one o fthe more amsuing stories...
I just read this today. It's a story our friend Jason posted about one of his many experiences while serving in the Marines.
"So one day we’re out on patrol along the reverse slop of a ridge called “Trashcan Ridge”. On one side of Trashcan Ridge there’s intermittent jungle and clearings extending out towards Mt. Santa Rita. On the inside slope was the trash dump for the Navy base at Subic Bay. The whole area is generally known as “Monkey Hell” as there are literally hundreds of troops of monkeys in the area living off of the edible trash. Some of these troops have 50-60 monkeys.
All of them are MEAN, NASTY, AND ALL AROUND f***ing EVIL!
These Monkeys beat each other up all day long with sticks and rocks at the trash heap, and they know how to fight. They also know that the Marines in the area are carrying chow, and that we have a forward area on the far side of Trashcan Ridge where the patrols rotate in and out of. And it is far easier to steal a couple of MREs from the Marines sometimes than it is to play in the Thunderdome-like area of the trash pile.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: Monkeys aren’t stupid. They know what it means when a Marine points a rifle/shotgun at them. They come armed and ready to fight. A two foot tall 30lb Spider Monkey can throw a small 1oz rock at about 50mph, and hit you through a 3” hole in the brush with no trouble… and can do it while jumping through the air from tree to tree. He can whip a 12” long stick at you and hit you like he was pitching a ninja throwing knife.
If you corner one, you will get bombarded with rocks, sticks, and monkey poo from 4 other directions. You can’t just shoot one, since all of you ammo has to be accounted for, so there’s only so much real firepower you can bring to bear on these guys. Thus, we usually carried things like Slingshots and .30 caliber steel ball bearings, and over at the Trashcan Ridge camp there were always a few Negreto Cross Bows on hand along with assorted spare ammo for small arms and the occasional purloined explosive booby trap that we kept from the last live fire exercise.
Back to the topic at hand. The day I will always remember as “The Battle of Monkey Hell Ridge”. After a very long patrol, we returned to Trashcan Ridge to rest for 24 hours before going back out again. The Company Gunny came by and dropped off some MRE’s and some other goodies and off he went. Someone made the mistake of leaving a case of MRE’s out in the open, and the Monkeys were starting to swarm in the branches. I told PFC Todd to secure the case of chow before the monkeys got to it. He went and picked it up, but instead of returning to the locker, he stood there looking at the monkeys.
Mistake #1. Monkeys hate stink eye. Never stare at monkeys in the wild when they are contemplating stealing your chow. They take it as a CHALLENGE from a VERY WEAK OPPONENT!
The monkeys started going apeshit (pun intended), beating their chests, jacking off, screaming and shaking the branches. Having started to piss them off, I told him to BACK AWAY FROM THE MONKEYS AND START YELLING.
Obviously, he knew better, and decided to ignore me. He yelled something to the effect of “f**k YOU MONKEYS” and then turned his back on them and TROTTED back to the locker.
Mistake #2: If you are being called out by a troop of monkeys, assuming you don’t want to get your ass kicked, you have to make a shitload of noise and slowly back away. You have to act like you are the biggest, baddest, most king shit dynamite monkey in the whole f***ing jungle. If you RUN (or trot away like a little girl) with your back turned to them, they will RUSH YOU.
And that is what they did, about 3 dozen pissed off and hungry monkeys went running after PFC Todd. But that isn’t where he REALLY fucked up… noooo. He might have gotten hassled by 2-3 of them for a minute or two if he’d have bothered to stop, turn and start yelling (as we were furiously instructing him to do), but he (again… start looking for a pattern) DIDN’T LISTEN.
He Stops, turns, and… does he yell? Does he? Does he? f**k NO! He THROWS AN MRE GRAPE JELLY AT THEM!
Mistake #3: Do not throw anything at the monkeys unless it can f***ing HURT THEM. They are Mean, Evil, Vile little creatures, but they are also cowards. Most have been hit by a rock, or seen one of their buddies get hit by a rock, and they know one thing: “I don’t want any of that”. If one of them gets creamed by a rock thrown by a screaming mad man, they run as soon as that monkey screams. They scatter like… well, like monkeys.
Idiot boy throws a GRAPE JELLY at the monkeys. He gets another 2 steps before he gets hit in the back, legs, and head by a massive retaliation (monkeys only know massive retaliation, none of this tit for tat shit) fire of rocks, sticks, and poo raining down on him.
Zamp capped one with his 9mm and they retreated.
“GOD DAMN IT! STOP THROWING STUFF AT THE f***ing MONKEYS!”
For the rest of the day, anyone going outside of the shack was subject to random barrages of flying rocks and sticks.
I got very fed up with this and shot another one of them on my way from the shack to the bunker. Because I AM the KING SHIT DYNAMITE MONKEY God Damn It! After getting hit particularly hard in the back by a rock, I finally LOST IT.
“MOTHER f***er!”
I went to the locker to see what kind of spare ammo we had. My lucky day indeed. I found *TWO* MK3A2’s in the locker. We don’t even carry them on patrol, only the DAP uses them. We mustered up some chow and put it in a mortar round box, then took the box-o-yummies out to the compound entrance. I put one of the MK3’s under the box rather precariously, with the pin removed and the spoon lodged in such a way that moving the box more than half an inch would set off the MK3. The now box-o-yummie-kablooie was placed in a position behind a 3 foot tall berm that the site builders used to define the perimeter, and we were supposed to use as an ad-hoc fighting position.
Then everyone went back into the shack and waited. It took about a minute before the first monkey went for the box. 30 seconds later there were 50 of them. It seemed to take a long time, but finally… BOOM!
8oz of Composition B and 1.5 oz’s of PETN/RDX makes a hell of a lot of “Boom”. There were dead monkeys everywhere. It looked like the closing scenes from “Platoon” with all of the little dead monkeys everywhere. The hoards of monkeys had been repelled. I believe we killed Caesar, and they had finally had enough of the "Hairless Green Thunder Maker Monkeys in the Food House". We didn’t see them for at least another 2 weeks, and when they did come back, they most definitely knew their place.
Spider Monkeys are the bane of my existence, and the above is why."
"So one day we’re out on patrol along the reverse slop of a ridge called “Trashcan Ridge”. On one side of Trashcan Ridge there’s intermittent jungle and clearings extending out towards Mt. Santa Rita. On the inside slope was the trash dump for the Navy base at Subic Bay. The whole area is generally known as “Monkey Hell” as there are literally hundreds of troops of monkeys in the area living off of the edible trash. Some of these troops have 50-60 monkeys.
All of them are MEAN, NASTY, AND ALL AROUND f***ing EVIL!
These Monkeys beat each other up all day long with sticks and rocks at the trash heap, and they know how to fight. They also know that the Marines in the area are carrying chow, and that we have a forward area on the far side of Trashcan Ridge where the patrols rotate in and out of. And it is far easier to steal a couple of MREs from the Marines sometimes than it is to play in the Thunderdome-like area of the trash pile.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: Monkeys aren’t stupid. They know what it means when a Marine points a rifle/shotgun at them. They come armed and ready to fight. A two foot tall 30lb Spider Monkey can throw a small 1oz rock at about 50mph, and hit you through a 3” hole in the brush with no trouble… and can do it while jumping through the air from tree to tree. He can whip a 12” long stick at you and hit you like he was pitching a ninja throwing knife.
If you corner one, you will get bombarded with rocks, sticks, and monkey poo from 4 other directions. You can’t just shoot one, since all of you ammo has to be accounted for, so there’s only so much real firepower you can bring to bear on these guys. Thus, we usually carried things like Slingshots and .30 caliber steel ball bearings, and over at the Trashcan Ridge camp there were always a few Negreto Cross Bows on hand along with assorted spare ammo for small arms and the occasional purloined explosive booby trap that we kept from the last live fire exercise.
Back to the topic at hand. The day I will always remember as “The Battle of Monkey Hell Ridge”. After a very long patrol, we returned to Trashcan Ridge to rest for 24 hours before going back out again. The Company Gunny came by and dropped off some MRE’s and some other goodies and off he went. Someone made the mistake of leaving a case of MRE’s out in the open, and the Monkeys were starting to swarm in the branches. I told PFC Todd to secure the case of chow before the monkeys got to it. He went and picked it up, but instead of returning to the locker, he stood there looking at the monkeys.
Mistake #1. Monkeys hate stink eye. Never stare at monkeys in the wild when they are contemplating stealing your chow. They take it as a CHALLENGE from a VERY WEAK OPPONENT!
The monkeys started going apeshit (pun intended), beating their chests, jacking off, screaming and shaking the branches. Having started to piss them off, I told him to BACK AWAY FROM THE MONKEYS AND START YELLING.
Obviously, he knew better, and decided to ignore me. He yelled something to the effect of “f**k YOU MONKEYS” and then turned his back on them and TROTTED back to the locker.
Mistake #2: If you are being called out by a troop of monkeys, assuming you don’t want to get your ass kicked, you have to make a shitload of noise and slowly back away. You have to act like you are the biggest, baddest, most king shit dynamite monkey in the whole f***ing jungle. If you RUN (or trot away like a little girl) with your back turned to them, they will RUSH YOU.
And that is what they did, about 3 dozen pissed off and hungry monkeys went running after PFC Todd. But that isn’t where he REALLY fucked up… noooo. He might have gotten hassled by 2-3 of them for a minute or two if he’d have bothered to stop, turn and start yelling (as we were furiously instructing him to do), but he (again… start looking for a pattern) DIDN’T LISTEN.
He Stops, turns, and… does he yell? Does he? Does he? f**k NO! He THROWS AN MRE GRAPE JELLY AT THEM!
Mistake #3: Do not throw anything at the monkeys unless it can f***ing HURT THEM. They are Mean, Evil, Vile little creatures, but they are also cowards. Most have been hit by a rock, or seen one of their buddies get hit by a rock, and they know one thing: “I don’t want any of that”. If one of them gets creamed by a rock thrown by a screaming mad man, they run as soon as that monkey screams. They scatter like… well, like monkeys.
Idiot boy throws a GRAPE JELLY at the monkeys. He gets another 2 steps before he gets hit in the back, legs, and head by a massive retaliation (monkeys only know massive retaliation, none of this tit for tat shit) fire of rocks, sticks, and poo raining down on him.
Zamp capped one with his 9mm and they retreated.
“GOD DAMN IT! STOP THROWING STUFF AT THE f***ing MONKEYS!”
For the rest of the day, anyone going outside of the shack was subject to random barrages of flying rocks and sticks.
I got very fed up with this and shot another one of them on my way from the shack to the bunker. Because I AM the KING SHIT DYNAMITE MONKEY God Damn It! After getting hit particularly hard in the back by a rock, I finally LOST IT.
“MOTHER f***er!”
I went to the locker to see what kind of spare ammo we had. My lucky day indeed. I found *TWO* MK3A2’s in the locker. We don’t even carry them on patrol, only the DAP uses them. We mustered up some chow and put it in a mortar round box, then took the box-o-yummies out to the compound entrance. I put one of the MK3’s under the box rather precariously, with the pin removed and the spoon lodged in such a way that moving the box more than half an inch would set off the MK3. The now box-o-yummie-kablooie was placed in a position behind a 3 foot tall berm that the site builders used to define the perimeter, and we were supposed to use as an ad-hoc fighting position.
Then everyone went back into the shack and waited. It took about a minute before the first monkey went for the box. 30 seconds later there were 50 of them. It seemed to take a long time, but finally… BOOM!
8oz of Composition B and 1.5 oz’s of PETN/RDX makes a hell of a lot of “Boom”. There were dead monkeys everywhere. It looked like the closing scenes from “Platoon” with all of the little dead monkeys everywhere. The hoards of monkeys had been repelled. I believe we killed Caesar, and they had finally had enough of the "Hairless Green Thunder Maker Monkeys in the Food House". We didn’t see them for at least another 2 weeks, and when they did come back, they most definitely knew their place.
Spider Monkeys are the bane of my existence, and the above is why."