Minkey

Not Original Minley and Ma

This was one of my cherished rescues. I remember it raining heavily and we received a call for the Railway Administrative Quarters, stating that there was an abandoned baby monkey which had fallen from a tree. Along with my driver of the ambulance, l went to the rescue the monkey with great apprehension. The rains had blocked and flooded the roads and it was difficult to reach the quarters. However, once we reached, we swung into action. The family had carefully wrapped the little one, since the baby monkey was completely drenched.

At the shelter, we prepared a large cage and put in a branch with leaves, to give the monkey a ‘’homely’’ atmosphere. We decided to call it minkey (based on Peter Sellers movie-Pink Panther).  We tied a red ribbon on its neck to give it a nice look.

Every morning, I would feed it bananas, actually I used to peal a banana in front of it and it followed the action and learned to eat the same. We fed it on some other fruits and it started linking wafers (which of course was given very rarely).

We used to remove its cage and place it in the sun while cleaning the shelter. One day we saw a group of monkeys coming and sitting on a well which was lose to the shelter. They used to chatter and minkey used to respond to the same. These visits started becoming regular and minkey started looking forward to the same. After a lot of deliberations, one day, we decided to release minkey from the cage and hand it over to the group of visitors, specifically to one female (who I assumed was its mother).

With a heavy heart and apprehensions, my team and I gently took minkey to the well and waited for the reactions from the group. It was such a wonderful sight when the female just engulfed minkey in her arms, and minkey likewise hugged the mother.

Immediately the whole gang left the shelter with minkey (with her red ribbon). On the one hand, it was very a very sad day for us, but on the other, minkey found a family and which would care for it.