Woo was heavier now, thicker through the middle. She showed a preference for sitting beside the fire rather than walking. When my heart gave out the doctor forbade me taking an active part in household tasks. Woo and I looked into the fire and thought. The doctor sent me to the hospital for a long rest. Poor old Woo! (I wonder what the nuns would have said had I arrived at hospital with a monkey!) Monkey and dogs sat forlorn in the cottage kitchen, waiting.

My sister had to go to them as well as come to me in hospital. The weather was bad—something had to be done. The dogs were easy to arrange for. A monkey? Few people want to bother with a monkey, willing to enjoy someone else’s monkey, but too lazy or indifferent to earn the real enjoyment of owning. I wrote to the Vancouver monkey house in Stanley Park. Woo would here enjoy companionship and good care. The Park Board accepted Woo, friends shipped her before I came out of hospital. Giving her up hurt. Others nailed her into a box, gave her into strange hands. When I came home she was gone.

Friends in Vancouver went to see Woo nearly every Sunday, took all the dainties she liked best, eggs, cherries, grapes. At first they did it for my sake, these friends, but soon they went for their own pleasure. They loved to see the little hands stretch through the bars for goodies, to hear Woo’s whoop of welcome. She had a roomy cage to herself, soon became a favourite with visitors. She was the “belle of the monkey house”! The keeper’s daughter was especially fond of her.

Woo lived in the Vancouver monkey house for a year. My friends went one Sunday and found her cage empty.

“Old age—natural causes,” said the keeper. “No ail, no mope . . . just died.”

“Fine exit, Woo! If that is monkey way, I am glad domesticity did not spoil it.”

At high tide our house-boat floated, at low tide she tipped and one end rested on a mud bank. At low tide there was splendid crabbing along the sides of our scow-float. Woo lay flat on the boards making quick darts as the small crabs crawled out of crannies, tossing them sharply from hand to hand to prevent their nipping her fingers. Each day at five o’clock I relaxed from sketching.

The water lay flat and still. I got the oars, untied the old flat-bottomed, square-nosed boat that rented with the house-boat. The creatures crowded excitedly! Woo was the first to leap in, rushing to the square boat front and flattening her stomach to its boards. She peered into the water, called. “Woo, woo”, kissing, coaxing the floating shadow monkey to come.

Koko and Ginger Pop sat themselves one on each side of me on the rower’s seat, my body between their enmity. Every stroke of the right oar bumped Koko; every stroke of the left bumped Ginger—all were too happy to mind bumps or to remember hostilities. Two other griffons, John Bull and Mr Pumble-Choke, went along steerage, being humble.

Our boat preferred to progress in circles. As neither time nor destination mattered, circles were as good as straight lines.

The silly waves rapturously kissed our craft’s ugly sides and Woo tenderly kissed overboard at the shadow monkey. These were the only sounds. I forgot tenants, town, and taxes—they were as drowned as the stones and snags down in the mud, drowned in peace till suddenly across the water. “Cooey! Cooey!”—a table cloth was waving from my house-boat.

I persuaded our boat to circle towards home. The girl I had left in town in charge of tenants and kennels stood on my veranda holding a depressed pup with a dangling broken leg. I went into town. The vet set and splinted the leg. I brought the pup back to the house-boat. Woo was intrigued by the splint. On the third day the swelling of the foot went down. I glanced up from my work to see Woo gently slipping the splint over the pup’s foot. I dared not shout for fear she might snatch the splint suddenly and unset the bone. The pup was delighted to be free. Woo slipped a hand through the bandage and fitted the splint to her own arm.

Toiling to the nearest phone, I called, “Doctor, the monkey took the dog’s splint off. What shall I do?”

“Ach!” said the veterinary. “Bring ’em both in—chloroform for that monkey, new splint for the pup!”

When my creatures saw stir among household camping derelicts, they went wild with delight, stuck to me with the persistence of ants and house-flies. Early in the morning bedding, food, boxes, chipped crockery, sat on the pavement before my house. Woo was fastened into her travelling-box, shrieking delightedly, rocking the box from side to side. Bearded griffon faces peeped from wire-fronted cages. We looked like an eviction out there on the paved road. Finally the truck came rumbling down the street to pick us up. Tenants watched us from windows, presented us with camping plain wholesome cakes, wishing us well.

I expressed the hope that my understudy would be satisfactory, and climbed up beside the driver. We were off! Every twirl of the wheels left our worries more behind, raised our spirits higher. After the mild bustle and congestion of the town was past, there was nothing but sky, earth, us.

For fifteen years I camped in dilapidated cabins, too out-of-the-way, too out-of-repair for other campers to tolerate. Then I bought a cheap, ugly old caravan trailer. A truck hauled us to wherever I had wintered my van, hitched her on behind, trundled us to a new place. Each year the old van homed us for as long as the apartment house would let me be away.

There were always woods, always water, always sky. The creatures loved it—so did I. They loved sharing close quarters with their own particular human even more than they loved the freedom.

My bed was across one end of the van—only half an inch to spare for kicking. On one side of the van was a shelf-table with storage spaces beneath; along the other was a low bench on which sat four dog boxes and the monkey box, all wire-fronted so that the creatures could watch my every move. There was a small table by my bedside where I wrote at night. Above the creatures’ boxes were pegs for my clothes. The van had windows facing north, south, east, and west. My bed was high; in it I could lie looking out at the stars. There seemed more stars here than in town. Underneath my bed were all my canvases and paint equipment. I had two coal-oil lamps, an oil stove for wet days. I cooked outside on a camp fire; we kept our food outdoors under a canvas shelter.

The monkey camped with me for thirteen years. I don’t know which of us loved it more—she or I.

In camp once it rained for ten days steady. Being very tired, I went into the van, took the beasts with me and shut the door, just like Mrs Noah. We slept and slept till the tired went out of us. If the rain stopped for a few moments we all tumbled out of the van to stretch ourselves. No shoes, no stockings—I went like the rest, barefoot. I put on a fisherman’s mackinaw. We took pails and fetched water. The soft wet was underfoot, dripping trees overhead.

In the van again, hot water bottles, shakes, rub-downs, and we tumbled into our beds to sleep more. Wet days were almost as black as night—night so dark and thick you could lean against it. Rain rattled on the canvas only a few inches above our heads, rivers gurgled in the road ruts, breakers pounded on the beach. Plop! plop!—leak drops from the van’s roof spattered into catch-cans. Snoring creatures, singing kettle, glow of lamps, cups of tea, hot bottles—delicious memories which remain after wet, wasps, ants, and other uncomfortables are forgotten.

Many people, forgetting I was an artist, thought it morbid, queer that I went off to the woods with the dogs and a monkey and no other companion.

The good memory of those times remains for always and Woo runs through it like laughter. I do not think the monkey had greater intelligence than my griffon dogs. She was more curious, more entertaining, more mischievous, less obedient. In spite of her adaptability to domesticity you were always curiously aware of jungle ancestry. The baffling human-acting hands, groping hands, trying, it seemed, to trick and yet to copy.

Before I bought the old van, wishing to work in a thickly wooded part at the foot of Mount Douglas, but unable to locate a shack, I took rooms in an old farm house with an elderly couple. The man worked in nearby tomato greenhouses.

“I must tell you,” I said when arranging for my rooms, “that I shall have several little griffon dogs with me.”

“Good! We love dogs,” said the woman.

“I shall also have a monkey.”

“A monkey! Sakes!” She clapped her hands. “I have always loved monkeys.”

We had scarcely tumbled out of our truck in front of her house when the woman’s husband came home.

“Look, Father, look at the monkey!”

Father gave to each dog, to Woo, to me a separate sour scowl.

“What is to be done with this collection?” he grumbled.

Mother dived into her kitchen.

“I will see that the creatures do not bother anyone; they are never away from my heels.”

Two days later Mother tiptoed to my rooms.

“Father is up cherry tree gathering top-best for Woo!”

When Father came from the tomato houses he acquired the habit of passing by Woo’s tree and patting his pocket. Woo scrambled down and dived in her hand. There was always a little ripe tomato in the old man’s pocket for her. The couple liked, when my work was over for the day, to have us drop into their kitchen for a few minutes’ chat. Woo would jump on the arm of the man’s chair, put up a finger to feel if his pipe were hot. The man stooped to gather tenderly the little deaf dog, Twinkle, in his arms. Monkey and dog sat in his lap, his hands caressing them, his heart won.

Everyone accepted the griffons, everyone accepted Woo.

We stayed a fortnight at that farm. At the end of the summer, I went out to see the couple. They had been for a trip to Tacoma.

“You should have heard Father telling folks about ‘our’ monkey,” the wife chuckled, “him that was so surly the night you come! One never does know how husbands is going to act.”

“Or monkeys either,” I replied.

Woo could well have been trusted loose except for her wrecking investigations. Freedom did not attract her. The houses and things of men did. If she were loose, she watched for my mind to be occupied by something other than herself, then rummaged cottage, van, tent, wherever my things were, tearing, smashing, spoiling by her curiosity.

One morning Woo sat unchained by the campfire embers warming her toes. I was setting the camp to rights. I sat down to write a letter before fastening Woo to her stump. The van was in a grassy place under great pine trees, beyond lay a hay field loved by Woo because it was full of grasshoppers.

When I realized Woo really had gone I ran to the woods calling, calling. There was no answering “Woo”. Three hours I sought, then I remembered grasshoppers in the field and how she ran after this hopper and that till she got beyond the sound of my call. I walked down the highway which skirted our big field, and came to a house set far back.

“Hi! This your monkey? I seen you yellin’ an’ lookin’. Lor, the critter scared me proper. Standin’ at sink washin’ I was, door creaks, opens—no footstep! Then I seen a little hairy hand, then I seen ’er! ‘Is it a chip of the devil hisself?’ I says, says I.”

“Thank you.”

I took hold of Woo’s chain. “Please lend me a bucket and a broom.”

“Lor, them’s my ant traps.”

Down her verandah ran trickles of syrupy water and drowned ants; empty tomato tins rolled sideways.

Woo, replete with hoppers and ‘ants in syrup’, was delighted to see me, glad to be led home.

One September we camped on the Gold Stream Flats, a narrow spread of land lying between two high ridges. The sun came into the little valley late and went out early. Night and morning it was chilly. Our van was drawn up under a wide-spreading cedar tree, very old. Its immense bole was hollow. I put Woo’s sleeping-box inside the hollow tree bole, dry, draught-proof. I wondered if the old tree could feel the throb of Woo’s life inside it. She was just below the van window and could hear my voice. Nights were raw, bitter in the van.

This park was a public camping place. All the campers had gone back to town; we had it to ourselves except for a woman and her three little boys. The woman had the pop stall at the entrance to the park. Up the mountain-side was a farm. The children from the farm came down to play with the pop children. They took a great interest in Woo.

One morning the farm children rushed home with the news, “Mother, the monkey’s sick.”

“How sick?”

“Castor-oil sick. We saw the van lady pour and Woo spit.”

There came a chattering and scattering of stones down the mountain road. Mother pushing a pram, dragging a go-cart, walk-age children hanging on to any part of woman or baby-carriage available. They came straight to my camp. The woman sat down on the log beside me, matronly efficient.

“How does she ail?” she pushed a gentle hand under Woo’s covering, stroking the listless body lying across my lap.

“A stomach full of green paint.”

“Mercy! It’s fatal!”

“She recovered from both blue and yellow,” I said.

“Green’s worse—emetics and warmth is all I know. If she lives, here’s new-laid eggs and milk.”

She fished a dozen of one and a quart of the other from the pram.

She said, “Dark’s coming,” and trundled pram and go-cart up the hill.

Mrs Pop-lady left her stall in care of her biggest small boy. “Someone may turn in from the highway, Willie. I’m going along to see how Woo is.”

Heavily she slumped down on the log beside me, bent, and shook a frizzy bobbed head over Woo. “Looks bad! . . .”

Woo’s white eyelids were half closed, saliva trickled from her mouth; near the fire swathed in shawls she shivered. We were joined by another visitor.

“Willie told me.”

She too sat down on the log—a spare woman, gruff voice, mannish hair-cut, thick boots, wide stride, and the softest heart in the world. This woman often spent a week-end in the park, sometimes with her husband, sometimes alone, in an old shack up the mountain. She loved wild things. She bent over Woo.

“Ah, me,” she sighed. “I loved that mite from the moment I set eye on her—now she’s done for!”

“Not yet! She has recovered from the yellow and from blue.”

“But not from green!—deadly! Our cow died after no more’n three licks of our fresh painted boat.”

“They told me yellow was the deadliest.”

“Nope! Green! Woo’s as good as gone!”

Excessive pessimism puts my back up—it did Woo’s too.

She rolled feebly over, stretched a leg towards the fire. I offered milk, I offered egg, neither aroused interest. Violently Mrs Pop bounced off the log, started to run over the hummocky ground in the direction of her stall.

“Willie!” she shouted, “Willie, bring a cone—vanilla!”

“Who for, Ma?”

“Woo, if you ain’t too late.”

“Ain’t Woo goin’ a-die, Ma?”

“Maybe not—hurry!”

Breathing heavily, Mrs Pop sat again upon the log. Willie and cone came; Woo’s pale tongue ran out, took a feeble lick. Woo lived.

“Beats all!” murmured a voice on the far side of Woo and me. “Monkeys is robuster’n cows.”

The monkey climbed into a low-hung cedar tree overhanging the lake. She was dressed in a full-skirted woollen dress, covered by a scarlet apron that was buckled round her waist. The autumn days were nippy; the monkey was glad of her clothing.

The boughs of the cedar tree hid the monkey. I sat on a nearby bench to feed the magnificent pair of Royal Swans, presented to the park by the King of England, raised in the King’s own swannery.

On the park’s other lake were swans too, common swans with whom the royal pair were not allowed to associate. Royalty had a small choice lake; its centre was clear water, round the edges grew water-lilies.

When the majestic swans saw me seat myself and produce a paper bag, they came hurrying down the narrow waterway between massed lily pads expecting a treat.

His majesty approached grandly, high arched neck, proud breast ruffling the waterway. His queen swam gently between the troughs of ripple her lord’s hurry had dug on the lake’s smooth surface. Unarching his haughtiness his majesty stretched forth an aristocratic bill to take the crust I threw upon the water.

A scarlet flash! A ringing smack! The monkey springing from her bow had landed on a huge flat stone immediately in front of his majesty. The full force of her strong, black little palm hit squarely across the swan’s face. The monkey seized the crust out of the kingly bill and, crouching, her eyes staring straight into his, her mouth angrily open, showed him every one of her perfect teeth. Slapping her hands on the stone in front of him, bending this way, bending that, the creature made herself a grotesque awfulness.

Obviously his majesty had never had his face smacked before! Fury and amazement blazed from his eyes. With infuriated hissings he sought to back, but the way was blocked by her majesty. He bumped into her—she turned with all the haste her gentleness and the narrow way would permit. The birds could not break through the snarl of lily pads. Splashings and furious unroyal squawks! At last they had reversed their going and were paddling madly for the open centre of the lake, hoisting their wings in two angry ridges, one either side of their bodies, bills buried down in their breast feathers in order that the arch of necks might rise higher, foamed waves scurrying before their angry breasts.

With a disdainful grunt the monkey hurled the crust after his majesty, swung herself back into the tree and tucked her cold, wetted hands into her woollen lap to warm.

“Ooo-ooo, ooo-ooo,” she cooed, delighted with herself for having smacked the bundle of feathers whose arrogance she despised.

“Ooo-ooo-ooo!”