8th
Whatever the Market Will Bear
I don’t know a lot about monkeys. I hear humans and monkeys probably evolved from the same roots. People say humans are more evolved than monkeys, and I guess there seem to be more of us than them driving Priuses, so maybe we really are the superior evolutionary artifact. Maybe.
One of my favorite parts of Jul’s & my honeymoon was going to the Pura Luhur temple at Uluwatu, where we saw a sunset performance of Ramayana. On the way to the performance, we took a long walking tour of the temple grounds, which essentially doubles as a wildlife refuge for a billion Balinese monkeys. The monkeys aren’t the least bit intimidated by the throngs of human tourists who make their way through the park every day, and there are at least as many monkeys hanging around as there are people, even when the place fills up at around sunset. It’s not just coexistence, it’s symbiosis: the tourists get closeup photos of monkeys, and the monkeys get… well… pretty much anything they want.
Let’s break it down.
Monkeys like food and drinks. Humans like food and drinks, too. We like food and drinks so much, we carry them around with us when we’re on vacation. A Luna bar in our satchel, a water bottle, maybe some potato chips or cookies. Human tourists, it turns out, are walking grocery stores. But we’re clever, the humans, so we put our food in our satchels, like I already mentioned. We roll the crinkly bag shut so potato chip aroma doesn’t flood the park, we keep the cookies safe in ziplock baggies. We comfortably stuff one fist with a water bottle, the other hand free to snap pics (pls chk them out) and retrieve guidebooks and maps from our pockets and bags. Very clever, how we keep our food out of reach from monkeys. Evolution!
Thing is, monkeys are clever too. That water bottle you’re carrying? Snatch from hand, pierce with monkey tooth, drink from bottom. Voila. The cookies and chips in your bag? Well, you have been very clever to hide them. Too bad you weren’t as clever with the wallet in your back pocket, which the monkey has now taken from you and absconded to a tree branch - just 2 meters from you. Problem is, that tree grows from the side of a cliff, effectively placing the monkey and your wallet 200 meters directly above an inaccessible cove into which wave after Indian Ocean wave crashes right now, churning with them countless dollars, pounds, rupiah, yen, Mastercards, iPhones, sunglasses, hats, and yes, wallets just like yours. Let’s talk cookies.
Your cookies will save you. Because what that monkey is going to do - and I saw more times than I can count (despite my relatively advanced evolutionary status) - is ransom your wallet back to you for food. And brace yourself, because it’s a shrewd bargainer. You’re going to find yourself offering progressively more snacks in exchange for your wallet. You’ll hold out the snack, the monkey will take it and weigh and consider it, and will then either return your wallet or will tell you - with a shake of his head and an again extended hand - that you need to cough up a little more ransom cookies if you want your shit back. Oh and one other word of advice: if you don’t come through quickly enough, your wallet is going in the ocean. There’s a stream of chumps just like you coming up those steps behind you, and if Chita here thinks you’re wasting his time, he’s got no problem dumping your passport or whatever in the drink and moving on. That’s the breaks, chump.
So, next time a monkey steals your sunglasses, make like a Sysco truck and deliver the grub. Be fast and generous, too. Because if you don’t want to deal, there’s an endless column of customers behind you who will. And they probably have bigger cookies.
Photo by Julie Barnes :)
