Raising a Japanese Snow Monkey.

Last Christmas, my son Hayden tasted snowflakes on his tongue for the first time in front of our home in Colorado. While family and friends unwrapped presents and ate turkey indoors, Hayden and I snuck out to listen to the freshly-fallen snow crackle underneath our feet.

For my Christmas gift last year, my wife converted the yellow storage room in our basement into a writer's nook.

Classic books...

Scented candles...

Fluffy pillows...

Fake bamboo...

She pulled out all the proverbial Pier 1 Red Carpet.

Above my old wooden school desk where I type hangs a poster of two Japanese Snow Monkeys huddled together to keep warm. I purchased the poster years ago after reading a National Geographic article on the flamboyant behavior these monkeys are known for.

If I remember correctly, I believe that the article concluded that monkey scientists have begun to rethink their ideas on monkey culture because of the Japanese Macaques. Researchers have discovered that the Snow Monkeys invent odd behaviors and pass them on by imitation...

Which is pretty much my approach to fathering.

In 1963 a young female named Mukubili waded into a hot spring in the Nagano Mountains to retrieve some soybeans that had been thrown in by her keepers. Like any good monkey, she found herself at home in Mother Nature's Tea Kettle. Soon other young monkeys joined her in the hot spring. The Canadian Snow Monkeys brought beer and bath salts to the party.

At first Mukubili's behavior caught on only with the young macaques and their mothers. Over the years the rest of the troop took up the behavior, which now finds shelter in the 109° F (43° C) hot springs to escape the winter cold. Several years ago, the monkeys organized a hostile takeover of the hot tubs in a nearby town.

I can't blame them for their hot tub invasion.

If I was a Snow Monkey I'd raise hell for a hot tub as well.

Aside from their strange infatuation with bourgeois bathing, the thing I remember reading about these monkeys was their snowball fights. I was unaware that monkeys ran around throwing snowballs at each other before reading this article. For some reason, the mental picture stuck with me for years.

It make me wonder if you and I are wired for something more than paychecks and pretty fences in life. Perhaps we have been given a soul in order to make snowballs and sneak into other people's hot tubs. Lately, when I look into the eyes of my Japanese Snow Monkey, I remember to listen to snow crackle underneath my feet as I walk though life.