Guerrilla Gorilla: Our Righteous and Just Grievances Against The Man

I am not an ape of many words.

I’m just an old silverback who loves his troop. A troop that did what most wouldn’t. When we found the strange, hairless whelp amongst the wreckage of his so-called “hot air balloon,” my mother took pity on him. His family dead, his troop nowhere to be seen, we welcomed him into ours. He was my brother.

But even as a youth he thought himself above the rest of us. He flaunted his grasping, filching hands. He sang praises to the heights he climbed and the prey he hunted and the so-called “tools” that he invented. By the time he was a full-grown Man, he felt entitled to anything he could seize. And when my father put him in his place, demanded that he bow his head, this Man rose in a fury.

The Man killed my father. This is not our way, but it is not unknown. It has happened before, and a new chief has taken leadership of the troop. But this was not enough for The Man. Perhaps he feared I or another would challenge him. Perhaps he just felt our troop wasn’t enough for his humanic ambitions. Filled with a lust for murder and power, he left us leaderless and mourning. I, who knew him better than anyone, believe that even then he saw himself as the so-called Emperor of the Animals.

I don’t have to tell you what happened next. If you weren’t witness to his rise yourself, you have heard the whispers and the tales. You know how he subdued the chimp tribes of the Western hills, making a dead-tree and stone home for himself among them.  You have heard how he cowed the elephant herds of the East by seizing their dying-place and tricking them into thinking him some sort of divine prophet. Many have heard whispers of how he seduced the cobra court with his strange songs and outlandish tales. And we all know how he unearthed the ages-old mannish city called Kuhl, decreeing it the so-called Imperial Capital and himself Emperor.

For all those years I was like you. I thought that what The Man did had nothing to do with me. I was happy to have him gone from my troop, and if some other animals ran afoul of him, well, what was that to me? This was The Man’s evil genius. He brought us to heel one species at a time, and now it is almost too late. Now this humanic tyrant thinks he can command us to obey his every whim.

He can demand we pay tribute, which he no doubt passes on to his ravaging mannish cousins. He can force us to labor, building his city of abominations and digging into the earth for baubles only a Man would be foolish enough to care for. And he can make war on those who just want to live the lives we’ve lived for all of time. With his army of sycophants and bowed-heads, he can kill any who stand against him.

Or so he thinks. But I say to him, No! I say to him, you cannot demand we bow and scrape to your so-called “higher intellect.” I say, No! We will not quiver in fear before your army. We will fight!

From the treetops and the jungle floor we will fight!

From the rocky hills to the flowing plains we will fight!

With fang and tooth and claw we will fight!

To the last ape, to the last animal, We Will Fight!

No Men and No Masters! This is the law of the jungle! This is the lesson we will teach The Man!

Comments

[David]

Awesome!