A story 'broken' by a Chinese news organization claims the Taliban are teaching legions of monkeys to wield automatic weaponry against their invading infidel rivals. Like mushrooms after a June downpour, the story is sprouting up in every corner of the digital universe. But is a word of it true? Who cares- as a story it's dynamite.
Visions of rampaging monkey hoardes dropping from tree limbs to pour hot lead onto unsuspecting platoons of tow-headed Rangers? That's just good television.
You can almost imagine the chimps meeting up after the ambush to exchange high fives and lice removal. Just like at every monkey enclosure at every zoo, there would be an aged, scarred patriarch quietly brooding off in the corner while the others cavort and carry on like the band of fuzzy gallutes they are. But in the Taliban Monkey squad, this grizzled fellow dons an eyepatch and smokes cigarettes pilfered from the corpses of his fallen victims. A string of human ears decorates his chest in a literal fuck-you to evolution.
The aftermath of a chimp ambush can be even more horrific than a strictly homo sapien fray, thanks primarilly to their tendency to hurl handfuls of shit when their weapons run out of ammo. Teaching a monkey to fire an AK-47 is one thing, teaching it to reload is another.
Training monkeys seems like something right up the Taliban's alley. Their recruiters have a decent track record with the below average intelligence crowd. Convince them they'll receive 72 bananas when they die in battle. Or virgins if they're bonobos.
But pity the unlucky Talib that draws the short straw to hand out the loaded weaponry for the first time, hoping the simian pupils aim at the poster of a snarling GI and not his junk. "Just toss them the rifle and get behind the rock, Omar!" Woe to any that try to get between a monkey and his bang stick before it runs out of bullets. A Nordic berserker knee-deep in enemy entrails would scarcely compare to the furious outburst of an armed chimp maddened with blood lust. And all the while the things are screeching with wild-eyed inhuman laughter. If there's one thing television has taught me about monkeys, it's that they enjoy their hijinks.
Suspiciously the dire report arrives less than a month on the heels of a published study detailing organized chimpanzee patrols and warfare. I’m roughly 99.999% certain the entire “monkeys with machine-guns” thing is total malarkey. Handguns, sure I might buy that. We've all seen and loved the picture by now. But a machinegun? Do they think we were born yesterday?
There's a big part of me that desperately wishes it was true. Because if monkeys have mastered firearms there is nothing stopping them from taking humans down a notch. We've taught them to drive go-carts, wear cheap sunglasses, and flip the bird. Guns were the one thing keeping us the master species. Our kind has royally screwed up everything we've touched. It's time to give another branch of the Tree a go at the top.
Some of the monkeys I've seen seem happy enough, swinging from the truck tires in their enclosures, eating peanuts, sleeping, whacking off. I've spent less productive Sundays. If the monkeys manage through hard work and some masterful strategy to enslave mankind, I for one would shrug and accept my fate. Who doesn't like free peanuts?
