Fifty Years in the Doghouse, Page 3

  One of the ASPCA officials noticed him admiring it one day. "Quite a rig, isn't it?" he said. Ryan agreed. "When do you replace it?" he asked. "Oh, I don't think we'll change this one for quite a while," the Berghs-man said. "Why?"

  "I just wondered," Ryan answered. Next day, before he was due to return to the automotive firm, Ryan stopped for a last look at the red and gold ambulance. The ASPCA man met him again. "Say," he said, "I hear you're a good man with trucks."

  "I know how to drive them," Ryan said. "I hear you're pretty good with horses, too," the man went on. "I've been driving horses longer than I've been driving trucks," Ryan admitted. "You're pretty good with animals in general, aren't you," the Berghs-man added. "Why don't you work with us? We need men like you." Ryan hesitated a moment. "You can start with that ambulance," the Berghs-man went on quickly. Ryan blinked. "That ambulance? With a horse, not a motor?"

  "That's right."

  "You know what?" Ryan said. "You just hired me." Ryan's career as a truck demonstrator ended that day. It was an opportunity to work with his beloved horses again, and the sight of the red and gold ambulance might have tipped the balance. Ryan, indeed, was always to be involved to one degree or another with horses. What he did not know, at the time, was that he would also be involved with practically every animal that came out of the Ark.

  3 - The Monkey House

  The first animal off the Ark must have been a monkey. If monkeys then were anything like they are now, he came bursting out full of beans and looking for mischief. His descendants have been doing so ever since. Compared to human beings, they show every sign of being smarter, quicker and more fiendish. Ryan is one man who appreciates this. Although originally devoted to horses, Ryan learned about monkeys in a hurry (with monkeys, this is the best way to do it). They are, Ryan discovered, much like children. But very old children, very precocious children, with prehensile tails as added equipment. On the one hand, monkeys crave affection; they can be wistful, pleading, and downright angelic when they have a mind to do so. On the other hand, they can show all the refined and subtle sense of humor of a four year old practical joker. They also enjoy the feeling of being one up on you. They are often jittery, excitable, boisterous; they lose their tempers, throw tantrums, sulk and give the impression of brooding on the wicked ways of the world. With this personality, monkeys have naturally found a compatible atmosphere in Manhattan. No one (except perhaps the ASPCA) can say for sure how many monkeys have run loose in New York-or may be running loose at this moment. This is hardly surprising, for there is little demand for that type of census data. The more startling thought is that any monkeys at all are running loose.

  Yet not long ago Ryan captured four of them in the vicinity of the American Telephone and Telegraph Building in downtown New York. One by one, he lured them into boxes baited with fruit, carted them back to the shelter and eventually transferred them to the zoo. He never did discover where they came from, how they reached the AT&T Building, or what they wanted at the offices of this great utility. AT&T shares have always made an excellent investment, but even Ryan does not credit monkeys with this kind of foresight. On another occasion, Ryan had a telephone call from a policeman at a boardinghouse. The monkey, whose owner had died and left the animal to fend for himself, was still living in the room. He showed no inclination to move out, and the landlady had found prospective tenants reluctant to share quarters with him. She had tried everything to persuade the monkey to vacate. He only jabbered at her and made what she believed to be insulting gestures. Finally, as if he had been any ordinary lodger behind in his rent, she called the police. One officer had been dispatched to the boardinghouse. He decided he needed reinforcements. The reinforcements decided they needed Ryan. "What's all the fuss over a monkey?" Ryan asked. He could hear excited voices in the background. "We can't get hold of him," the policeman said. "There's a cage here, but he won't go in it."

  "You boys disappoint me," Ryan said. "Just put on a pair of gloves, pick him up gently and put him in the cage."

  "Yeah?" said the policeman. "This monkey's as big as an Airedale. You try it."

  "All right," said Ryan cheerfully, "so I will." Ryan packed his monkey equipment into an ASPCA truck: a pole with a lasso on the end for catching the monkey, and a screen-sided box to hold the monkey after Ryan caught him.

  When he reached the boardinghouse, Ryan saw that the policeman had not been accurate. The monkey was not a monkey, but a red ape. He was not the size of an Airedale; he was much bigger. He was also in a foul temper. He squawked, huffed, grunted, bared his teeth, and Ryan could easily understand why the landlady had considered herself insulted. "Well," Ryan mused, "he is a big one, isn't he?"

  "Just put on a pair of gloves," one of the officers advised, "and put him in the cage." The ape, meanwhile, bounced up and down on the bed, clambered over the furniture and finally perched on the top of his own cage. There he sat, shaking his shoulders and muttering irritably. He took hold of the cage bars and rattled them loudly, curled up his lips and made disagreeable noises at Ryan. "You stop that," Ryan ordered. He pointed at the cage door. "You just get in there and behave yourself." The ape gave Ryan a look of surprise, hesitated a moment, then obediently climbed down and entered the cage. He even closed the door behind him. "I'll be damned," said one policeman. "You have to know how to talk to them," Ryan said modestly. The officers were still shaking their heads in admiration when Ryan went downstairs again to get the truck ready. On his way back to the room, Ryan noticed a red ape walking determinedly down the banister. He looked like a man on his way to an important business deal. Ryan did a classic double take. Before he could move, the ape padded into the vestibule, opened the door and disappeared into the street. Ryan had left his lasso and box upstairs. He raced to the room.

  "Why didn't you tell me there were two of them?" he said. "There aren't," said an officer.-"There's only one. As soon as you went out, he reached through the bars and opened the door."

  "Why didn't you stop him?" Ryan said with exasperation. "We don't know how to talk to him," the policeman answered. "You see, we do most of our work with felons. It's not the same...." Ryan grabbed his equipment and ran down to the street again. He saw no sign of the ape. A moment later, he heard a stream of chattering. The ape had climbed a girder of the elevated train structure. He perched there and beat his chest. "Get down!" Ryan called. "You go back in that cage." This time, Ryan's persuasiveness did not work. The ape hid behind a girder. A small crowd had already gathered and was watching Ryan with interest. Even in New York it was not usual to see a solid-looking, uniformed officer yelling into the empty air. The ape reappeared on another girder. "Hey, mister," an onlooker said, tugging Ryan's sleeve, "did you see the monk up there?"

  "Oh, shut up," Ryan muttered. The policemen came out and tried to keep the crowd from blocking traffic. Seeing the audience below, the ape revealed a new aspect of his personality. Snuffling gleefully, he waved at the spectators, put his hands above his head and wiggled his fingers. The ape, Ryan decided, should have been in show business. Like a human hoofer, the ape paraded back and forth along the girders, clapping his hands or raising them in the manner of a victorious prizefighter. He struck poses and even seemed to wait for applause. "All he needs is a cane and a straw hat," one of the officers remarked. "I've seen worse in vaudeville." The ape jumped to the roof of a passing streetcar.

  Ryan yelled at the conductor who, apparently thinking Ryan was only a passenger waiting to board, instinctively sped up. With a long arm held aloft, in the posture of the Statue of Liberty, the ape stood on the roof. In despair, Ryan imagined the streetcar bearing the animal far away, into the depths of Queens. The ape sprang off just in time. He reached the top of a parked car in one bound. In another, he leaped to the front of the boardinghouse and climbed up the brownstone facade. At a second-floor window sill he stopped, turned around and gave a triumphant chuckle. "Say, he's pretty good," a policeman observed. "He doesn't need the ASPCA. What he wants is a book
ing agent." The ape was out of range of Ryan's lasso. Ryan began figuring ways of luring him down. He turned to one of the policemen. "Got any fruit?" he asked. "Only a ham sandwich in my lunch box," the officer said. "But I know a fruit stand around the corner."

  "I need a couple of bananas," Ryan said. "Sure." The officer left and returned a few moments later. In one hand he held a bunch of bananas; in the other, an apple which he munched on. Ryan peeled the banana halfway down and waved it in the air. The ape looked at it with mild interest. Ryan tossed the fruit into the box. He had already rigged the lid with a cord, so that he could pull it shut as soon as the ape entered. The ape did not enter. Ryan peeled another banana and ate part of it. "Yum, yum, yum," Ryan called. "Boy, this is sure a good banana." The ape did not seem convinced. Ryan tried again, with even more enthusiastic expressions, smacking his lips, patting his stomach and shouting "Yum! Yum!" at the top of his voice. He consumed the best part of three.

  The police squad also joined in the banana eating. Very gingerly, the ape climbed down from his perch and sidled up to the box. "Quiet now," Ryan ordered. The ape peered and sniffed. Finally, he jumped inside. He picked up a half-eaten banana but tossed it down again. Something else had caught his eye. Ryan pulled the cord and the lid dropped into place. The ape paid no attention. He looked perfectly content in the box. "Geez," said a policeman, "I thought you were going to lose him again."

  "No," Ryan said. "I knew if I could get him inside he'd stay there a while."

  "He didn't want the bananas after all," said the officer. "He'll eat them later," Ryan said. "Right now, he's busy." He pointed to the far wall of the box, where the ape sat happily making faces at himself in a mirror. "Never go after a monkey without a mirror," Ryan said. "Did you ever see anybody pass a mirror without stopping to look in it? Monkeys are the same way. Especially this one. After I saw him clowning around up there, I figured he couldn't resist it. The banana was just to get him to realize there was a mirror in the box." Ryan hoisted the box into the truck, then mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Well," he said, heaving a sigh of relief. "I hope I don't have to do that again for a while."

  "Tough work," the policeman sympathized. "No, not so much that," Ryan said. "It's the damned bananas. I'm allergic to them!"

  Most of the monkeys Ryan has met do not normally frequent boardinghouses or office buildings. They prefer, instead, the waterfront and dock-sides. A lot of them escape from ships putting into New York from tropical ports. Like sailors and stevedores, stray monkeys hang around the piers, the customs sheds and the warehouses. Possibly they enjoy the exotic, international flavor; or they may be waiting for transportation back home. One monkey, a little Capuchin who had acquired the name "Sally," lived on the waterfront for five months. She cadged food from the deckhands or swiped it from cargo vessels and lunch wagons. No one knew Sally's address, for she always dashed away to a nest she had arranged for herself, hidden somewhere in the maze of alleyways and old buildings. With winter coming on, the stevedores began worrying about Sally. They called Ryan to see if he could catch her. Sally herself must have been concerned about the weather. Ryan lured her into a cage with nothing more complicated than a glass of milk. But he took no credit for it. "She wanted to be caught," he admitted. Sally was such a gentle, friendly animal that Ryan himself adopted her. Once in his apartment, however, the situation changed. Sally turned partial to Mrs. Ryan. Whenever Ryan came near, Sally would leap into Mrs. Ryan's arms and scream invective at the baffled humane officer. "Sometimes I think she's a gold-digger at heart," Ryan said. "She got what she wanted, and after that ... Oh well," he shrugged. "I'm not the first." Eventually Ryan gave Sally to another agent at the shelter. "You take her," he said. "It's not that I don't like her. But it's embarrassing. When anybody from the Society stops in for a visit, she acts like I've been beating her. I mean, it just doesn't look right." Sally, with her five months on the waterfront, might have established some kind of record for loose monkeys in New York. The Professor, another Capuchin, was at liberty only five weeks.

  He more than made up for this brief period by sheer brilliance, audacity, dazzling footwork, strategy and tactics that very nearly disrupted all of the North River shipping. As far as Ryan could reconstruct the case, the Professor escaped from a freighter that had tied up at Pier 62. Ryan could not be sure whether the Professor had belonged to a sailor or whether the monkey had been a stowaway. As he came to know the Professor better, Ryan decided he must have been a stowaway; and he often wondered why, during the course of the voyage, the Professor had not bothered to take over the whole ship. In any case, the Professor arrived in New York with all the enthusiasm and dedication of a man convinced that his fortune lay within his grasp. The first indication was not slow in coming. A couple of longshoremen were having a snack at a waterfront lunch counter when something brown flashed in and out again. "My God, Charlie, what was that?" asked one of them. "I don't know," said the second, his coffee cup still poised at his lips. "A cat, probably. Funny. I could have sworn it looked like a monkey." During the days that followed, the lunch counter customers realized very clearly that it was a monkey. The Professor, like any competent guerrilla general, had scouted out a supply base. From then on, he raided it consistently and thoroughly. The Professor would burst in unexpectedly and, in the ensuing confusion, load his arms with bags of potato chips and be on his way before the proprietor or customers could recover their wits. He swiped sandwiches from the plates and, chattering triumphantly, dashed off with his loot. If the customers chased him outside, the Professor would shinny up a pole and pelt them with leftovers.

  Once, the Professor even stole a coffee cup. "What, for God's sake, does he want with a coffee cup?" the startled customer asked. (The Professor had not taken the contents, which now soaked the customer's lap.) "Beats me," said the proprietor, helping to mop up. "Maybe he gets his coffee someplace else." The lunch counterman complained to the pier captain. The Professor was wrecking his business. The captain promised action. The situation had become more urgent. In addition to the lunch counter, the Professor had extended his theater of operations to a five-block area. Moving from one warehouse to the next, the Professor broke open cases of figs, nuts and kippered herring. Classifying the Professor as a deportable alien or as contraband merchandise, the customs guards set after him. The Professor conducted a successful rearguard action by throwing kippers at them. The pier captain mobilized flying squads of longshoremen. They had no better luck. The Professor had his headquarters deep among the rafters and girders of the pier. Even the longshoremen could not follow his trail. Within a month, the Professor had broken up about five hundred dollars' worth of goods and the port area had fallen into a state of total confusion. At that point, the captain called for Ryan. "Listen," he said, "this monkey is a genius. A criminal genius, but a genius. Take my word for it."

  "Go on," Ryan said. "I never saw one I couldn't handle." He would remember that remark in the week to come. Because the captain had been so forceful in detailing the Professor's ability, Ryan decided to bring along his friend Bob Coles, another of the Society's agents. The monkey, Ryan thought, might be smarter than either of them individually, but certainly not together. Ryan had time to wonder about that, too. Ryan and Coles began with standard procedure: a baited box and a mirror. For a while, Ryan set up as many mirrors as a millinery department. But the Professor had no interest in self-admiration; nor did he show any enthusiasm for food. The first day, Ryan had used bananas and other fruits. The Professor scorned them. "Okay," Ryan said. "And he doesn't like vegetables. So maybe he likes meat." Next day, Ryan tried a different lure: a pork chop. The Professor wouldn't even sniff at it. Ryan and Coles, defeated, ended up eating the pork chop for lunch. Ryan thought a lot about the Professor throughout the following week. He began to see the monkey as a cross between Albert Einstein and Lucky Luciano. "He's clever," Ryan admitted. "Maybe that's where we're making our mistake. The ordinary stuff doesn't work with him we've got to be as clev
er as he is, we've got to use our imaginations." The next device was indeed an imaginative one. Ryan had invented it just for the occasion. The idea had come to him at about three in the morning, while he had been tossing restlessly and pondering over the Professor. It was a loaded coconut. Ryan drilled a one-inch hole in the coconut, emptied out the milk and packed it with chopped bananas. "Here's the way I see it," Ryan told Coles. "If the Professor reaches in and grabs the banana, he won't be able to get his hand out again."