Its a 'beruk' business.

What you see here is a modern tamed monkey (‘beruk’ they call them in Malaysia - short tail monkey - Marga Macaca) drinking coconut water from a young coconut using a straw. But don’t be mistaken, these ‘beruk’ though trained can still be dangerous. Go near it and it will grab you, your hand or your clothings. It may even bite you. For girls/women/female it just likes to grab your hair.

I remember years ago my late uncle used to walk about in the village with similar ‘beruk’, tamed and used to climb coconut trees to plug old/ripe coconuts. These are specially trained monkey (‘beruk’) which can even distinguish green young/unripe coconut from the brownish old and ripe coconut, and they only plug the old ripe coconuts by twisting the stalk and letting the coconut falls to the ground. I think you can only find these tamed ‘beruk’ now in East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia, South Thailand and probably part of Indonesia (correct me if I am wrong). My late uncle then did not train the ‘beruk’, he bought one already trained. The ‘beruk’ was very useful then as there were many coconut trees in the village, and people in the village kept asking him to use the ‘beruk’ to climb their coconut trees to plug old/ripe coconuts. Coconut then (and still is in some part of the country) was very useful, extract coconut oil, and the fresh coconut milk (called ‘santan’ in Malay) used in cooking curry and all sorts of Malay dishes and sweets. He used to earn quite a bit of money from the services of this ‘beruk’. Sometimes he got only a few ripe coconuts as payment but he did not mind, as then he could sell those at the nearest town market and got some money. But in reality I think it was not so much the money he yearned for, the ‘beruk’ was his pet, sort of, and he was very proud to take it for a walk or even walking with the ‘beruk’ on his shoulders when walking around in the village. He was childless, so I think he yearned for a child, and the ‘beruk’ was more a less a ‘replacement child’ sort of.

Whether the ‘beruk’ was a ‘replacement child' or not he kept it tied to a tree near his house when he did not walk around with it. He had a small tree house made for it. He tied it to a dog chain with a loop around the tree so that the ‘beruk’ could maneuver itself when coming up or going down the tree. Actually the ‘beruk’ was very clever, it never got strangled by the dog chain, and it always knew what to do if the dog chain got stuck. And dogs (which we used to have) never got near the ‘beruk’; and of course we children also never got within reach of the ‘beruk’ for fear of being bitten by it. The ‘beruk’ though friendly to my late uncle but was never friendly to other people (even his late wife). Worse if my late uncle was not around, it was a wild ‘beruk’ in a sense.

Eventually the ‘beruk’ died of old age ( I think and I never found out really) and my late uncle got himself a small ‘beruk’ from the Orang Asli (Malaysian aborigines who live in the jungle or on the fringes of the jungle, sometime doing shifting cultivation, planting hill 'padi' or tapioca or local sweet potatoes and hunt wild games) somehow some where. A sort of replacement ‘child’ I suppose. He looked after the baby ‘beruk’, fed it with diluted condensed milk, mashed bananas and sometimes mashed cooked rice. Eventually it grew to be quite big. When it was time for it to be trained, my late uncle himself trained the ‘beruk’ on how to plug ripe and old coconut from those tall coconut trees we had near our house. I suppose my late uncle himself learned the trick of the trade from the ‘beruk’ he had earlier. He managed to train the ‘beruk’ well, as far as I could see, but I have no comparison really. At least soon the ‘beruk’ was able to plug the right coconuts and soon my late uncle was once again proudly walking about in the village with his new ‘beruk’. In fact the ‘beruk’ died (I think) just before my late uncle died.

I saw a film once on National Geographic TV channel on how they train these ‘beruk’, in South Thailand, I think. Fascinating really. But over there they have proper school for training these ‘beruk’ with proper experienced teachers. And on graduation, I remember, they even give some token credential. Bear in mind though only ‘beruk’ can be trained and accept the lessons, not the long tailed monkeys or monkeys from other species.

Its a monkey business really.

Talking about ‘beruk’, the Raja of Sarawak years ago was called Raja Brooke. Many Sarawak natives would like their sons to be called Brooke, in honour of the Raja. But many people then over there did not know how to spell Brooke, so the native son ended up with ‘Beruk’ as their names. Not a laughing matter.