 The
Proboscis Monkey - Issue Twenty-Two |
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for A.E. Stallings, E.E. Cummings, and William E. Brady by Ron Riekki It started off as your average ordinary everyday Alabama gun show, with people in massive cowboy hats the size of friendships and women with breasts the size of operas and guns the size of fraternity oaths. They had guns for rabbits and guns for cows and guns for Christmas and guns for humans. One little cute boy by the name of Ladislas picked up a gun, pointed it at a policeman and fired. The gun, of course, tore through the aorta of the cop with the ferocity of a beard. It was a little cute boy who made the simple mistake of confusing all of the fake guns and TV guns and movie guns and finger guns and Halloween guns and video game guns he'd seen throughout the entirety of his long, short life. An adult by the name of Roger stood next to him and agreed he didn't know any better either so he picked up a gun and pointed it at the floor and started shooting so that the bullets ricocheted all over the room. It was fun for Roger to watch the bullets bounce like little toy rubber balls and the sound was like magical fireworks. A grandmother named Wendy next to Roger picked up a gun and started firing at the ceiling, because, as everyone knows, no one can get hurt if you fire guns at a ceiling. It's like shooting at the moon, which, as we all know, can never be harmed. The vendors all began shooting too. The fun was seeing who would live and who would drop to the ground and fill the floor with platelets. The entire gun show became an actual gun show with guns and showing and more guns and even more showing. This was what evolution had led us to, the grand kindergarten of our future. It was exactly what Jesus wanted. If Jesus had been there, he would have overturned the moneychangers' tables and turned all of the guns to fish and turned all of the gun-owners into demon-possessed pigs, but Jesus wasn't there, so all that was to be done was to enjoy the sun-haze with its crystal silence that happens after all of the weapons have been emptied and the world is forced to be left with nothing but unbroken peace. Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (a 2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. His play “Carol” was included in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2012 and his short story "The Family Jewel" was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2015. |
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The
Proboscis Monkey or long nosed monkey is a reddish brown arboreal
Old World monkey that is endemic to the southeast Asian island of
Borneo. They also go by the Malay name monyet belanda (Dutch monkey)
as Indonesians remarked that the Dutch colonisers often had similarly
large bellies and noses. Males have a maximum known weight of 30
kg while Females weigh 7 to 12 kg, with a maximum known mass of
15 kg. The large nose of the male can exceed 10.2 cm in length and
hangs lower than the mouth. They live most commonly in coastal areas
and along rivers. They favour dipterocarp, mangrove and riverine
forests. It is perhaps the most aquatic of the primates and is a
fairly good swimmer, capable of swimming up to 20 m underwater and
have been known to swim across rivers. They have a long coat; the
fur on the back is bright orange, reddish brown, yellowish brown
or brick-red. Their face is orange-pink and the male has a red penis
with a black scrotum. Both sexes have bulging stomachs that give
the monkeys what resembles a pot belly and many of the monkeys'
toes are webbed. Females become sexually mature at five years old
and copulations tend to last for half a minute with both sexes participating
although now always successfully. Perhaps this is because the male
will grab the female by the ankles or torso and mount her from behind.
It likely doesn't help that when soliciting sexual attention, both
sexes will pouted, the males will sometimes vocalize, the females
will present their backsides, and mating pairs are sometimes harassed
by subadults. Proboscis monkeys eat primarily fruit and leaves,
but will also eat flowers, seeds and insects to a lesser extent.
Their daily activities consist of resting, traveling, feeding and
keeping vigilant. As night approaches, the monkeys move back near
the river and forage again. The proboscis monkey is assessed as
Endangered and its total population has decreased by more than 50%
in the past 36-40 years to 2008 due to ongoing habitat loss and
hunting in some areas. The largest remaining populations are found
in Kalimantan; there are far fewer in Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah.