Those lucky apes in the Budapest Zoo

Mark Lipton

Perhaps they should be served a bit of Creme de Banana poured over a bowl of sliced bananas rather than wine. Or perhaps they would like a bit of Anis del Mono. I am guessing that a monkey might like a sweet wine, so perhaps a bit of a sweet muscat wine for the ordinary monkeys and some Tokaji Aszu 6P for an endangeried species of monkey or ape would be in order. In the distant past, I have owned a wooly monkey, an "organ grinder" monkey, and a Siamese rather ape-like larger monkey. They all would eat a wide variety of foods. I also once had a kinkajou which is a tropical nocturnal member of the raccoon family that has huge eyes, is long and thin, and has a long prehensile tail. This critter looks much more like a monkey than a raccoon. He could not get enough bananas to eat. They have an extremely long tongue for reaching honey in tree holes. If you inverted a bottle of Creme de Banana and then opened it, the animal would run his long, narrow tongue down the neck of the bottle and lick it clean. The animal was quite tame. He would go over to new guests and sniff their shoes!