Children of the Earth (five minutes freewrite)

marie-jay (61)in #freewrite • 6 years ago (edited)

'Because they're just dumb animals, that's why!'
Wolfgang had had enough of this nonsense about Leopold and his pet monkey. It was a fine specimen, as far as monkeys go, and there was a certain spark in its eyes, but that didn't mean the animal had the mental capacity to talk. At most, it could be made to imitate certain sounds, like a parrot. And nobody seriously believed parrots had any brains, did they?
Leopold had been showing off Koko the monkey to anyone naive enough to mistake random sounds for actual speech. And now all the younger ones were running around trying to find other advanced monkeys spending their evenings training their pets. Left at that, you could chalk it down as just another fad that will pass. By next summer it would be back to wearing your hair down or that stupid paleo diet craze, when they'd all started to eat berries all day long.
What really pissed Wolfgang off was that bunch of youngsters preaching about equality of species and how they were all children of the Earth. According to those hipsters, it was their duty to do everything in their power to uplift the monkeys. 'Giving them the means to communicate would help them work together, like we do. They could create their own communities and cooperate to find food.' Others, even more deluded, argued the monkeys had real feelings, that went way beyond simple instincts.* 'They are capable of understanding complex relationships, like friendship. Didn't you see Koko sharing its food with us?'*
'Monkeys don't have strong enough teeth to gnaw on those bones, that's why they leave them to you, morons!'

As it turned out, they were all wrong about the monkeys. In the short space of just three generations they went from basic grunts to developing a basic language, by means of which they were able to better their lives. They formed hunting parties which were able to tackle larger prey. Instead of relying on rabbits and rats, the monkeys planned their attacks and felled boars or even the random mammoth, a feat which was met with dismay by the wolves.
Unfortunately, the newly uplifted monkeys proved to be lacking in community spirit and were not in the least thankful to those who had given them the gift of speech or any other animals for that matter. As far as they were concerned, they were the only true children of the Earth and all the other species were theirs to use as they saw fit. Goats and sheep were the first to fall into slavery. The smart monkeys put nooses around their necks and kept them around their caves, so they could have meat whenever they felt like.
Fortunately, old Wolfgang had been long dead so he did not have to witness the shameful moment when the first wolf bowed his head in front of a human and allowed a rope to be tied around his neck. How the tides had turned! The monkeys were now all competing to get their own talking dog. Not that they needed the conversation. No, the dogs were just useful - throw them a bone and they guard your sheep for you and help you with the hunting, as they had a superior sense of smell. The dogs seemed happy with their new lives and every time a wild brother would venture too close to their settlements they'd yap their heads off, alerting their masters. Life in captivity dulled their senses and it wasn't long till they lost their ability to speak. The mighty wolves who once bore with pride names like Wolfgang or Leopold started to go by ridiculous names like Fido or Skippy. One thing they never lost was the funny notion the monkeys were their friends, so they wagged their tails when they saw one. The uplifted monkeys have no tails to wag or maybe they don't care to talk with the dogs. After all, they're no longer animals, they call themselves humans now.