They lounged until the blue bag came out. She is a child. How was she to know?
The first slowly swung across a low-hanging rope extending from a wooden pole with a smallish perch to the edge of the habitat. One arm and then the next in the same natural flowing motion you see on the television. On the Discovery Channel when they are marveling at how little separates man and ape.
The child stood at the large glass window, peering up at the creatures in their habitat, propping her knee upon the wooden bench just below. She softly continued munching on a bright blue bag of animal crackers.
The monkey finished its arm strides to the edge of the habitat and for a half-second disappeared before popping its head over a wooden panel above the window. It placed its fingers in the metal wire above the wood and brought its body up as well.
Intermittently the creature would drop below the wooden panel and hang in the large window its hands gripped tight around the very bolts keeping the pane of glass in place.
And there it met eyes with the child. The human and her crackers.
“Oh. They must be fed all the time. Maybe animal crackers too.” An adult said.
“How sad.”
The monkey then leapt back above the window and took a seat on the wooden panel. It looked down upon the visitors and was soon joined by its troop. The jumping down to hang in the window for photo ops ceased. They were committed to the stare.
The child had seen enough.
“Here. Give them this,” she said. “They’re hungry.”
No. They’re conditioned, the older minds thought. It’s a game they play for treats. Probably best to ignore it and move on. To not encourage this sort of thing any farther.
But the child insists.
“But they’re sad,” she said.
Almost in as if to say “Yes. Sad.” the monkey, maybe the second youngest of the troop, actually reaches through the cage and down toward the group of men.
“That. In your hand. It will change all of this trap,” its face says.
There is a moment when an adult lets all of that hit him. He hears the child. He sees this animal clearly communicating. He wants to just hand a cracker up to the monkey. He is tall enough. It would be picturesque.
“I don’t know. Might take my finger off,” he reasons. “It’s small but it’s hands are strong.”
He finds the nerve and with the risk of being caught by zoo wardens, quickly places a single cracker on the wooden panel within reach of the patient troop.
The first, the orator, slowly takes the cracker. He quickly jumps away. The troop frantically chases after.
And the men drive home.
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