CHIMPSON AND A WAR

There are enemy monkeys near by.

War was in the air.

There rumours in the air a turning of the seasons earlier when strangers had been seen wandering about, swinging from trees in the most agile of ways and generally defecating in an area that Longchimp (now well past his prime but still inordinately fond of Chimpson who was now fully grown and as well endowed as his father) had always looked on as part of his tribe’s own territory.

There hadn’t been a war in living memory, and probably never in the history of the families that made up the tribe. True there were sometimes squabbles amongst themselves, especially when hoary old monkeys stumbled across peculiar liquids that had somehow become infused with the honey produced by stinging insects and fermented when wild air-born yeasts had come their way. There were some who spent a great deal of time searching for puddles of such fluids, maybe hidden away by nature in rocks hollowed by the passage of the years, and enjoyed the intoxication such discoveries provided. And, of course, the squabbles.

But squabbles and fisticuffs aren’t wars. Wars are between whole tribes and were unthinkable until Longchimp did a huge and unknown thing. He resigned as Bossmonk and insisted the elevated position passed directly to Chimpson, who by then was adult and showed some signs of a modicum of intelligence beyond the normal amount allotted by nature to the average monkey.

Some of the simpler monkeys were troubled by this move, though. Chimpson had grown up slightly mollycoddled by the retiring Bossmonk because Longchimp still saw his own reflection in the younger monkey’s appearance and demeanour. Indeed, some thought that Chimpson was trouble and needed to be punished with a sound biting in order to put him in line, but elevation to the highest position in the tribe was far from being a sound biting.

Then came further news of the interlopers. They were of the tribe noted earlier when Chumpo had used their existence as the kind of threat to the tribal happiness that he was well capable of dealing with. Well the threat, if threat it was, had come in Chimpson’s early years, not Chumpo’s.

A party of the squint-eyed monkeys had been seen carousing in the forest in an area that most certainly belonged to Chimpson’s tribe. And not only were they squint eyed and snub-nosed they were ginger of hair. In fact, they were a disgrace to monkey-kind. And they were untidy. They left their faeces where nippers might tread in them, and everyone knew how the stink lasted for ever and a day. Not that for ever was a term they would have used.

Chimpson had challenged them. He had sought them out and in his gruffest voice made them fully aware that they weren’t welcome in this part of the forest. And to push his message home he’d barked and spat at them. Actually spat!

“Just because you’ve got a long dangler doesn’t make you our ruler!” one of them had said in such guttural tones and using such a weird array of clicks and squeaks that he had been almost impossible to understand. But Chimpson was a trier, and he didn’t give up, probably because he was ready for a fight anyway.

“Just you take your filthy words and dirty ginger hair to where my monkeys won’t see them, and there’ll be no deflowering of our b*****s either, if you value your skins!” That was his threat, issued in brutal tones and with many a gesticulation of his tail.

“The long dangler wants to boss us,” sneered one of the interlopers, and he did the most unexpected thing. He went right up to Chimpson until he was so close their furs touches here and there on their bodies, and he urinated.

He held his less than superb dangler in one hand and urinated all over Chimpson and proved that what may be on the small side can also be mighty effective when effectiveness is called for.

Chimpson was drenched through and what was worse the wetness smelt far from pleasant. It was worse than any urine he’d ever smelt before. It was toxic, and above all, mighty offensive.

“This is war!” he raged as he scampered off, making his way to the tops of the canopy of trees for effect, and making sure that the enemy knew what was about.

The enemy had no word for war. No concept of it. And if the truth were told neither did Chimpson because it was no more than a sound he’d uttered on the spur of the moment. It meant, in his head, a whole mixture of unpleasant things in which the deflowering of a huge number of enemy b*****s figured near the top of the list, together with, possibly, the death of the monkey who had squirted stinking urine all over him.

When he arrived back at the central tree he called the families all around him and remained silent until as many as were available were all there, or if not all of them, most of them.

“It is war!” he shouted before explaining about the way he had been insulted.

“What’s war, then?” asked half a dozen of his monkeys in unison, like a choir of the distant future, in beautiful harmony.

“Battle is!” he roared, “for look and sniff: they pissed on me!”

The gathering of the tribe moved closer to him and there was a great deal of sniffing followed by the sort of comments no Bossmonk wants to hear when his fur is examined.

“Urgh! What a total stink!”

“Yuk! Go and swim in the mirror pool and get that mess off you!”

And there were other more offensive comments made in the weird language that the monkeys used and half understood. Chimpson started seething as anyone would when subjected to a tirade of comments like that.

“So war is!” he insisted, “war and battle and blood until the pissing monkeys are all dead and eaten, and their b*****s deflowered to death!”

A few noises of doubt were heard from the gathering, but Chimpson had convinced most of them that something must be done, and needed to be done soon.

His main problem was he didn’t know how to go about it. Words are one thing but action, personal action under the scrutiny of friend and foe alike, is something very different.

“So who’s with me?” he asked, slightly timorously.

Half the males insisted they were whilst the other half melted away.

“They only pissed on him,” one was heard to say, “something I’ve been wanting to do since he was a nipper and bullied my sister!”

“Who does he think he is anyway,” muttered a second, also in Chimpson’s earshot, “a little water never hurt anyone!”

“Anyway, we know what he’s like,” concluded the first, “he probably deserved what he got and he reckons it’s all right dragging me into a fight to save his face while no doubt he stands in the shadows and cheers whichever side seems to be winning! Well, I’m not going, and that’s that!”

© Peter Rogerson 04.11.19