The Colonel’s First Story, pt. 4

February 6, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

We have nearly come to the end of Colonel Birdwhistle’s first story from the book. Click here to start at the beginning: Part 1 .

And now, I submit to you Part 4:

“An excellent question,” replied the Colonel. “We used local ingenuity, my dear. Local ingenuity. You see, the people there have been trapping monkeys for hundreds of years. The monkey is a clever animal, but he is more selfish than he is clever. He can figure out how to get his hand on something to steal, but once he has it in that hand, he won’t ever let go until it is his. So we tied several crates to the top of our cart, each with a freshly cut mango inside. Then we made holes in them just large enough so that monkey hands would fit in but the mango wouldn’t come out. On our trip, the monkeys descended on our cart and smelled the mangos. They fought over which ones got to stick their little hands inside to grab those fresh mangos. When we stopped the cart, the monkeys scattered — all except the ones with their hands stuck in the crate, too greedy to let go. So, we would untie those crates with monkeys attached and give them to the locals to…to take away… and relocate.” 400px-Vervet_yawn

He held up a hand again and pointed at it adding, “So the very thing that they cause trouble with gets them into trouble, too.”

“Did you get rid of all the monkeys in Africa, sir?” asked a boy with bright red hair and a nose generously sprinkled with freckles.

“No, young fellow,” laughed the Colonel. Then he pointed at the large tree behind him.

“You see this tree. It has squirrels in it right?” he said to general agreement. “If I were to take the squirrel family that lived there away, another family that lived say, over there in that smaller tree would look at it and say, ‘that’s a nice tree and there are no squirrels living in it. I’ll bet it has lots of nuts. We should go live there.’ And they would. So you would never have an attractive tree like this with no squirrels, right?”

The audience bobbled their heads as if they understood.

“It is, unfortunately, the same with monkeys,” said the Colonel. “We removed as many as we could, and by the time the next ship came in, there were at least as many monkeys there as there had been before. And they were stealing from us again. To them, our supplies were just like that nice big tree the squirrel family wanted. So they came in droves with their cute little hands and chit-chit noises and robbed us blind.”

He finished his story by slapping his knees to add emphasis and the children laughed. The mothers behind them clapped their approval, and the Colonel couldn’t suppress a “dreadful vermin,” muttered under his breath.

Conclusion coming soon

Vervet Monkey photo credit: Whit Welles

The Colonel’s First Story, pt. 3

January 30, 2014.Reading time 3 minutes.

I have been serializing Colonel Birdwhistle’s first story from the book. Click here to start at the beginning: Part 1 .

And now, I submit to you Part 3:

He sat for several minutes facing skyward with a peculiar look on his face. Having lived alongside noise all his military life, he had developed the ability to drown out distractions around him by simply shutting his eyes and focusing on his thoughts. It was a rare gift really. He entered this trance while considering what to say next and was half hoping that Leon would wander off. Finally, an acceptable topic came to mind, and he blurted out the word, “Monkeys!”

The Colonel opened his eyes and looked down to find that his audience had grown. Instead of one plump boy seated in front of him, there were now a dozen children of all shapes and sizes waiting patiently for him to continue. Behind them all stood their mothers as interested as their tots, and Mrs. Dobrey was smiling and nodding to him.

“I like monkeys,” said a pig-tailed little girl up front with her hand on his knee.

Surrounded and outnumbered, he continued, “Young lady, you might not like monkeys if there were hundreds of them and they were everywhere. What was your name?”

“My name is Sally,” said the little girl with a smile.

“Well Sally, do you like rats?” asked the Colonel.

“Ewwww. No. They’re gross.”

“To some degree, in Africa, monkeys are just like rats. Only they are more intelligent and can get into more trouble because they have these,” he held up one hand and pointed to it with the other. “There is almost nothing that a group of cute little monkeys can’t steal. And you know what they want most of all?”

The children said nothing but sat, eyes wide open, waiting for an answer.

“Food. Just the same as what you and I want,” continued the old man, warming to his story. “One of the things I had to do was to make sure that all of our men had enough food, right. Because they couldn’t do anything if they were hungry all the time. So we had these great big ships that came into port full of food and other supplies, and we would have to unload it and put it on carts that would carry everything to the forward post. But the monkeys made it terribly hard to get this done because they were everywhere. There were hundreds of them. So we decided one time to trap the monkeys and um…” he paused looking slowly around at the innocent faces. “Um, relocate them to a different area. Yes, that’s it.”

“If they’re smart, how could you trap them?” asked one of the children.

Part 4