PREFACE
A Primate Meets His Match (A note from one of the authors)
Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.
KATHARINE HEPBURN,
as Miss Rose Sayer, in The African Queen
One muggy afternoon in 1988, some local men were selling peanuts at the entrance to the botanical gardens in Penang, Malaysia. I’d come with my girlfriend, Ana, to walk off a big lunch. Sensing our confusion, the men explained that the peanuts weren’t for us, but to feed irresistibly cute baby monkeys like those we hadn’t yet noticed rolling around on the grass nearby. We bought a few bags.
We soon came to a little guy hanging by his tail right over the path. His oh-so-human eyes focused imploringly on the bag of nuts in Ana’s hand. We were standing there cooing like teenage girls in a kitten shop when the underbrush exploded in a sudden simian strike. A full-grown monkey flashed past me, bounced off Ana, and was gone—along with the nuts. Ana’s hand was bleeding where he’d scratched her. We were stunned, trembling, silent. There’d been no time to scream.
After a few minutes, when the adrenaline had finally begun to ebb, my fear curdled into loathing. I felt betrayed in a way I never had before. Along with our nuts went precious assumptions about the purity of nature, of evil as a uniquely human affliction. A line had been crossed. I wasn’t just angry; I was philosophically offended.
I felt something changing inside me. My chest seemed to swell, my shoulders to broaden. My arms felt stronger; my eyesight sharpened. I felt like Popeye after a can of spinach. I glared into the underbrush like the heavyweight primate I now knew myself to be. I’d take no more abuse from these lightweights.
I’d been traveling in Asia long enough to know that monkeys there are nothing like their trombone-playing, tambourine-banging cousins I’d seen on TV as a kid. Free-living Asian primates possess a characteristic I found shocking and confusing the first time I saw it: self-respect. If you make the mistake of holding the gaze of a street monkey in India, Nepal, or Malaysia, you’ll find you’re facing a belligerently intelligent creature whose expression says, with a Robert DeNiro–like scowl, “What the hell are you looking at? You wanna piece of me?” Forget about putting one of these guys in a little red vest.
It wasn’t long before we came to another imploring, furry face hanging upside down from a tree in the middle of a clearing. Ana was ready to forgive and forget. Though I was fully hardened against cuteness of any kind, I agreed to give her the remaining bag of nuts. We seemed safely distant from underbrush from which an ambush could be launched. But as I pulled the bag out of my sweat-soaked pocket, its cellophane rustle must have rung through the jungle like a clanging dinner bell.
In a heartbeat, a large, arrogant-looking brute appeared at the edge of the clearing, about twenty yards away. He gazed at us, considering the situation, sizing me up. His exaggerated yawn seemed calculated to dismiss and threaten me simultaneously: a long, slow display of his fangs. Determined to fill any power vacuum without delay, I picked up a small branch and tossed it casually in his direction, making the point that these nuts were definitely not for him and that I was not to be trifled with. He watched the branch land a few feet in front of him, not moving a muscle. Then his forehead briefly crinkled in eerily emotional thought, as if I’d hurt his feelings. He looked up at me, straight into my eyes. His expression held no hint of fear, respect, or humor.
As if shot from a cannon, he leapt over the branch I’d tossed, long yellow dagger fangs bared, shrieking, charging straight at me.
Caught between the attacking beast and my terrified girlfriend, I understood for the first time what it would really mean to have a “monkey on your back.” I felt something snap in my mind. I lost it. In movement quicker than thought, my arms flew open, my legs flexed into a wrestler’s crouch, and my own coffee-stained, orthodontia-corrected teeth were bared with a wild shriek. I was helplessly launched into a hopping-mad, saliva-spraying dominance display of my own.
I was as surprised as he was. He pulled up and stared at me for a second or two before slowly backing away. This time, though, I’m pretty sure I saw a hint of laughter in his eyes.
Above nature? Not a chance. Take it from Mr. Allnut.