I grew up in this zoo, the Milwaukee Zoo to be exact. Sandy the zookeeper has always been nice to me. It has been fun hanging out with the other monkeys in my habitat, especially Charlie and Blake, but I have always wanted more. Day after day we are forced to stay here while people come by and look at us and laugh when we do stuff. Its humiliating.
All my friends are okay with being here but I am jealous of the birds. Why do they get to fly around all the place? There are windows near the ceiling where they can fly in and mock us. The only bird I am okay with is Reggie. He is a funny young pigeon who is obsessed with human food, so he is starting to get kind of fat. He visits often and sometimes brings me extra food stolen from random people he finds in the food court who would kindly throw their food to an overweight pigeon.
I swear, it’s the people who come here that annoy me the most. It is okay that we get free food that we do not have to hunt for, provided by Sandy, but the people are terrible. They laugh at us, mock our sounds, and always try to get George, the big silverback gorilla, to beat his chest.
When he first moved in here people tried to get him to do it, and succeeded. He was trying to show his dominance and scare them away but they did nothing but laugh at him. That was a big shot against his self-confidence. Ever since that day, he has decided not to do it because he knew he would not get his point across.
One day, a girl visited who caught my eye. She was not like the other humans in the fact that she did not beat her chest at George or mock our language. She did not laugh when little Timmy, who was just learning to climb for the first time, fell and hurt his leg. Everyone else in the room was laughing at his fall, but she was standing there looking sad.
“Is he okay?” she asked her friend with a worried tone.
“It’’s just a monkey. It doesn’t matter, Susan.” he replied. So Susan was the name of the only girl in the world that cared. (Besides Sandy of course) But then, her group called her away and she was forced to leave.
It was good to know that someone cared about us. I didn’t want to say anything to the other monkeys for they might not have seen her, so they might not believe me.
“Ring Ring,” sang the alarm. That meant it was feeding time again. Feeding time was always the same. George went to take charge and distributed the food to the babies first, then the mothers, then the males.
I asked George what the outside is like. He replied, “Bobo, the wild is where you feel free. You are not locked up in a cage to entertain humans all your life. You can do anything you want, but it is not all good. There are predators you have to survive from and you have to hunt for your food. There is not perfect weather all year long. It is barbarous out there, but you do get fresh plants and grass, and a true sunshine.” The wild sounds awesome. It may be harder out there but that is worth freedom.
I thought about the wild all night and couldn’t drift to sleep until very late. I woke up with that bad feeling I usually get when I don’t get enough sleep. I think that today is going to be a hard day.
The crowd’s of people started to walk in with the speech given by the manager, which starts off every day here at the zoo. All of a sudden, out of the mass of people I saw Susan. Why was she back? This zoo is really expensive. Did she really care that much about animals to pay two days in a row to see us? Apparently, because she did, in fact, come back again.
She seemed to be staring at me. Why me? I was one of the least amusing monkeys of the group because I did not do anything to pleasure the humans.
I decided to move and to go by the river to get a drink and her eyes were still on me. She must be thinking about how awful it is for us in the zoo. I try to act miserable to see if any of the other humans would start to think like Susan, but it only seemed to affect her.
She moved onto the next over exhibit, the Kangaroos, but she moved back by us within an hour. What was her obsession with us? Why did she come back over and over just to see us?
When the zoo closed she left, we got our food, and everyone laid down for bed. I couldn’t sleep again because I kept pondering why a human would care for any different species. She payed an awful lot to visit us monkeys. I was laying there awake and something moved in the corner of my eye.
By god, it was Susan. She came back in the middle of the night. What was she thinking. She saw me stirring and pointed to me and signalled me to come closer. I decided to go over there but I couldn’t go up that high because our climbing trees aren’t that big. She let down a rope. What am I suppose to do? Leave my friends and go with her? Well, I am not too close to my friends and I do hate it here.
So I decide to climb. It feels good to be leaving behind this trashy place. When I get up there with her she hugs me. Is it allowed for me to hug a human? But who can stop me or punish me for doing this. Everyone is asleep and Sandy left a while ago to go to sleep in her house.
Susan signals for me to follow her and I do. Apparently I am walking too loudly because she quiets me. I follow her to some strange machine. She opens a door and I enter. This machine must be my escape from my sad past. All of a sudden, I feel like I am moving strangely and the machine is loud. We are passing all the terrain very quickly in this machine. We keep going, and going, and going. I feel like I am about to go to sleep in the machine but we stop with a jolt. 
I look outside and see trees. Real trees. We are in the wild and I feel free. The door opens so I climb out. Susan signals me to go off into the woods and I do. “Go on.” she insisted. She hugged me and walked behind me.
The sound I hear earlier when I got into the moving object started up again and it left. Susan was nowhere in sight!
Did she leave me in the wild? I should have woken and brought one of my friends. What can I do here? Where do I go? Okay, the first thing I need to do is calm down so I can find food and water without panicking.
Within minutes of my arrival, I hear other monkeys, from above in some trees. They look at me and bear their teeth, which is a deadly angry sign in our language. One shouts out in the language of monkeys, “Who goes there? State your name and where you are from.” “I am Bobo and I come from a zoo,” I replied.
They discuss with each other in a small whisper and then return to our conversation. “I am Chris,” one finally spoke. “And I am Alex,” said the other, “and you do not belong here.” “Go back to the zoo at once,” Chris forces.
I just got here and I am getting kicked out. After a while, I reply, “I do not know how to get back. Is there any other place in the woods I could go to get food?” They ushered me away from their grounds and to the place with the quicksand. I may be a tree climber but I have to get low to collect the fresh bananas from the low banana trees.
For some reason, they followed me around all day. I found a stream with close banana trees. I hang down from my tail to get to the trees and Alex throws a rock and knocks the bananas into the quicksand. What is he doing?
How can I live here? I won’t be able to get food here. I knew it would be rough going out to the wild but this is worse than I thought. That night, when I tried to sleep on an empty stomach, I found it hard because they might do something to me at any time of the night.
I woke up to a push out of the tree. I immediately grabbed on with my tail as I was trying to realize what was going on. Chris and Alex tried to get me stuck in the quicksand, but I got away.
Why did Susan ever come? I really wanted this freedom but I did not know the horrible state of the wild. I hear a snake in the distance and a panther on my right. I am trapped in this terrible place. Susan, please come back to rescue me.
I run and run until I cannot hear any animals. Where am I now? I do not see any trees directly around me. There are only things made from trees where there are some people eating. Is this another zoo? Why are people just sitting here looking at me?
One person is moving towards me and it happens to be Susan. I hug her and try to look as miserable as I feel. I think she has realized how I hate it here.
She brought me to her moving vehicle and let me in. I hated the wild so much. How could I have not guessed what it is like all these 7 years? I wanted it so bad and it ended up being terrible. We get back to the zoo and she hides me until we get to the monkey exhibit. I arrive back at my real home and see my real family.
Everyone shows their gratitude that I am back and everyone missed me. I leave Susan showing great thanks that she tried for me. Every monkey in the exhibit wanted to know all about the wild. I told them about my horror stories and portrayed accurately my time in the wild, and how it was the most twisted day of my life.