Ben? Speechless?

Well, Mallie, our illustrious web, entertainment, and biking expert, has asked me to pipe out a blog. I gotta tell ya, for once, I really have nothing to talk about. Who could have guessed, me...speechless. Now that I think about it, there was another time when I was speechless.

About ten or twelve years ago, we had a severe weather situation that almost went VERY wrong. It happened on a Monday. We were just beginning the Midday show, when a tornado warning was issued. Now, it is customary that any time we have severe weather, the meteorologist starts the show as the top story. I was ready for just such a task. What I wasn't ready for related to the interview guest we had scheduled for that day. We had an animal trainer from Wild Adventures Theme Park here with a little spider monkey named Buttons.

Don't get me wrong, Buttons was a cute little guy, all decked out in his premie diaper, but he was also quiet the wild adventurer himself. Right as the show opens, they toss to me for a weather "hit". At the same time, Buttons decided that he'd had enough of waiting...and enough of sitting in his cage. Sooooo, as I was talking over a shot of the Doppler, I hear a loud CLANG! This, of course, is the now familiar sound of a cage gate opening. What happened next nearly left me speechless.

Buttons ran over to ME, grabbed on tightly to my leg, and began shaking it like an elephant trying to fell a tree! Mind you, this was all below the camera shot. So as I was talking about serious stuff, I was trying to get a monkey off my back...er, leg. The audience had to be wondering what was going on. Needless to say, I broke a sweat.

That was a fun day.

Chief Meteorologist Ben Jones