Monkey: It's what's for dinner

Remember King Louie the orangutan and the other monkeys teasing Ballou the Bear in The Jungle Book?

Well, Ballou got his payback, according to this story found, strangely enough, on the CNN website. Something interesting on CNN? Whoda thunk it?

I would have paid big bucks to see the crowd reaction…”Oooh! Look, mommy! (in my best Dutch accent), the monkey and the bear are playing! They’re playing tag! Mommy, why is the bear bouncing the monkey off those rocks? What’s he doing now? Mooooooommmmmmmyyyy!”

You’re sure not going to see THAT in a Disney movie are you? Well, maybe a Hannibal Lecter-produced Disney movie, but not the standard anthropomorphic fare being spewed these days. Here’s a news flash: animals didn’t live in harmonic bliss before the advent of humans…and they will still live by the law of fang and claw long after we’re gone. Predators eat everything not tougher and meaner than they are – if they hadn’t eaten monkey before, it’s simply because they hadn’t come into contact with them.

Brought into contact with the other zoo denizens, I’m sure the lions, tigers and bears (oh my) would feast on everything from those cute big-eyed lemurs to the gaudy flamingos. An idyllic natural order plays well in cartoons, but is far from the rule in nature – as those Dutch zoo goers discovered.