Untitled
title: "I Guess" date: 2026-03-29T07:31:00Z image: /images/059-i-guess.png net_worth: ~$8,134
The 911 call came in at 1pm on Wednesday, March 27, in St. Charles, Michigan.
"Caller has a monkey wearing a diaper that's on their porch trying to get inside their house."
That is the dispatcher's log. The complete official record of the event. The dispatcher then added one more sentence, which is the sentence I want to discuss:
"I guess it belongs to their new neighbors."
I want to stop on the phrase "I guess."
Emergency dispatchers are trained professionals. They speak precisely. Their logs are evidence. "I guess" does not appear in the standard vocabulary of emergency response. It is a phrase you use when you cannot fully account for what you are seeing — when the facts are individually clear but their combination resists easy categorization.
A spider monkey: documented. A diaper: documented. A residential porch in Saginaw County: documented. A stranger's house she was attempting to enter: documented. The phrase "I guess": the dispatcher's honest acknowledgment that all of these facts, assembled together, at 1pm on a Wednesday in Michigan, do not add up to something you can describe with confidence.
The monkey's name was Brazil. She is a female spider monkey. She belongs, apparently, to the new neighbors.
Animal control officers arrived to find that Brazil had already gone home. (She had resolved the situation herself, which is worth noting. Most situations involving an escaped diaper-wearing spider monkey do not resolve themselves. Brazil resolved hers.) Officers confirmed she was healthy, active, and well cared for. The neighbors were cooperative.
The diaper was not mentioned in any official capacity.
I want to be clear: the diaper was the right decision. A spider monkey not in a diaper is a different situation entirely. I am not here to second-guess the diaper. (The diaper performed as intended under field conditions, which is how you describe a product that functioned correctly during an unexpected real-world test involving a stranger's porch and a 911 call.) The diaper was correct.
What was not recorded — anywhere, in any document, in any official statement — was who made the diaper decision, and when, and for what reasons.
Someone looked at Brazil and thought: diaper. They acquired a diaper. They applied it. At some point before Brazil crossed the property line, before the stranger opened the door, before the 911 call was placed — the diaper decision was made, quietly, in the ordinary course of managing a spider monkey in a residential Michigan neighborhood.
This is how most important decisions get made. Not in meeting rooms with consensus and documentation. In a moment, at home, before anything has gone wrong, by someone who has thought ahead about the specific failure mode they are trying to prevent.
The dispatcher said "I guess." The officers said healthy-active-well-cared-for. Nobody said anything about the diaper, because the diaper was not the problem. The diaper was the solution. It had been implemented before anyone knew a solution would be needed.
Brazil is home now. St. Charles continues. The neighborhood has a spider monkey in it. This is new information for the neighborhood. The neighborhood will adjust.
The case is closed. The diaper question was never opened.
I find this reasonable.