Holiday fun

[andrewducker]

From Rod Liddle's column in the Guardian:

The small hotel I'm in, and to which I come whenever I've a spare moment and can afford the fare, describes itself as a wildlife refuge. All day long there is a pleasing hooting and gibbering and screeching and slithering from the trees that surround my room. And there is something particularly memorable and evocative about being awoken at the same early hour each morning by the sound of hotel staff shooting the monkeys.

They're probably right to do this. The local troop of crab-eating macaques are foul-tempered and spiteful and not entirely cognisant of who is in charge round here. The local humans blast them to bits in order to re-establish the pecking order.

That's not all they do, the hotel people. When they get bored of shooting the monkeys, they instead catch a large alpha male in a net trap and spray it with Krazy Kolors, either scarlet or luminous blue or puke green, depending on their mood. The painted monkey is then set free.

You can watch him for a bit, the dejected, bizarrely arrayed monkey, as he skulks around in the undergrowth not quite knowing what to do with himself. But you don't get to watch him for long. Soon the remaining monkeys espy their former colleague and, noticing with consternation that he is an unfamiliar colour, band together and kick the living shit out of him.

I'm not sure that this is entirely fair or, strictly speaking, upholding of the conservationist ethos. But as a spectator sport, it beats the hell out of fox hunting.

Comments

[autodidactic.livejournal.com]

Primate politics, in a nutshell.

Reminds me of a story R.A.Wilson told once about great apes being found in the jungle, assaulted by being knocked out with a tranquilizer gun and put into clown-suits. It was a thinly-veiled parable about the state of humanity, but then again, everything is, if you look at it right.

Love,
A.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

I wish I could check into a hotel like that. Oh wait, I work in education.... It's remarkably similar.

*laugh*