WELL BITE MY STEM AND TAKE MY PUMPKIN!

Anyone who visits PLM regularly, or even irregularly, for that matter - even just a couple times a year would do - will likely be aware of my bitterly earned expertise in bedevilment by monkeys, who, if proof be needed, recently visited my garden while I was out and chewed all my shiitake buds off the oak logs, actually BIT OFF CHUNKS OF THE BARK, leaving my formerly pristine logs all imprinted with monkey teethmarks ideal for monkey criminal forensic experts, were there any, and while I'm on the subject a simian prosecutor would be nice too, but to get to the point here, some scientists spent several years on a tropical island (ah, the experimental ardor!) studying the monkeys that lived there to learn, basically, whether monkeys are sly creatures or what. (Those scientists certainly are sly creatures, aren’t they?)

Anyway, after several years of day-in, day-out slaving over hot monkeys, the nicely tanned scientists’ conclusion is twofold: Rhesus Monkeys Make Clever Thieves, and Monkeys Steal When No One's Looking! (Well bite my stem and take my pumpkin!) I could have saved those poor overworked beach-burdened scientists several years of tropical island living, if they had just visited my house for a couple of weeks, or even simpler, read my little simian diatribe It Ain't No Picnic, in which I said, and I quote, just to save you a trip: "Still, his [the alpha male] wanting me to think he wasn’t watching my every move told me he knew he was in the wrong - but only as long as I was there. When I went into the house, i. e., disappeared from his reality, he’d be back in the right again, quicker than you can say Garden of Eden. Thus operates the simian conscience, which still has its ancient echoes in our own..." or my various earlier monkey rants in which I specifically state that monkeys check their watches while waiting around for me to leave before plundering my estate.

"Until now, we didn't know that rhesus monkeys could do these things, and in fact there are many scientists who said they couldn't," said one doctoral candidate. I suggest they come and monitor my garden while I'm away.