Here's one of the many, many pictures of Elizabeth and her life-partner Joey the Monkey. This one is temporally notable because it was taken in 2012, the first such picture on Elizabethtown. (Note E's professional-grade leotard, a gift from Santa Claus.)
Joey is old. No one knows for sure, but he's got to be pushing 60. And this puppet gets used harder than Charlie McCarthy on a USO tour. Joey is in service pretty much seven days a week, and during the weekends I'll spend hours and hours with the puppet on my hand. Thus, he's getting worn out. The mohair on the inside of his arms is gone. His beard is nearly gone. His paws are holey.
He can't be replaced because, a) his type hasn't been manufactured in forty years, and b) they were hand made so no two are exactly alike. I'd like to get him repaired before he's an utter wreck, but I'm not sure if I can find someone locally to do the job, or if I'd want to pay what such a restoration expert would likely charge. So I began to think of vivisection. Perhaps I could buy a similar puppet and do a paw transplant. Or, as brother Mark (who bought this Joey) suggested, cackling with malignant glee, a head transplant onto a fresh puppet-body.
Mad, you say!? They said Victor Franksetin was mad!!
Long story short, I'm watching some auctions on eBay and hope to buy a cousin of Joey's soon. Particularly if he's going to be part of Suzanne's childhood, measures will have to be taken to improve his corpus.
For what it's worth, Joey is a Steiff "Jocko the Chimp" puppet manufactured in Germany. Those Germans know their business, whether it's cars, gigantic artillery pieces, or puppets. You've got to hand it to them.
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