Monkey Shit

I’d be out back watering the garden of an evening, and Mr. Hunter would come out and amble over and lean on the fence and start to talking.  One evening he has just seen something on the news about drug dealers crossing the border, and he launches into a harangue about the evil of drugs, and said that what he would do, should he catch any drug dealers crossing the border, was line them up and shoot them on the spot. 

chimpMost of the time, when he launched into one of his idiotic opinions, I was not inclined to say much of anything because, as I said, he was six feet six and weighed about 320 and really there’s no point in making trouble with a neighbor over the USA’s drug policy. But if I didn’t say anything at all, I worried that he might think, since he knew I had a college degree, I felt too superior to even respond to his idiotic opinions, and I didn’t want to do that because I knew he had a severe inferiority complex.  So I said, well, lining them up and shooting them like that might be a violation of their civil rights.

 He goes like, huh?—like that idea had never crossed his mind.  Well, then, what would you do?  He wanted to know.  I said I didn’t have the foggiest though lining them up and shooting them on the spot made good sense except for the civil rights issue.

While talking to Mr. Hunter about political issues made me nervous, he could be a good talker if you got him to telling stories.  Nowadays I can’t find people who tell good stories.  I guess people are in too much of a rush, and Mr. Hunter’s story telling skills were developed and polished down in Mississippi where people had time for such things.  Now you just have to get to the point ASAP, as people say, but his stories were all about taking as long as possible to get to the point.

Working at the zoo, he had a chance to observe all the animals and the people there.  He liked to tell one story about the monkey cage, and he would describe the monkeys that lived there and then he would talk about the tourists who came to see the monkeys and then he would—apologies to the ladies if any were present—talk about the monkeys throwing their shit at the tourists.  And he went on and on about this one monkey—chimpanzee for those more technically inclined–that was one sure shooting shit slinger (apologies to the ladies).  He was one dead eye dick and especially did not like having his picture taken because he payed special attention to people with cameras. 

So Mr. H. one day saw this fellow fling a piece that completely covered the camera of this Japanese gentleman and also got stuck between this his glasses and his eyeballs, and the monkey did this all without even breaking his wrist.  And the point or punch line to the story, aside from paying tribute to one straight shooting shit slinger, was Mr. Hunter’s complete confondation and utter amazement that the monkey was able to achieve such accuracy and force without even breaking his wrist. Mr. Hunter’s consternation, almost childlike amazement, at what he had observed served somehow to infuse and to conceal the fact (apologies to any ladies present) he had been telling a story about a shit throwing monkey.

 I have observed since, watching the Discovery Channel, that chimps can be just sitting there and suddenly heave a rock with considerable force underhanded without even breaking the wrist.

 

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