It was midday and I was standing at my kitchen sink inspecting an Argentinean pear in the intense noon light refracting through the room's main window.
       It was the first day of an unplanned and unpaid vacation, a leave forced upon me after I brought a crate of live chickens into the office to demonstrate the logic behind Kant's premise on human will and presupposition to the guy who sat caddy-corner to me. The chickens happened to deny my authority and escaped. Luckily, all but three were recaptured.
       Hauling me into his office, my boss said he'd "had it up to here" while holding his hand at nose-level, unlike the last time he'd "had it up to here" and held his hand just above his navel. Before he sent me home, I expressed that I appreciated his candor and admired his shoes.
       As I attempted to memorize the web address from the sticker on the pear, out of the corner of my eye I saw what appeared to be an orangutan hurriedly walk bipedally past the kitchen window. I scurried forward to get a better look. Just as I approached the window, he turned around and paused a moment. The eye contact was not awkward like it would have been with another human – say, Jerry from work (God that guy is creepy, with his deep, sad, glassy eyeballs, brown teeth and pervert's smile) or any other animal (say, a squirrel: likely rabid and hungry. Or a zebra: simultaneously condescending and desperately heartbreaking). I was transfixed, lost in the beauty of the occurrence.
       After giving each other a once-over, the orangutan curtly shrugged his shoulders and kept walking. I crunched my face against the glass, needlessly to the point of pain as he strolled out of view. I rushed to the patio door to see if he was headed for the backyard, perhaps after the crate of corn chips I kept back there. They were under lock and key but I'd heard primates were generally skilled at the art of intrusion.
       With the monkey gone, my focus shifted to getting the monkey to return. I could definitely see a bond forming between us, a bond that would undoubtedly lead to me shelling out thousands of dollars on clothing large enough for a great ape. Because how cool is a monkey when not dressed in human clothing?
       Compelling the orangutan to return could be as easy as a banana, or perhaps four bananas or one giant fiberglass banana, approximately 60-65 feet high. (Note: Maybe the whole monkey-banana thing is just a stereotype. Example: Everyone thinks that bears eat honey and porridge when in actuality, the whole bear-honey-porridge thing originates in fables, cartoons and children's cereals. So it's probable that the concept of monkeys and bananas derived from some allegory, likely African. And because monkeys and bananas have been linked so seamlessly, perhaps now at zoos and in cartoons, monkeys eat bananas because "monkeys eat bananas." Or maybe monkeys eat bananas because they're readily available in their native habitat. If monkeys were introduced to different fruits and vegetables, perhaps they would prefer radishes, carrots or cherry tomatoes.)
       On second thought, instead of bananas, I figured I should build a giant fiberglass vegetable tray. But a monkey may not recognize a giant vegetable tray until he's had a chance to familiarize himself with a regular-sized vegetable tray. (Note: With a vegetable tray, do I leave the dish of ranch dressing in the center? If I leave it, I suspect he will not use it as a vegetable dip as intended but might drink it haphazardly or more likely dip his hands in it, smear it on his genitals and then eat it. Either way, it sounded like a mess.)
       On the way to the grocery store to buy as many vegetable trays as possible without being ushered from the store by security, I noticed a gorilla waving in front of a tax preparation store. Because of the recent occurrence of a great ape sighting, I thought it prudent to stop and investigate despite the impressive speed at which I pedaled.
       As I approached the gorilla, he stopped waving and turned in my direction. He made a stereotypical monkey sound of "ooh-ooh ahh-ahh" before producing a very human-like laugh.
       "You crafty son of bitch," I said in a hushed tone crouching a little closer to the sidewalk.
       "How's it going?" he asked.
       "Easy big fella," I said, tone still hushed, as this was how experts spoke to wild animals on television.
       "You had your taxes done yet?" he asked.
       I stood up straight and stared at him, trying to decipher what had transpired. I knew some gorillas had the ability to read Braille – or maybe it was sign language – and some that spoke broken Chinese but I hadn't heard of any that spoke such marvelous English. It must be a man in a gorilla costume, I deduced.
       To confirm my suspicion, I quickly jostled his solar plexus then went for the gorilla head. We struggled a bit as a cocktail of grunts and English swear words spewed forth. I finally wrangled the gorilla head off and stared at a dopey, bespectacled teenager with sweaty, disheveled hair and a horrible attempt at a mustache. Berating my inquisition, his words were not quite as eloquent coming from a mere human.
       Just as I noticed his dingy white low-tops, he took a quick swing at my face as I ducked. Peering inside the store, I saw what was likely the lead tax preparation specialist rise from his desk and come to the aid of his waving gorilla. It was time to turn my back and retreat, letting the altercation diffuse. Back on my bike, I pedaled as hard as humanly possible the rest of the way to the store.
       While looking for the store's vegetable tray section, I had to make my way around in a covert fashion as it was important to keep a low profile amongst store employees, the butcher in particular. We'd been on valiant terms until a few weeks ago when I asked him a series of questions in reference to specific cuts of pork and ended up insulting the troops (the First Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, in particular), which infuriated him. And being threatened by a chain maille arm holding a rather sharp rectangular knife was not as amusing as I had imagined.
       Luckily I avoided further confrontation and headed out with a load of vegetable trays, six boxes of Super Golden Crisp and a set of measuring spoons I picked up on impulse.
When I arrived home I decided to put the orangutan situation aside. After devising a plan to institute a compulsory government-mandated statewide pancake breakfast every Saturday, I began to draft a letter to my congressman, not about the pancake breakfast but to reiterate my opinion on wizardry that I had covered briefly in the previous week's letter.
       Just when I discovered that I had not dotted any of the i's in my letter, I got the odd feeling I was being watched. I glanced out the kitchen window and caught sight of the orangutan, which had climbed the side of the house, peering inside. Not wanting to frighten him off, I tried to play it cool. From experience, the coolest portrayal of myself that I could offer was to slouch ever slightly, lazily tilt my head to one side while pointing with my index finger and thumb outstretched. He seemed to dig the gesture.
       Feeling my cool gesture was growing less cool with each passing moment, I laid my hand down and straightened my posture. The orangutan then produced a piece of paper that he held against the glass. I picked myself up out of the dining room chair and started a brisk walk to the window. The paper could be anything, considering it was coming from a great ape. It could be an eviction notice or a petition to allow Norse chanting back into schools. It could be the first part of the complete works of Shakespeare that he and an infinite number of friends typed on an infinite number of typewriters. Or it could be litter he had picked up moments earlier.
As I approached the window he jumped to the ground. I looked out but he had disappeared. I ran out the door connecting the kitchen to the driveway and saw no sign of the monkey. Instead, I discovered an overturned recycle bin the orangutan must have used to get high enough to look into the window. I found the piece of paper crumpled on the ground, picked it up and straightened it out.
       Written in crayon was the word "LOOK."
       Curious to see what the monkey saw, I stepped onto the bin and peered into my gloriously lit house.
       My eagerness faded quickly as I frowned involuntarily. Something seemed different, as if I was looking into the house of a stranger. In the kitchen, the cabinets had been meticulously painted argyle, a miniature fishing net sat on my kitchen table next to a shoebox full of candy corn and an oversized toothbrush propped itself in the corner. In the living room, a cardboard cutout of Smokey the Bear was forced into a sitting position on my loveseat, smothered by faux-goat fur pillows. A plastic recreation of the 1981 John McEnroe-Bjorn Borg Wimbledon match hogged the bulk of the coffee table. A Nancy Pelosi mask perched atop a broken torch lamp.
       It then hit me that I was on administrative leave for releasing live chickens at work and was currently pursuing the whereabouts of an orangutan .
       This was my life.
       It was a feeling part clarity, part sadness, part shame, part hope, part bewilderment.
       A shot of adrenaline jostled my innards, shooting up my chest and spine. A fully-clothed orangutan stood before me, now inside my house. We stared at one another through the window as he perched himself on the kitchen sink, smoking my pipe. I first noticed his see-through shower cap as he washed dishes using a wire barbecue brush. After further inspection I realized the corduroys he wore were mine, as was the plaid flannel vest I had bought on a dare in 1997. They looked old and cheap and appalling on him. He stopped scrubbing long enough to hold his arms out to his sides and shrug his shoulders as if to say "What did you expect?"