It Is Florida - Where Something Weird Is Always Happening

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

In 2002, in High Point, NC, I was guarding a facility against AQ attacks. There was some highly volatile crap there that, if it was set off, would have left a crater 60 feet deep and 600 feet in diameter right where I was standing, and would have leveled 16 square miles of High Point outside of the crater, so folks were pretty nervous that it might attract unwanted attention for AQ in those days.

About 6 AM one morning, just as the sun was coming up, I was out patrolling the perimeter, checking for intruders or breaks in the fence or anything out of the way, and suddenly I heard the damndest row of chittering and screeching and screaming in the woods along a set of railroad tracks, and that grabbed my immediate attention. Tree tops over there were swaying and shaking like a wind storm had hit them. They were only about 100 meters or so away, and I couldn't feel any wind where I was, so I figured it had to be a big flock of birds making the racket - North Carolina, ya know? Nothing there to do that other than birds, and lots of 'em.

Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was monkeys. Dozens of them. In North Carolina, out in the wild in the woods. It looked like it was two opposing forces of monkeys throwing a young war at each other.

In North Carolina - did I mention that?

I never told anyone about it, nor did it go into any of my reports. They'd have disarmed me and sent me home - or worse, to a shrink's office - but I know what I saw.

And it was monkeys. Dozens of 'em. in NC. In the wild, in the woods.

A few weeks later, I heard that PETA had set a bunch of monkeys loose from a research facility, "liberated" them they said. Never mind that monkeys are not native to NC, and would not survive long there without the research facility to take care of them. That was a couple hundred miles away from where I had been that morning, and I'm still not convinced of the connection, but it's the only explanation I have. The report mentioned "a few" monkeys released, rather than dozens, but "a few" IS a rather imprecise figure, so who knows?

"There are stranger things in Heaven and on Earth, Horatio..."

.

Monkeys are resilient, clever, and survivors. 

They have quite a few feral monkeys in South Carolina, so I would expect a group or two have moved a little further north.

When I am out in the woods, I am sometimes reminded why the woods is the setting for so many horror movies.