MONKEY BUSINESS

When Jack brought Jeff, his new stuffed toy monkey home, he told Julia, “Jeff will be a good playmate for both of us, and I’m sure he will enjoy getting to know and play with our Mulligans.”

What Jack and Julia didn’t know was that Jeff, the very cute monkey, had more than play on his mind. He looked at their big beautiful house, their playhouse, their bedrooms, their exercise room, their nice big flat screen TV and began to think about something other than play.  Jeff started thinking about business.

MONKEY BUSINESS.

And it wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy playing with Jack and Julia---he loved the house, the yard, the playhouse, the exercise room, the fish tank, the flat screen TV and he really loved his new friends, the stuffed toy Mulligan pups.

Between the five of them---Jack, Julia, two Mulligans and Jeff---they fed the fish, had a nice picnic in the playhouse, exercised in the exercise room, played video games and watched cartoons on the big flat screen TV.

What could go wrong?

Well, normally nothing, but when you are dealing with a monkey, there’s one thing that you better keep your eye out for, and that’s MONKEY BUSINESS.

Jack and Julia knew all about Curious George, the story of a monkey that The Man With the Yellow Hat brought to the city from far away Africa. And they knew how Curious George escaped from the zoo where The Man With the Yellow Hat put him and how George got himself in some shenanigans---like riding a bicycle and how the Man With the Yellow hat had to take him to his home just to keep him from getting into trouble.

Well, Jack never thought that Jeff would end up being a bit like Curious George.  But here’s what happened.  Jeff, like Curious George, after all was a monkey.  And what Jack never expected was that, when he and his sister were sleeping gently in their rooms, Jeff tended to stay up late. And when he was wide awake he, being a monkey, couldn’t resist into getting into a bit of monkey business.  The first evidence of this came early one morning when Jack’s dad shouted up the steps to the kids, just as they were waking up, “Hey, who painted our new exercise room pink after we’d just painted it?”

Jack looked at Julia and Julia looked at Jack. Then they both looked at the Mulligans---their pups weren’t painters, and they weren’t troublemakers.

Big Jack said, “Well, whoever did this is going to have to help me repaint it today and so, Jack and Julia, you better get your paint brushes.”

While Jeff napped all day, the kids repainted the room.

Then came the fact that the fish were suddenly looking a bit chubby.  “Kids, have you two been overfeeding these fish?  They look like they’ve put on some weight, one of them almost got stuck trying to swim through the little castle in the tank!”

Jack looked at Julia, and she looked at Jack.  They both shrugged.

Well, this went on and on---first the painting the exercise room, then the overfeeding of the fish, then came a little paint job inside the kid’s new playhouse where their dada found the inside walls a bright red color.

Once during the night, Liz heard the TV playing and went downstairs to find that someone (probably Jack she thought) had been playing (favorite video game filled in here).  But she found Jack sound asleep and so she checked on Julia, also in her room sound asleep.

Things were strange in their house now. So she and Big Jack decided that they would have to find out which one of their kids was getting up during the night and doing little unacceptable things in and around the house.

Just the night before they found a big mixing bowl out and a mess in the kitchen where someone----during the night----was baking cookies!

“One of them is sleepwalking,” Big Jack said. So Liz and Jack set their alarm and waited outside the kids’ rooms.

They did this for three straight nights.

Nothing!

And then on the fourth night they heard a little soft sound, “Eeeeh, eeeeh, eeeeh!”
And here he came, out of Jack’s room.  Jeff swung up on the stair railing and slid all the way down the steps.

Liz and Jack on tiptoe followed the monkey.  “He’s headed to the garage,” Liz whispered. They followed up and pretty soon they heard the garage door open and they couldn’t believe what they saw. Jeff, the monkey, was up to MONKEY BUSINESS.

They watched him open the garage doors and slide behind the wheel of the kids’ little blue battery operated car.  He hit the buttons and was off, riding like a MONKEY around the dark back yard! Up and down he went, doing slides in the mud in front of the playhouse.

“Quick,” Liz said, “Get Jack and Julia up they need to see this!”

So their dada woke them up, and they went to the kitchen windows rubbing their eyes as they watched someone, something, flying around their backyard in their car.

When Jeff finally got tired of racing around the yard, the family hid in the kitchen. They heard the little car slam to a stop in the garage, the garage door go down and then here, through the kitchen door, came the newest member of the family---Mr. Jeff, the naughty monkey.

When he got halfway through the kitchen, his owner, Jack and his sister Julia shouted all at once----GOT YA!

Well, Jeff jumped about a foot in the air and with the kids right on his tail; he climbed--- a mile a minute---up the steps and then leapt into Jack’s bed.  By the time the kids got there, he was under the covers and pretending to be fast asleep.

Suddenly all the family was in the bedroom and Big Jack and Liz got there just in time to hear Jack say, “Look, Jeff, we know you’re awake and we know now that you painted the exercise room, fat fed the fish, baked cookies during the night, and were playing video games during the night!  But our parents thought all that monkey business was me and Julia.  And so you could have gotten us in trouble!

“And he will never do any of this again, right?”  Liz said, loud enough for Jeff to hear her.

The monkey didn’t move, and that’s when Jack said, “Look, we know the story of Curious George, and we know that when he was bad that he almost found himself in a cage in the zoo!  We know you were just a monkey being a monkey, but I don’t think you’d want to go off to the Atlanta zoo, do you?”

Now the room was dark so Jack and Julia weren’t positive they saw it, but they were pretty sure that they saw Jeff’s eyes blink, and that they saw him shake his head no, saying that his monkey business days were over!

Then Jack said one more thing, “You are a good monkey, and we love you but, you are family now, and we are a family with a nice house and we are NOT a zoo!

As Jack when to sleep that night, he did have one last thought.  He wondered if things went well with Jeff, that maybe he could get himself a big yellow hat and a yellow coat just like Curious George’s owner.