monkeys nurture a special animosity toward me. Perhaps they should. Perhaps their hatred of every Snow is justified. Of all people, I have no right to debate the merit of their grievance, though this doesn't mean I feel obliged to pay a price for what, with the best of motivations, my mother did.
Remaining safely unkibbled at the bungalow window, I heard what seemed to be the single reverberant toll of a large bell, followed by a clatter. I watched as the churning troop parted around an object I couldn't see. A scraping of iron on stone followed, and several individuals conspired to raise the weighty thing onto its side.
Busy monkeys prevented me from immediately getting a clear view of the item, although it appeared to be round. They began to roll it in a circle, from curb to curb and back again, some watching while others scampered beside the object, keeping it balanced on edge. In the burnishing moonlight, it initially resembled a coin so enormous that it must have fallen out of the giant's pocket from the top of Jack's beanstalk. Then I realized it was a manhole cover they had pried from the pavement.
Suddenly they were chattering and shrieking as though they were a group—exuberant children who had made a toy out of an old tire. In my experience such playfulness was completely out of character for them.
Of my previous encounters with the troop, only one had been face-to-face, and throughout that confrontation, they had acted less like children than like a pack of homicidal skinheads wired on PCP-and-cocaine cocktails.
They quickly tired of rolling the manhole cover. Then three individuals worked together to spin it, as if in fact it were a coin, and with considerable coordinated effort they eventually set it in a blur of motion.
The troop fell silent again. They gathered in a wide circle around the whirling disc, giving it space to move but watching it with great interest.
Periodically, the three who had spun the cover darted to it, one by one, judiciously applying enough force to keep it balanced and in steady motion. Their timing revealed at least a rudimentary understanding of the laws of physics and a mechanical skill that belied their ordinary appearance.
The tightly rotating disc sang roughly, its iron edge grinding against the concrete pavement. This low metallic song had become the sole sound in the night, nearly a one-note drone, oscillating only faintly over a half-tone range.
The spinning manhole cover didn't seem to provide sufficient spectacle to explain the intensity of the troop's attention. They were rapt.
Almost in a trance. I found it difficult to believe that the disc, merely by chance, could have achieved the precise rotational velocity that, combined with exactly these oscillating tones, was hypnotic to monkeys.
Perhaps this wasn't a game that I was witnessing, not play but ritual, a ceremony with a symbolic significance that was clear to these rhesuses but was an impenetrable mystery to me. Ritual and symbol not only implied abstract thinking but raised the possibility that these monkeys' lives had a spiritual dimension, that they were not just smart but capable of brooding about the origin of all things and the purpose of their existence.
This idea disconcerted me so much that I almost turned away from the window.
In spite of their hostility toward humanity and their enthusiasm for violence, I already had sympathy for these pathetic creatures, was moved by their status as outcasts with no rightful place in nature. If they indeed possess the capacity to wonder about God and about the design of the cosmos, then they may know the exquisite pain that humanity knows too well, the yearning to understand why our Creator allows us to suffer so much, the terrible unfulfilled longing to find Him, to see His face, to touch Him, and to know that He is real. If they share this quiet but profound agony with us, then I sympathize with their plight, but I also pity them.
And while pitying them, how
Remaining safely unkibbled at the bungalow window, I heard what seemed to be the single reverberant toll of a large bell, followed by a clatter. I watched as the churning troop parted around an object I couldn't see. A scraping of iron on stone followed, and several individuals conspired to raise the weighty thing onto its side.
Busy monkeys prevented me from immediately getting a clear view of the item, although it appeared to be round. They began to roll it in a circle, from curb to curb and back again, some watching while others scampered beside the object, keeping it balanced on edge. In the burnishing moonlight, it initially resembled a coin so enormous that it must have fallen out of the giant's pocket from the top of Jack's beanstalk. Then I realized it was a manhole cover they had pried from the pavement.
Suddenly they were chattering and shrieking as though they were a group—exuberant children who had made a toy out of an old tire. In my experience such playfulness was completely out of character for them.
Of my previous encounters with the troop, only one had been face-to-face, and throughout that confrontation, they had acted less like children than like a pack of homicidal skinheads wired on PCP-and-cocaine cocktails.
They quickly tired of rolling the manhole cover. Then three individuals worked together to spin it, as if in fact it were a coin, and with considerable coordinated effort they eventually set it in a blur of motion.
The troop fell silent again. They gathered in a wide circle around the whirling disc, giving it space to move but watching it with great interest.
Periodically, the three who had spun the cover darted to it, one by one, judiciously applying enough force to keep it balanced and in steady motion. Their timing revealed at least a rudimentary understanding of the laws of physics and a mechanical skill that belied their ordinary appearance.
The tightly rotating disc sang roughly, its iron edge grinding against the concrete pavement. This low metallic song had become the sole sound in the night, nearly a one-note drone, oscillating only faintly over a half-tone range.
The spinning manhole cover didn't seem to provide sufficient spectacle to explain the intensity of the troop's attention. They were rapt.
Almost in a trance. I found it difficult to believe that the disc, merely by chance, could have achieved the precise rotational velocity that, combined with exactly these oscillating tones, was hypnotic to monkeys.
Perhaps this wasn't a game that I was witnessing, not play but ritual, a ceremony with a symbolic significance that was clear to these rhesuses but was an impenetrable mystery to me. Ritual and symbol not only implied abstract thinking but raised the possibility that these monkeys' lives had a spiritual dimension, that they were not just smart but capable of brooding about the origin of all things and the purpose of their existence.
This idea disconcerted me so much that I almost turned away from the window.
In spite of their hostility toward humanity and their enthusiasm for violence, I already had sympathy for these pathetic creatures, was moved by their status as outcasts with no rightful place in nature. If they indeed possess the capacity to wonder about God and about the design of the cosmos, then they may know the exquisite pain that humanity knows too well, the yearning to understand why our Creator allows us to suffer so much, the terrible unfulfilled longing to find Him, to see His face, to touch Him, and to know that He is real. If they share this quiet but profound agony with us, then I sympathize with their plight, but I also pity them.
And while pitying them, how
Similar Books
