MOUNTAIN LANDLADY

We have a nice big flat-topped rock next to the tall old oak in the garden, with daffodils growing around it, it's a great place to sit in the shade on a hot-day break from gardening or woodpslitting, and while I was in the house taking a lunch break the shemonkey came out of the bamboo and headed straight for the rock in all familiarity, sat down casually and looked around like she owned it all, landlady taking inventory, relaxing there on her comfy rock amid her daffodils in the cool shade of her oak as calmly as you or I might sit there with our arms around our knees and scanned the garden in all serenity, itemizing, thinking to herself 'hmmm... I notice my human tenant has put in some tomatoes for me, they should be due in 4-6 weeks…' and making a note in the mental palm pilot they all carry, when I stepped quietly out onto the deck and grabbed a couple of egg-sized rocks from the monkey ammo basket.

She didn't see me or hear me, she was so engrossed in the new assets I had generated on her behalf '...we finished what few mushrooms there were last time, but now where are the onions, cucumbers, pumpkins I require...' and was puzzling over what to do with all that pointless firewood ‘…maybe the kids could play on it...,' so deep in her audit she didn't notice me until I pounded the rocks on the deck railing and made like a New York landlord yelling in monkey. She levitated about three feet in the air, legs already running in the away direction.

That's when I noticed that at least half a dozen henchmonkeys had been hunching quietly up in the trees above the hairy landlady and in the underbrush behind her, where they'd been awaiting the results of her inventory, ready to carry off whatever of her assets she indicated. They all took off at once in a loud cloud of brown fur, discussing tomato due dates.

Reminded me of the IRS, somehow...