Go Ape!

Go Ape!

THE PROBLEM was the same for all the beasts. It wasn’t just that things weren’t what they used to be. It was rather that they were not what they used to be. Lions weren’t as proud. Monkeys had lost the talent for imitation. Tigers had become dis-spirited. Foxes had lost their guile, and even eagles were no longer eagle-eyed.

At least that was the argument of Simon, a late middle-aged chimpanzee with scrupulously groomed fur and remarkably white teeth. Simon had written a tremendously popular book called Go Ape! You, Your Nature and The Path to Change. Each species, he argued, has its essence and this is inscribed in the soul of each beast by the hand of Nature. You can go against the proper order of things, but the result will only be confusion, anarchy and despair.

Simon often appeared on chat shows, was employed as a consultant to a reality TV series and had developed a very lucrative private practice in what he called ‘species-centric’ psychotherapy.

‘If you’re a monkey, go on - make a monkey of yourself,’ he liked to say (adding a grunt or two and baring his teeth). ‘You’ll love yourself and others will recognize you for who you are.’

But not everyone saw him as a lifestyle guru. Susan, a tough-talking hen, took issue with just about everything he said. Her story was that she’d come from an abusive coop, but was not a victim – definitely not a victim - but a survivor. Although some said her shtick was merely being a Simon knocker, her position was in fact more refined.

‘Just because you’re a chicken,’ she would say, ‘you don’t have to be chicken. One should resist stereotypes, not simply reinforce them. Don’t trust anyone who rambles on about Nature.’

There had been rumours about Simon for some time. His teeth were almost disturbingly bright, for a start. His grooming was beyond impeccable, too, and there was something, well, unnatural about it.

And when the fall came, it came suddenly.

Simon was papped in a Chinese restaurant with a giggling panda. Here was a species-centric ape, trying it on with a plump black and white bear, teasing her with bamboo shoots and tickling her tummy. It didn’t look good.

What looked even worse was when he was caught on film knuckle-walking into a primate dentist’s waiting room. The outfit was called Smile Design and specialized in tooth whitening.

As if that wasn’t enough, Simon was photographed examining pelts in a fur-implant store. One photo showed him handing money over the counter, and in another he was leaving with a bundle of something in a large brown paper bag.

So much for Simon’s twinkling white teeth. So much, too, for his famously sleek fur. Now, in the words of the Beatstly Times' double-page spread, he had become ‘the cheeky chimp who monkeys around with the truth.’  

No one wanted to be associated with a swindler. The TV appearances came to a halt and his private practice crumbled. Species-centred therapy, it seemed, was dead and buried.

Six months later and out of rehab, however, Simon was on the chat show circuit again. He could be seen in debates with Susan, who’d enjoyed every minute of his fall from grace.

On one programme, she said: ‘Those who extol the virtues of Nature should finally admit that Nature herself isn’t natural. We are what we become and that’s something beyond the mastery of any species.

‘Simon should just own up to this. And he should get off our screens and out of our bookshops. Simon, baby, it’s over!’ 

But Simon had lost none of his former enthusiasm. If there was any change in his outlook, he said, it was that he was now truer to his nature. It had taken the tabloid exposé and his time in the clinic to discover who he truly was.

In short, he was no longer ashamed of his feelings for pandas. ‘I’ve set up a Primate-Panda Friendship Society,’ he said. ‘And I’m prepared to say it: I’m a panda lover, loud and proud.’

And the tooth whitening and fur replacement?  These, he said, were just neurotic symptoms: when you deny your nature, that’s what’s likely to happen. Now there was no need for him to be anything other than who he really was.

That was fine by the female pandas. They’d always been as interested in the night-time company of their male counterparts as the males had been interested in them: given the choice between rumpy-pumpy and a stick of bamboo, the average male panda would choose a mouthful of woody grass.

With Simon, though, things were different. He might be a bit peculiar, but he was exciting and there was no doubting that he really liked them. There wasn’t a sow who wouldn’t open her paws, and much more, for Simon.

The male pandas felt differently, though. Although they remained largely indifferent to their females, each and every one of them wanted to murder the sexually trespassing chimp.

And they got him, eventually. On his way back home from The Fragrant Pagoda, one of his favourite restaurants and pick-up joints, Simon was jumped by a gang of four male pandas, who not only killed him but also smashed his teeth in and shaved the words Nature? You’re Having a Laugh into his fur. After their successful mission, the pandas went and boorishly munched some bamboo together.

Asked about Simon’s death on a late night news programme, Susan shuffled her feathers and said, ‘Although the two of us didn’t see eye to eye, had Simon lived he would have been a true survivor. As it is, he was the victim of a vicious attack and those responsible must be brought to justice.

‘He’s met an unnatural death, and, although I hate to say it, that seems strangely appropriate.’ Then Susan jutted her beak towards the camera, clucked ostentatiously and hopped away.