Things were better when Barry came to visit me. Those might have been my best years at the zoo. He would smile and then bare his teeth, and I would bare mine. He had the loudest laugh; even through the glass I could hear his hearty chuckles and goofy guffaws.
From the time that Barry was very young, his mother would bring him by the zoo. I remember noticing he was one of the tiniest kids in the viewing area. I guess most parents are afraid to bring in their real young ones. They think we'll frighten the children, make them cry or something. But Barry never cried. Not even when he was a toddler. He would just sit in his stroller and look at me with those cheerful green eyes of his. As Barry got older, his mother would drop him off at the monkey house, and leave him for a bit of time, unattended. We would play all sorts of games with one another: copy cat, I spy, staring contests, who can make the funniest face… The time flew by so fast during those days, - Barry's mother would come to pick him up and it would feel like she had dropped him off minutes before, even though a whole hour had gone by.
Then came the days when Barry didn't need his mother at all to bring him to the zoo. He would just show up all on his own. I could never wait until he got there and see his smiling face. None of the zoo keepers ever smiled at me the way he did. To them I was just another "animal" under their care – but to Barry, I was a true friend.
I still think about Barry sometimes, and I wonder what he's doing now. Maybe one day he'll come back to visit, and bring a little monkey of his own.
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