The Missing Link

Last year when Maggie and I had sailed into Gibraltar Bay and stayed in La Linea, Spain, we went with Yoshi and Fumi for a hike to the top of Gibraltar Rock.  A cable car can make the round trip, for 26 pounds, or you can do what we did: climb up and sneak onto the cable car going down for free.

While we were there waiting for the car, I was leaning against the railing and admiring the magnificent view, we were over 300 meters above sea level, when I felt something bump into and brush by me.  It was an adult Barbary Ape that loiters around the cable car station.  Since he was forward enough to jostle me, I figured that he would submit to my petting him, so I gave him a pet.  He patiently sat there as I scratched his back.  I for my part, kept a close watch for signs that he might suddenly turn and sink his considerable fangs into my hand.  Thankfully, there was a peaceful understanding between the two representative members of their primate species - a connection was made across the temporal gulf of millennia from when my ancient forefather dropped from his branch, stood up and first thought "What can I have for a snack?" to me thinking the exact same thought while scratching some monkey on Gibraltar Rock.

Monkey business

This sublime Darwinian moment was interrupted by an adolescent monkey that seemed to think that I was a new social-climbing interloper in the tribe and he was going to put a halt to it.  He jumped over, insinuated himself between me and the other monkey, and started to groom the alpha male - not me the other one.   For a while I stood there and watched, feeling somewhat that my social standing in the tribe had just dropped a couple of notches, when I spitefully decided  that I would return to my own tribe, so I turned and started to walk away.  Just then, the adolescent made his bold move to cement his position in the hierarchy of the tribe; he would make a monkey out of me!

Sometimes you feel like you have a monkey on your back.

Here's the hat but where's the cup?

 He leapt from the railing and sat on top of my hat, which I was unfortunately wearing at the time.  He sat there for a few moments grinning and mocking me while Fumi snapped a few photos (she just found them on her hard drive which is why I am posting this now).  When he abruptly jumped off onto the railing, he knocked my hat to the ground and my humiliation was complete - I would never join their tribe now.  The older monkey confirmed it by turning his back to me and once again contemplated that snack.  By now even the members of my old tribe were laughing at me.

Did somebody say something about a snack?

Am I bitter?  Yes, a little, but it is, after all, a matter of survival among the fittest, and that has little to do with me.

Branko