Monkey Trouble

First, let me apologize for naming this post after a terrible mid-90s monkey movie starring Harvey Keitel in a role that must surely have been leveled against him as punishment for showing off his crank in "The Piano" a year earlier. The only other monkey movie I could think of was "Dunston Checks In," and that name doesn't really apply. I think what's his name--Joey from Friends--might have made a monkey movie too during the high point of his career (that statement is sad, but true), but I didn't have enough interest to try and find out what the name of it is in the off chance that it would apply.

But we do have a bit of an issue building with Dag Masters, P.I., the big gorilla doll, and Gabe, so a monkey title of some sort was in order.

For the past week, I've been leaving the gate upstairs open so that Gabe can come and go as he pleases. He's gotten to the point where he can navigate the stairs without much trouble. The only worry now, really, is that he likes to use the stairs as a toy--throwing things up and down them, hauling things upstairs then back down, that sort of thing--and I'm afraid that he'll begin to take for granted the effects that gravity and hardwood stairs can have on a young noggin. We've been imprinting on him the absolute necessity of holding onto the stair rail, and he usually does a pretty good job, but it only takes one time. Nonetheless, I decided it was time he had a few more rooms of the house at his disposal. Also, since, as I pointed out last week, almost all of my best stories begin "I wasn't paying close enough attention to Gabe when . . . ." So, I figured this would give me ample new material to work with.

But it really hasn't, for the most part. He's enjoyed being able to go up and down as he pleases, but he really has been very responsible with his time alone upstairs. He makes some messes (and at some point in the last few weeks he shoved a half dozen very thin books into the VCR we have up there, rendering even the DVD portion of it unusable until I dug all the books out this morning), but nothing too interesting has occurred.

Except for this running . . . I don't know what to call it. I think of it as a running gag, but I just don't know how to read it. He MIGHT be doing it on purpose, just to be a turd, but I'm not sure if he's reached the developmental stage necessary for practical joking.

Four out of the last seven days, when he's gone upstairs, he's left a surprise for me in my room. The first night, it caught me off guard. He knows he's not supposed to play in our bedroom, and he usually doesn't. A few months back, he took to closing our bedroom door--maybe as a reminder that he's not supposed to go in there, but maybe because he just likes to open and close doors. So, when I came up that night for bed and found my door closed, I didn't really think anything of it. I opened the door and saw this:

Now, tell me that wouldn't put the wind up you a little bit. Not to mention the fact that most of the lights were off, so all I could see was a lifeless, good-sized lump on the floor right inside my door. My first instinct, actually, was that our giant cat Tsunami had gotten locked in there and chosen that time and place to die (or sleep, there really isn't much difference between the two for most practical purposes, but my mind went immediately to her being dead--so read into that whatever you like). But I quickly recovered and figured out that it was Dag.

For the next two nights I found the same thing when I went upstairs. Then, while Libby was gone last week, he stopped doing it and a few days passed. But he did it again this morning.

Now, my question is: what does this mean? Should I be putting some sort of Freudian spin on this? I'm not sure HOW I could do that, as I never paid that much attention in my Psychology classes, but it seems like it should make some sense if analyzed under the lens of Freud. Or is it just saying something about him and that monkey? I know he doesn't hate the toy. He set it up on a chair at the little table in his room two weeks ago and served it some pretend soup, which I don't think he would have done if he was scared of it. But what else could be encouraging him, on a daily basis, to pick up the monkey, throw it into our bedroom, and shut the door on it? Anyone? I just wonder if I should be worried.