Legacy

Richard the Baboon loved his freedom, he went where and when he pleased.

One day he was wandering around and discovered that the Dirty Snake Clan had captured and enslaved his friends, the Monkey Clan.  This saddened Richard a whole lot and he started thinking how he could free them and take them to a new land where the Snake Clan couldn’t follow.

Richard thought about the problem for a couple of days and decided that if he quietly snuck into the Snake Clan’s village in the middle of the night he could let the Monkey Clan out of their cages and quietly lead them away. They should be long gone when The Snake Clan woke up.   So that is what Richard did.

Everything went according to plan and they were all miles away when the Snake Clan woke up.  The alarm was sounded and the Snake Clan went in hot pursuit.  Richard knew monkeys could swim and snakes could not; therefore he would lead the monkeys across a wide creek where once on the other side they could live in freedom and peace.  On the way it rained and the water level came up a little, just enough to make the current too fast to swim.

A monkey rear guard scout came running up and said the Snake Clan was only about two hours behind.  Oh my!  What should they do?  The creek was too fast to swim and too wide to jump.  The creek was eight feet wide and monkeys could only jump five feet.   Richard notice a lot of rocks laying around so he told all the monkeys to start grabbing rocks and throw them in the middle and to keep doing it until they had  created a little rock island. This they did, but it seemed like it would take forever.

They kept it up for about an hour and forty five minutes and a small island began to appear and grew a couple of inches above the water line.  The rear guard monkey came running up again and said they are only ten minutes behind us now.  Richard said, “Okay, now start one by one as fast as you can and jump to the island, and then jump again to the far side.  The monkey people did and just after the last one jumped, the Snake Clan arrived led by the head snake Fred the Fang. Fred was so mad he hollered, “Follow me.” And he jumped right after the Monkey People.  Fred however, had forgotten in his anger that snakes can only jump three feet and they all fell short and were swept away forever.

It would seem that doing wrong to others and making decisions in anger just don’t work out right.