This is the kind of place where you sit back and relax, and everybody tells stories. Here's the one I've been telling recently: I was on vacation in Belize, where they have a primate reserve. I had broken away from the group and gone off by myself when I accidentally disturbed a colony of howler monkeys--babies and mothers--on the ground. The babies started screaming, the male came charging through the trees, and all the monkeys started throwing fruit and twigs and monkey doo-doo at me. I started running, and the male chased me, screaming, all the way to the end of their territory. I was covered with monkey doo-doo, and it was five miles from inside the reserve to the highway. I stood by the side of the highway, and when I finally flagged down a bus the driver opened the door and said, "Whoa, you can't get on. You smell too bad." So I started walking toward where I was staying, 35 miles away. I passed a man in the ditch with a machete cutting weeds, and I realized after a while that he was following me. I saw a bus stop ahead, and as I was walking toward it he came up, put his hand on my shoulder, spun me around, and put the machete up to my neck. To be continued...

--Mona Bingham, paralegal