Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  As for Pok Jr., he had already taken a fondness for the little Beryl, and decided to move his bunny ranch next to Beri's fields as the two of them built a hut together. "Smart, hot and rich", he thinks to himself as he watches her and the baby. "Plus, she doesn't mind taking crap off of me."

  Watch the natural rhythms of the world, and learn to nudge them in a direction favorable for you and your customers, rather than push against them. And take in, or host, a berry fight every now and then. Growing up many years prior to the berry fights, Ahks would watch his father, Og, and Mar, his older brother, working on the larger tree falls while gathering wood each day. From time to time the men would beat on the falls with large rocks to weaken the wood in order to better split or break it. Or, the men might lever the larger logs with medium logs to add stress. Little Ahks would toddle up and attempt to imitate them, as he would beat vainly on the wood with a smallish rock. Mar, barely older than a teen himself, would laugh and say, "your arms are too little, Ahks, as were mine at your age."

  Years later, and growing toward his thirteenth year, Ahks, feeling his growing muscles, threw several heavy rocks off an embankment. One larger rock had crashed into the stream bed below, and cracked into several slivers. For days, he carefully stepped past these slivers as he chased minnows and wondered why Pokette didn't seem as annoying as she had last year. Maybe those squirrel tassels she wore were from her father's fluffier squirrels. Lost in those thoughts, the shards caught his eye, and he imagined putting the rock back together as he tried to fit the pieces into a whole.

  Out of curiosity Ahks picked up one of the slivers and carried it to the glen where his father and brother were working. As Og pulled back on a branch, Mar was hammering away with a large rock at the bend. Taking a break, Mar stepped aside and Ahks shot into his place. Beating upon the bend with the sharp edge, the fibers began to separate. Og was amused by this as well, and said "Ahks, if your arms were longer that might help. Now get out of the way and let your brother work. Get back to catching those minnows, that weir on the river isn't going to bait itself."

  Inspired, Ahks had an idea about how to get a longer arm. If Og and Mar could make their arms longer by using logs, he could make his arms longer, too. He selected a broken branch with a crook at the end, and tied his blade in the crook with some squirrel leather. This was a miserable failure, as he soon discovered as he chopped at a log. The head simply fell off the branch on impact.

  Next, Ahks put the blade in the end of the branch, and struck the flat back of the blade with another rock to drive it in. He had seen his brother and father doing exactly this when they wanted to split a log. The branch split halfway, ruining his handle.

  This inspired Ahks to first wrap the next branch part way up in squirrel leather, preventing the blade from penetrating too far. This worked as desired, but now the blade was stuck, as was Ahks for a few days. Until he saw his brother retrieve a stuck splitting rock by hammering a branch into the notch, relieving the pressure. Ahks did the same, writ small, by beating a twig into the split between the blade and the leather. The blade didn't fall free, but loosened enough to turn it sideways. Ahks then wrapped the top of the branch above the blade with more leather. And then gave it a try.

  This new tool worked. For a few tries anyway, until the blade retreated into the branch. For months, this was his state of the art, until one day Pokette walked by with a gourd of rabbit pellets. As she cast these about, he noticed that for some reason, her hips had grown since last year. No longer did her body drop straight from her shoulders to her legs. No, now she had a dip at her waist, and her hips swelled more fully, her sleek, tanned legs tapering into her little bunny boots.

  Each day, Ahks would take the longer path to the glen, waving at Pokette as she cast about the pellets. She pretended not to notice, but turned in ways which he couldn't help noticing. One day, as he walked by her, Mar approached from the other direction.

  "Where have you been, and what has been taking you so long each day?" he shouted at his little brother across the field. Ahks said nothing, but continued staring.

  Following his gaze, Mar understood. And laughed. "Go take a dip in the cool stream. Then, catch up with Dad and I in the south glen, we've got a lot of branches to haul today," slapping his little brother on the back.

  The cool water helped, indeed. All day, though, hauling branches, Ahks alternately thought about Pokette, her hips, and his barely functional tool. The blade was still slipping out, which really just made it a curiosity, rather than something useful. Again, progress was stalled, his thoughts elsewhere.

  Until one day, almost a year later, Ahks heard giggling and laughing from the field near Pok's hut. Running, not knowing why, he ran to the edge of the field where Pok Jr. was watching Beri and Pokette throwing berries at each other. As usual, the older Pok Jr. barely noticed him. But after a time Pok Jr. rushed in and grabbed Beri, two years older than Pokette, by the waist. She pretended to fight him, smearing him with berries also. Soon the two of them ran into the forest, Pok Jr. grabbing at her more generous hips and her squirming away, giggling and laughing. As they ran out of sight, Pokette stared at Ahks for a minute, blushed, and fled for her father's hut.

  Suddenly, the inspiration hit him. Just as Pok Jr. had grabbed Beri by the waist, so might a properly shaped blade be grabbed by the handle, preventing it from being pushed through the handle by the blow. Seizing his best blade, Ahks soon put a waist into each side of it with a blunt rock, and after a few adjustments, it was finished. He rushed to the glen where his father and brother were harvesting wood. The first blow, and the next and the next proved the idea. Within minutes, with Mar applying leverage, the tool cut through the fibers of the branch, severing it in far less time than would be required without the blade or the handle. And the blade stayed in place throughout.

  Soon, Ahks had made larger versions of the tool for his brother and father, and their output doubled. Og, freed of the necessity for his younger son's labor, set him to work instead refining his craft. Ahks soon had stone and wood tools of every variety, from axes, splitters and shavers to hand tools for cutting smaller branches. And even an arm-sized axe which Mar took to war when necessary, as well as stone tips for Cor's lances.

  Ahks also began to learn how to select the right kinds of rock for different tools, and could almost "see" the tool head hiding within each rock as he moved it in his hands. Using this knowledge, and his growing experience bordering on geology, he also improved the tools which helped him make implements for others in exchange for their own produce. Soon, rocks which others moved aside or ignored became valuable resources, and trees and falls which had been out of reach of harvest became accessible.

  As for Pokette, one day she didn't flee to her father's hut, but instead stood her ground as Ahks approached her, their eyes locked. Some time later, Ahks made Pokette a little stone knife to help her cut food for the baby girl, whom they called Hatchette.

  Invest in tool making. Find those areas of effort which you can automate away, if not avoid entirely. You may fail many times in these efforts, but keep trying, your inspiration for success may come unexpectedly to your subconscious mind. We shall discuss many ways in which you can make tools to help your work, even in the modern world. This may require you to acquire new skills. Across the valley, Ken and his woman Chi weren't fortunate enough to have a forest with squirrels. Instead, they had only a meadow and a couple of fields of low scrub. But, chubby birds loved to grouse around in the scrub looking for the bugs and beetles which lived there. Each day or two Chi and Ken would find one of these birds and catch it as it was flapping off, barely flying. The eggs, while small, were also delicious, so finding a nest was a nice bonus.

  One day, Chi just fell in love with a particularly chubby little hen and begged Ken to let her keep it as a pet instead of having it as dinner. Ken relented, and soon the little hen was following Chi around as she cleaned up the hut, looking for bugs which would go scampering underfoot. As it turned out
, the chubby hen had a little nest under a fallen tree. Soon, there were yellow little chicks waddling around, each nearly as chubby as their mother. Chi and Ken were delighted at this turn of events. Having seen Pok Jr.'s bunny hutches the pair decided to build a hut for the birds off the ground to protect them from snakes and liberals, I mean, weasels.

  Chi and Ken were soon aswarm in chubby little birds, who grew fat and lazy with the abundance of bugs in and about the hut and their droppings. To keep them from escaping, Ken would chase after the more athletic birds as dinner. So the bird population soon became chubbier and chubbier. As for the birds' droppings, the couple followed Beri and Pokette's experience and spread them onto a nearby grain outcrop, and were amazed that the next year the amount of grain tripled. It was as if the little birds, which the tribe soon began to call Chi-Kens, were a blessing straight from God Himself.

  Before long, Chi and Ken had more eggs than they could eat themselves. They began traveling the valley with gourds of eggs, trading them for wood, squirrel, rabbit, leather, berries, wine and tools. It became obvious very quickly that a negotiated price of four eggs for a rabbit would produce either a frown or a smile depending upon the size of the eggs in question. As a result, Ken decided that he and Chi would eat the smaller eggs, and save the larger eggs for trade as those would bring a higher return in traded goods.

  One day, Ken fell sick and was unable to make his bird and egg rounds for a couple of days. As a result, the larger eggs never made it to the trading gourd. These, rolled out of sight by the hens, later hatched and grew into largish, plumper Chi-Kens. After a few months it became apparent that these larger Chi-Kens themselves produced the large eggs in general, and onto the dinner plate fell most of the smaller Chi-Ken eggs.

  Unexpected events, including accidents and tragedies, will often perturb the normal flow of life and create new opportunities if you will pay attention. This turn of events gave Ken an idea as he sat by the stream wondering upon his discovery and now seeing that couple of days of sickness as a blessing. As he looked at the babbling water he imagined little Chi-Kens laying little eggs, and big Chi-Kens laying big eggs. Or little eggs making little Chi-Kens, and big eggs making big Chi-Kens, depending on which came first.

  He decided to conduct a scientific experiment. He built several little pens and kept the birds hatched from the smaller eggs segregated from those hatched from the larger eggs. After a year or so, he noticed that there wasn't necessarily a one-to-one correlation between egg size and chicken size. But, there did seem to be a strong correlation between egg sizes between generations, and more importantly, a correlation between chicken sizes between generations.

  He and Chi decided they would eat the smaller Chi-Kens and eggs, and reserve the larger Chi-Kens and eggs for trade. But, he reasoned, if he traded away the largest eggs and birds, then soon everyone else in the valley would have birds larger than his. Just as he was pondering this issue, a wise old man named Tith walked up to his hut.

  In another less tolerant time, a man such as Tith would have been stoned as a witch or medicated as autistic. As a young boy he was known to wander around the fields at day and by night, living on what he found. Tith would study the most minute detail of a single plant for days, tasting, smelling, pinching. He had a little set of rocks which he would use to crush seeds and leaves that he kept in a leather pouch tied to his waist. Often, he would be found outside in storms, watching the skies. It was said by some that God spoke to him during storms.

  As a young man Tith became a hero of the tribe when a storm arose. A family took shelter under a tree near a hillside. Noticing this, and during the worst of the storm, Tith ran to them and begged them to seek shelter elsewhere. Frightened, they relented and followed him downhill into a stream bed. Within minutes, lightning struck the tree which they had sheltered underneath. As this story spread through the tribe, he gained his reputation for wisdom and his advice was considered by all, and often paid for by gifts of wood or meat. Soon after that, it was said that he traveled to far away lands, often returning with strange seeds in curious little pouches, only to leave again soon afterward on another adventure.

  Tith had a small hut of his own, which never seemed to be wet inside, and a remarkable variety of wonderful plants happened to grow nearby. He would trade portions of these plants at particular times of the year, but some who picked these plants for themselves would fall ill. Others seemed to have demonic possession for a time, or in some cases, fell dead. The tribe soon learned to leave the harvest of these particular plants to Tith himself.

  Tith's most remarkable crop, however, was a carefully ordered arrangement of stones which the old man would fuss over in the moonlight. He was often seen walking back and forth, stopping to stare at the stars as they wheeled overhead, making slight adjustments to positions of his rocks on the ground.

  Anyone who stopped by Tith's hut would be treated to a sip of the best water anyone had ever tasted, drawn from a spring bubbling between the rocks on a nearby hillside. Whenever anyone suffered an injury and sought his help, Tith could be counted on to show up with a mixture of herbs from his plants to ease their pain. At times he cast these mixtures onto the fire in the hut. Other times he offered the ailing a strange-tasting drink. His presence alone had a calming effect, and his treatments were welcomed with relief. Even those for whom there was no hope benefitted from Tith's treatments as he helped ease their pain during their departure.

  That day, Ken was so lost in thought that he didn't see Tith approaching. As Ken thought, Tith stood there watching him, a smile twinkling in the old man's eyes. As was normal for him, the old man said nothing until spoken to. Eventually, Ken turned and, startled, noticed the old man standing behind him.

  "Tith, I didn't see you there, you frightened me", Ken gasped. "It isn't yet time for anyone to be frightened by someone like me," Tith said, smiling, looking over the hillside as if seeing into the future.

  "What?" Ken asked. "Never mind," the old man replied, turning back to Ken, "it seems like you've been thinking hard about something."

  "I have," Ken admitted, telling the old man about the dilemma he had been pondering. As Ken spoke, Tith nodded knowingly, and began beaming almost like a parent might when his child began to walk.

  "You are wise to eat the smaller birds and eggs for yourself, and trade only the larger," Tith acknowledged when Ken had finished. "And, you are correct that if you trade the larger that you will be harming your flock in the long term." He then paused to wait for the question he knew would come.

  "Then how can I trade the best and not harm my flock?" Ken asked, knowing Tith's manner.

  "How does God make both the wolf and the rabbit fast?" Tith asked, waiting patiently.

  "Well, the wolf can easily catch the slow rabbit, leaving only the faster to make little rabbits," Ken answered. "And the wolf?" Tith asked. The light dawned on Ken's face as he suddenly understood, "And the faster wolves will eat better, and be more likely to make faster cubs."

  "Then do as God teaches you from His own work," Tith answered. "I leave the best one of ten of my plants for Him in the field. You leave the best one in ten in your nests, trade the best of the remainder, and eat the dross yourself."

  Ken was almost embarrassed at the simplicity of the answer. After all, he had nearly arrived there himself with his Chi-Ken and egg experiment. Nonetheless, he resolved to implement Tith's suggestion. So, Ken elected to reserve one in ten of the best birds and eggs, thus saving them for God to work His genetic miracle on their behalf. He and Chi traded the remainder. This plan worked as desired, and soon he and Chi had the reputation for the best birds and eggs in the valley.

  Their reputation was so impressive that at the next berry fight festival, Pok Jr. asked Ken to rise and tell the tribe of their success. Tith, having just passed away a week before, was fresh in all their minds. So, Ken decided to honor the old man who had given them all so much wisdom and comfort during his life. After Ken's telling of the technique and its
inspiration, more than a few left the festival that summer determined to apply for themselves the method.

  And so, one in ten, the plumpest berries remained in the fields for seed, the most prolific rabbits were preserved for breeding. The largest Chi-Kens and the largest eggs, the straightest trees in the forest, were all reserved for God and His protection of man and provision for his needs. Soon the tribe grew in strength and size. And they weathered famines which decimated others, following the method which would become known as "Tithing", in honor of the old man's wisdom.

  Reinvest in yourself and your business by nurturing the best of your work and ideas. Don't let your old habits drag you down into unproductive effort. Eat your less valuable assets (or worst losses) and move on to focus on the better things which appear before you. On one of Mar and Cor's campaigns they met a woman whose village had been destroyed by the very barbarians they were chasing. K'ette, as she was known, offered to help them find the barbarians. After that work was done, Mar invited K'ette back to the tribe. She agreed, having formed a respect and admiration for Mar's character and abilities.

  After they returned, Og informed his son and new daughter-of-choice that the lightered post at which he and Pok often traded wood and squirrels was becoming more popular among other members of the tribe. The other tribesmen had begun to meet there in the evenings to trade goods among themselves. However, some tribe members who lived farther away were unable to travel there each evening, only arriving once in several days, or, in some cases, weeks apart. Sadly, some of these goods from far away were the most valuable, and it was rare that two distant tribesmen would arrive on the same day. So, even some of the local tribesmen were beginning to wonder whether they should be bringing their goods elsewhere. This would be a bitter blow to Og and Pok, and the other local tribesmen, who would then have to spend their time traveling elsewhere.