[woofa.express]

Gerry’s pet Monkey.

Gerry Post was one of three Dutch pilots I worked with in Sudan in 1977. The three were all good pilots and Gerry was my good drinking buddy. He never had any money and continually asked for loans for which he never repaid but not to worry for it was spent on liquor and I got to share it.
I first met him on the airliner enroute to Khartoum. On arrival he insisted we go to the bar of the Excelsior Hotel bar for a drink of beer. My first mouthful got spat straight back into the glass and he was expecting this. The brand was Camel and I reckon it was brewed from camel shit and straw. Well Gerry gave a laugh and said I’d become quite accustomed to it in about 5 days. Yes he was correct.
One of the locations we worked was Aba Shoush I remember but I don’t remember the correct spelling. Well Gerry reckons he’ll have a pet monkey and this is how he caught it with the recommendations and help of an old timer. They chased them up a tree and sat below with a bottle of beer each and pretended to drink it. The monkeys were terribly curious of course and when the blokes left, leaving the bottles behind and now opened the monkeys climbed down and they too drank it. They became drunk of course having never before experienced alcohol and the blokes simply picked one up. I don’t recall what name they gave it, it’s now more than 40 years ago. ( see the third line on my signature).Monkey lived in a tarpaulin strung over the roof of our “rest house”. In protest to having been removed from it’s community it pulled some of it’s teeth but in10 days it was like one of the family. At the end of the spray season Gerry flew one of the planes back to Europe and Monkey rode along and became an illegal immigrant in Holland.
I heard a funny incident about this way of catching a monkey. On a previous occasion it was said the old bloke coughed and lost his false teeth. The monkeys up the tree showed their teeth and pulled at them in a gesture of amusement and laughter.