Edith and Cyrus

"Of course it's monkeys, I feel like John is doing this on purpose," Edith complained as she watched the monkeys play above her head.

They would eat mangoes and throw some down at her, she would mostly duck out of the way but every now and then a few would reach her and hit.

She tried controlling them by telling them to get down like the way that Cyrus told her giraffe that one time but they were being ignorant of her.

Seeing this made her want to get this over with as soon as possible, she decided that if she couldn't get them to come down then she would be the one climbing up, bracing herself she leaped into the tree that they resided in and attempted to grab one by its tail.

As soon as she raised her hand to try it, the monkeys moved out of the way and jumped around her all over the tree, they would act as if playing a game of tag, they would each attempt to get close to her and hit her somewhere whilst avoiding themselves from being caught.

One hit her on her head, another on her back, thigh, cheek arm, anywhere that they could. She soon got tired of this and stopped trying to grab at them as she slapped her palm on her face and closed her eyes to think.

The monkey which would mostly cover its eyes saw this and attempted to comfort her, it was the smallest monkey in the tree and inched itself closer to her with a small mango held in its small hands, when it saw that she wasn't reacting no matter what it stood upright like a human and ran forward to deliver her the mango.

It poked Edith's leg but she didn't bother reacting, it then poked her again and again until Edith eventually removed her hand from covering her eyes and looked at it. It had its small eyes looking up at her, making a small *squeak* sound and rolling the mango forward.

Edith saw the mango and reached her hands towards it and then after she touched it, she pushed it away and tried to reach for the monkey but it moved past her running away back to its friends.

One monkey was laughing while another was jumping around quietly as the monkey that attempted to give her the mango was looking onward at her.

Edith had enough, she wasn't going to let them laugh and have their way anymore, she rushed forward at them on the branch she was on, and seeing the speed she ran at, the monkeys decided it was safer to abandon the tree.

Leaping from one tree to another was easy for them as the trees were quite close together, Edith had her mouth hung open for a while but quickly gave chase, she too was jumping from one branch on a tree to another.

The monkeys ran away and Edith gave chase after them in a game of cat and mouse.

Branch to branch, tree to tree, it was as if Edith herself had transformed into a monkey and was moving along with them, but to anyone who was paying attention her face looked different, she truly wanted to catch those monkeys and as to what she would do with them, only she knew.

This chase continued on for quite a while as it looked as if Edith wouldn't run out of stamina, in fact, it was quite the opposite, as long as she was determined she could keep on chasing them but because they were better adapted to the tree they were capable of staying ahead.

That was until Edith made a wrong move, she had stepped on a branch that one of the monkeys had stepped on but she didn't consider her weight and the size of the branch so when she placed her foot on it, it broke before she could even take off to another branch.

Edith grabbed hold of the broken branch as a piece of it was still attached to the tree, she tried to climb upwards but it was only breaking the tree even more. She was quite high up and though a fall from this height wouldn't kill her it would certainly be unpleasant.

As she finally accepted the fact that there was nothing she could do, the branch broke off of the tree and fell, but Edith did not, the three monkeys had come back for her, and using their teamwork they were holding each other's hands and lifting her up by her shirt.

"You guys came back? Why?" Edith asked confused. She couldn't even process what was going on before the monkey that was the anchor lost its grip and they all fell down a little bit before stopping again.

Looking upwards, Edith could see a fourth monkey that was holding on to the last monkey and had its hand gripped tightly on a small branch up on the tree.

Edith saw this and her eyes expanded, "There was a fourth!!?" and just then the branch that the little monkey was holding onto broke, and all 5 of them fell down.

During her fall Edith could see her life flash before her eyes as she recalled the memory of the monkey that took her ice cream and ran away with it, when she had chased after it she fell and scraped her knee on the ground, crying from the pain.

After a while someone came to help her though and that someone was a medical professional who was also in charge of the wildlife in that area. That someone was being led to her by the same monkey that took her ice cream from her. It came back to help after seeing her in pain.

As Edith was falling down she didn't even realize what she was doing but she grabbed hold of all 4 monkeys that were in the air with her and huddled herself to cushion their fall. Her back hit the ground and she lay on the ground with her eyes closed.

She could still feel the movements of the monkeys above her and they seemed to be playing with her face, Edith wanted to get upset again but then quickly realized that they were just making sure that she was alive. 'I am alive you idiots,' she thought.

As she opened her eyes she was surprised to see only 3 of them, "Where did the fourth one go?" she asked but she soon had her answer. The last monkey that she couldn't see was the same one that was covering its eyes earlier, it brought her another mango and shyly placed it on her chest before backing away and waiting to see what she would do.

Edith let out a *sigh* of disbelief and said, "Fine, I will take it." she took the mango and took a bite of it in front of them and this caused all of them to cheer, each one in its own unique way.

That was when she realized two things, one being that all the mangoes they threw at her earlier were all ripped and untarnished, meaning that they were trying to share them with her from the beginning and two being that she should have peeled the mango first before biting into it.

But the second one didn't matter as much as they were all happy to see her finally eating it. Even the monkey that was quiet was celebrating by clapping its hands loudly. "In the end, they are all just monkeys, but I guess they are not so bad," she smiled.

****

Back in the forest, Cyrus had made a plan on how he would deal with the tiger that he was in charge of taming. He wasn't simply going to walk up to it and try to pet it, one would be crazy to have that as their first thought of action.

He had with him a small portion of raw meat, about 200 pounds worth of it. He planned to get as close as possible to it and climb onto a big tree, luckily, near the den where the tiger made its home, there was a small tree that had fallen down and was connected to a bigger tree right beside it.

The reason he wanted to climb the tree was that he knew that tigers were hesitant if they had to climb over 15 feet high because they were scared of the fall. If he fed it some meat from the top of the tree he would then make his move to get familiar with it after it had eaten.

He was replaying to himself all the information he knew of tigers and what to do and avoid and finally, he had begun to make his way closer to it. The only problem was that the environment was littered with leaves, as though placed to sabotage him in his mission, 'John,' he thought.

Reaching as close as he could to the tree he soon realized that if he wished to carry out his original goal then he would have no choice but to step on the leaves. He didn't want to do it but in order to get closer to it he did.

Immediately after his first step, he thought that it would react to him or maybe turn its head towards him but it didn't, instead, it was completely oblivious.

As he slowly but surely walked over to the tree, it still hadn't made its move so he figured that he was being quiet enough, that was until he tried to climb onto the tree, the moment he had placed his foot on the smaller tree that fell down, the tiger turned its head quickly and started to approach him.

'Was it listening this whole time? Waiting for me to get closer? No way, it can't be that smart, can it?' he asked himself. 

Seeing that there was no avoiding confrontation he decided that the best move wouldn't be to run, that would only agitate it and cause it to get excited and hunt after him. You would be insane to do that. Instead, he kept his arms low to seem less like a threat and threw the chunk of meat he had towards it.

He backed away slowly and allowed it to eat the meat in front of it. It took its steps slowly, one paw at a time as it growled lowly and approached the raw meat laid out for it. "A growl? That is a warning sign," Cyrus said still hoping things would resolve the way he had hoped but as soon as it reached the meat, it walked right past it instead. There was something more appealing than a small pile of meat right in front of its eyes.

Seeing this, Cyrus had only one word to describe his situation, "Shit."

He ran, "Guess I'm insane," he said as he ducked in between trees, his goal was to lose it. There were a multitude of trees in this forest and if he were to run away far enough to an area where the tiger scent was the strongest, he could rub his clothes on that tree and camouflage himself some more.

He had already done this once before entering the place but decided that it was better to be cautious than underprepared.

As he ran away he started to calculate his chances of a successful escape, "Let's see, a prime hunter, beautiful and majestic with powerful hind legs for jumping, can run up to 40mph while a normal human can run up to 8mph except I am not a normal human, it has a paralyzing roar that it hasn't used yet and I might be immune to it as I still have this mark on my shoulder."

"Based on worldwide statistics, tigers have a 90% chance of falling every hunt even in their territory, basically I have a 1/10 chance of being caught," turning left then right Cyrus had tucked himself deeper into the forest and was gone.

Finally, he had reached a part of the forest where the scent of urine was extremely strong, not wasting much time he rubbed his back against the tree in order to hide away. "With this, I should be safe," he said but when he turned his head behind him he saw that the tiger was right there with him.

"I didn't even hear it," he said as it pounced on him hitting his head with its paws, each strike aimed only at his head. Cyrus tried to fight back and then got his glasses smacked away from his head and was left without them.

Looking upwards, he could only see the silhouette of the tiger as the sun shined on its back showing him the true beauty of nature one final time, "Survival of the Fittest", the tiger chuffed and then bit at his neck and this left Cyrus gasping for air....

This is what he thought would happen, instead, it was just lying on top of him with its mouth licking on his neck.

"Wait, what?" he asked somewhat taken by surprise.

The tiger got off of playing with his neck and started licking his face instead, it was acting like a cat now instead. This was when Cyrus realized that it wasn't going to hurt him at all, when it saw him it decided to have some fun with him instead.

Tigers are known for playing roughly with their friends and family so to it this was no different. Even the blows to his head weren't meant to hurt him, that's why it had retracted its claws during that sequence.

Cyrus pushed the tiger away and went to go and grab his glasses, "You better not have broken these!" he yelled and the tiger whined behind him.

Looking at them, they were perfectly fine and he was all worried for nothing, but the tiger was still looking at him in earnest wishing that they could continue playing.

"Let loose," he muttered as he put his head down from exhaustion.

"John you sly fox."