You called me a baboon.
Last time anyone called me that in a derogatory tone it was a cheeky little Thompson’s gazelle.
I smiled and cradled it in my arms for a while, feigning fatherly magnanimity, then ripped off one foreleg cleanly from the shoulder and ate it.
The Savannah Star stirred up a stooshie (or a fomentatious stew as they say in some places) the way it nearly always does. The Tommies all got together, formed a committee, demanded an inquiry, campaigned to have me thrown off the reserve. I resisted of course, saying “I’m a baboon! I have degrees in both mimicry and violence. How am I supposed to live without a degree of bloodshed? Thats the trouble with you people and your degrees. Am I supposed to eat nothing but acacia leaves like those ridiculous giraffes? And what about Acacia? They may seem green and benign but they dont half do damage if you get one of those spikes in your nose. Maybe they evolved from the sabretoothed tiger.
And if you’re condemning me for deceit, the fake nurturing bit is just a technique, a technique I learned in baboon kindergarten where one learns how to survive and sustain life, especially one’s own. I suppose you’re going to suggest that the art of camouflage is not fair game, or that snakes who drop from trees are just not playing cricket, or that flyspray aerosols are cruel. They’re only cruel if you’re a Jain Buddhist and I’m not, I’m a baboon.
Degrees of this
Degrees of that
I’ve nothing against young gazelles in principle. On the contrary I feel very positive about young gazelles because they melt in your mouth.
Isn’t it strange how raw nature gradually gets cooked and loses the vitamins of a global system? There was a time when no-one would have batted an eyelid at a baboon doing what it’s meant to do, but now there’s all these ragged edges of evolution scurrying into the millennium…and some of us, especially the ones with bald patches on our arses, are just not ready for it….everyone living in harmony, self-regulated mating programmes, old-gazelle welfare schemes and what have you. Maybe my grandson will have evolved into a flying fucking fruit fox or something but me I’m a baboon, and I can’t change that.
What’s happened to good old hunting imperatives, the urge of testosterone, the need for males to spend a bit of time together at the wadi of an evening, the odd fight over the girls?
I am a baboon and I’m still proud of it. I’ll drop the subject for now. Its a bit of a poisonous snake of a thing and I want a peaceful life. But if we get hitched and you ever start giving me gip about boozing with the boys, or spending too long at the office I’ll tear your arm off and throw it to the lions. Then let’s see where your vegetarian and slightly gazellist aspirations have got you.