There was a chimpanzee, born and raised on the shores of a certain, small paradise-like island near the mainland to their west. As a baby chimp she was nurtured and cared for by her nurse, for her mother and father were often away from their palm-treetops home, crossing the watery span from the small island to a much larger island to their east on a boat to tend to their mango, guava, and papaya trees planted there. They lived very well because of the exotic trees which they owned and traded the fruits to primate traders on the mainland. They like many other chimps on the beautiful, safe, and clean island lived in this sumptuous manner, never starving or lacking in whatever they needed or desired.
The chimp children, such as this particular chimp, received a grand education in the island’s schools, unlike many other primates on the mainland. These island-born chimpanzees learned many skills such as constructing treetop-homes, maintaining fruit trees, and navigating waterways. It was a luxurious life for chimps like herself. Most other primates simply slumped or hung from branches to sleep, foraged for food, and stayed on land. And she had many friends with shared interests like trading produce and identifying the stars. They scoffed at the other primates, those weaklings, savage brutes, less intelligent primates of lemurs, marmosets, tamarins, gibbons, gorillas.
But most especially did they laugh and joke offhandedly about orangutans, one of the least intelligent primates. Chimpanzees on the other hand were one of the smartest if not the smartest specie around. Behind the other primates backs’ did her friend group and many similarly island-chimp groups whisper condescendingly about them during the times they weren’t talking about island news or their own achievements. To the chimp children however, they didn’t see themselves as particularly rude or unkind; this was the norm on the island.
But one day a terrible hurricane swept throughout the smattering of the islands, including this island of the chimpanzees. While there were some casualties, the biggest losses were to the wrecked fruit trees on the other island and their treetop-homes. Some were hit harder than others, and for this particular chimp, she was towed away from the island to the mainland. There she met an orangutan troupe. Completely baffled at their lack of civil conduct she thought to herself, gasping in horror, “What monkeys!”
However the orangutans were kind and sheltered and fed the stranded chimpanzee. To them, she was just another monkey like themselves. Little by little her former ignorant opinion of them faded and grew positively. But as fate would have it, she was rescued by the chimps on their journey to the mainland. Overjoyed she went home, but on the way she heard the whispers of her former friends, “Why, the rumor’s true! She’s just like those orangutans now!”
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