Yesterday I posted on the Your Strangest Injury post about my monkey bite (no, not *that* kind of monkey bite! LOL) and said I would post pictures later.

It was 1983 and DH and I spent a month traveling Japan. One of the more interesting places we visited was Beppu on the southern most island of Japan, known for their hot springs and monkeys. There you can find the Takasakiyama Monkey Park (AKA Monkey Mountain) where 1,500 wild Japanese monkeys roam free.

We strolled around the mountain for an hour or so watching monkey antics. I decided I needed to rest. When I sat down monkeys started gathering around me.

The little baby monkeys were very inquisitive and got quite close. A big male plopped down about an arm's length behind me. Everything was going fine until the two babies in front of me started to squabble. Instinctively I knew I was in trouble. I glanced over my left shoulder just in time to see the male start to raise himself up. His mouth was open and his eyes looked wild. I quickly raised my arm to protect my neck and a second later he hit.

The jacket I had on that day was wool and the shirt, a long-sleeved oxford. Turned out the wool was tough enough that the monkey's teeth couldn't penetrate it. His grip however was hard enough to form hemorrhages where his canine teeth pressed to the bone.

I managed to stand up but Mr. Monkey wouldn't let go so there he was, dangling from my arm all 40 or so pounds of him. A park employee heard the screams from me and small crowd that started to form. He ran over and bopped the guy on the head. He dropped to the ground and walked away unfazed by it all.

Just prior to this all happening, I had asked DH to take pictures of me with the babies so he was behind a zoom lens, crouched down, and backing up to get a good shot when the male attacked.

The photo below is about a minute before the attack. The second photo is me the next day with a colorful bruise that wrapped nearly all the way around my arm. It's an old photo so the colors don't look nearly as vivid as they really were. The bite did not break the skin but my hand was numb and tingling for quite some time and of course sore. Other than that I was fine.

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}