MONKEYS BREAKING GOOD?

Judging by my cucumbers, the monkeys have changed their accounting standard.

Back in the glory days, their standard was to crash my garden, snatch and eat whatever they could on the spot or grab whatever they could carry, run a safe distance, eat the haul, come back for more, if any, then keep doing that until it was all gone or I was still throwing rocks. A simple standard, suited to the mountain forest lowlifestyle.

But civilization has been encroaching, as it tends to do. Historically, the same thing has happened to pirates, highwaymen, Wall Street and other forms of human brigandage, though there are signs that those changes are unraveling. On the simian side, the old standard worked well for the beasts during the good-time years, when I was planting rows of onions for them, I was planting rows of their potatoes, I was planting walls of tomatoes and cucumbers out of boundless admiration for my simian overlords, lots of everything for them, even sweet potatoes, guy from the city, and different varieties of it all, various squashes, even got blueberries, plums and loquats in there, not to mention 2 kinds of gourmet mushrooms, which the chompers really love.

Over the years, as they stole from me, I learned from them. Which was easier than with humans, because owing to certain cortical limitations, as well as social customs, e.g., no pockets, no briefcases, no banks, no Wall Street equivalent, my simian colleagues have evolved only a primitive form of greed, known locally as "paws and jaws," a concept familiar to monkey accountants, but seldom seen in human society other than in derivative markets, where it is referred to as "hand over fist."

For my part in this ever ongoing battle of ethics, I regained my old pitching eye and arm, did what else I could: I gathered rocks and stashed them strategically, put up a fence and gradually stopped planting the types of things that monkeys like, because it's difficult to grow that kind of stuff to fruition anyway, but to then have it consumed by thankless creatures... In time, I got almost as crafty as a monkey; the only thing that held me back was my job.

Despite that handicap, my efforts seem to have pressured the monkeys into changes of their own. I’m hearing more and more that the hairy marauders have started raiding gardens down in the village, which they never used to do. (I'm publishing this only in English.) "You can only get onions were there are onions!" is now major monkey dogma; same rule for potatoes, zucchinis etc.

So lately I've been noticing changes, like the other day - and then again today - I found a ready-to-harvest cucumber hanging among other similarly ready cucumbers, but with only ⅓ of it bitten off by patently monkey teeth, leaving nearly 67% for yours truly. A pretty high vig if you ask me, but it was only one cucumber, and if you also ask me "Is your take better than 0%," I have to say yes. Sooner or later, though, I must consult with my arboreal neighbors, person-to-ape, in mutual frankness, so I can make them an offer they can't refuse.

I also recommend that a human version of my SFD program (Stones, Fences, Deprivation) be tried on Wall Street.

THE WEEDS OF INTELLIGENCE


Early this morning while waiting for the dew to dry (now there's a pleasant task) so I could go out and do some seriously overdue weedwhacking around the deck and out into the garden without coming out of it looking like the jolly green giant, I looked out the front window and saw a solitary monkey sitting atop the electric meter on the pole outside by the road, one arm around the pole, one leg hanging down, casually chewing on a piece of grass and surveying the view of his vast possessions in all the tranquility of Huck Finn with his line in the big river, sitting on the bank and meditating on the meaning of life.

He gazed at the panorama before him, scratched an ear, then settled down and his eyes took on that distant look of deep thought, of whatever is the monkey equivalent of existential matters (is there a monkey Kierkegaard?), which was as infectious as a yawn, because as a fellow simian elsewhere on the same long branch I too began pondering such aspects of being as the distinction between him and I, at least at the surface level, where 99% of the differences lie. As to the depths, we haven't even begun. The monkey and I wandered the big mindspace together.

The hairy thinker was clearly satisfied and doing perfectly well without a house, an automobile, a television (having myself glanced at tv not long ago, I don't see how monkey tv could be any worse than our prime time.) As to a car, I doubt if the thought of wheels had ever entered his head, which must be a pleasant absence, to say nothing of insurance, licensing, carbon footprints and all that baggage; his gas prices aren't going up, either. Moreover, he pays no taxes, has no mortgage, needs no clothing, requires no schools, lives off the land, has no government, never needs to whack weeds (what are weeds?). The sky is his roof, the forest his walls, the whole great outdoors his house. He was also making better use than I of my electric meter, and he enjoys the fruits of my garden. Our much-touted intelligence was withering radically before my mind's eye; it was a welcome moment when the dew was dry.

The monkey just went on loafin' where he was-- waitin' on Tom, I 'spect.