Many years ago, there were only forests here. Great big
trees soared to the skies and in them and below them lived a great many number
of creatures, big and small. But then, the tiny city beside the huge forest
started to grow. And then, it grew and it grew and it soon became as big as the
big forest. Then, the city started to eat the forest and the trees were cut
down and the men built many big buildings here.
About that time, there was a gang of monkeys who used to
live in the forest. Since the forest was getting smaller and smaller, the
monkeys decided one day that they will move into the buildings. And so, they
came and the climbed on the balconies and the electric poles and the wires and
the cars and motor bikes and created a great big nuisance. As they played
around the buildings they also sang in their own language that no person of the
human tongue could understand.
“Once there was a forest here, a
place of many trees,
Now, there are
only buildings, buildings such as these,
We played with
the birds in the branches, and the squirrels and the bees,
Now we play with
boys and girls and children such as these,
We used to feast
on fruits and leaves, mangoes and berries,
Now we eat just
sandwiches, filled with veggies and cheese.”
The people of the city tried to catch the
monkeys or drive them away, but in vain. For the monkeys were very, very clever
and escaped the people all the time. Once, on a hot summer afternoon, the
monkeys entered a half built building. The workers had all gone away for lunch
and afternoon nap and the builiding played around the building breaking the
glass windows and throwing bricks and buckets of paint at each other, loudly
chattering and creating a huge din.
Now, in the gang was a monkey called
Kutoohalee. He was an inquisitive little imp and he wanted to go and see
everything and poke his nose into things, he could not quite understand.
Kutoohalee found a great, big block of
wood, half-sawn with a wedge driven into the half-sawn place so that the piece
would not snap shut.
“What is this?” said Kutoohalee loudly, so
his friends could gather around. They all knew a bit about Kutoohalee and about
humans as well, so they felt that there was something a little dangerous about
the wooden piece with the wedge in it, but not Kutoohalee.
“People are so foolish, as foolish as can
be,” he sang in his monkey voice.
“People are so foolish, as foolish as can be,
Man thinks he knows everything, but I know more than
he.
I know about the stars at night, I know about the
moon,
I know about just everything under the sun at noon.”
Now Kutoohalee was a monkey and monkeys
may know all the monkey things that man could never learn like climbing up a
building or a tree in a flash or jumping across twenty feet of space, but he
did not know about man things. But he liked to show that he did and so he
walked around the block of wood holding his hands behind his back like he was
inspecting it.
“Now what was this stupid carpenter
thinking,” he said putting on a serious face, holding his chin in his hand. “I
have no idea what this wedge is doing here where it has absolutely no business.
I guess, I will have to pull it out.”
“No,” said his monkey friends. “Don’t do
it Kutoohalee.”
“No, no, don’t
do it, don’t do it Kutoohalee,
You don’t know
what you are doing, you are doing it dangerously.”
But Kutoohalee did not listen and he put a
foot in the space between the two half sawn pieces of wood and pulled at the
wedge. And snap! Off came the wedge and the two pieces snap shut with curious
little Kutoohalee’s foot firmly in between.
“Ouuuch!” yelled Kutoohalee in pain. “I am
stuck, I am stuck, help me.”
But all his monkey friends had scattered
at the sound of the wood snapping shut and now they were running away scared of
what the men would do when they came back. And indeed, when the workers came
back, they saw Kutoohalee stuck in the piece of wood and glad that they had
caught one of those michievous monkeys at last, they beat him black and blue.
