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Taming John "The Monkey-boy" |
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The crickets are already tuning up for the evening as Millie beckons us through one last tunnel of undergrowth and stops at a small, knobbly barked tree. "There," she says breathlessly, gesticulating at the branch just above her head. "That's where he was. Up there, clinging to a branch, just like a monkey.
"There are no monkeys in the trees this evening, no signs of life at all as dusk closes in, except the escalating clatter of the crickets and an occasional flash of birds' plumage high in the branches. Much of the vegetation the monkeys lived among has been cleared in the ten years since Millie went looking for firewood and rushed screaming back to her home outside the village of Bombo to shout that she had seen a dreadful thing in the forest, a demon running and climbing trees with the monkeys |
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.....As we stand there gazing at the tree where the creature was finally cornered, Millie remembers what happened next. Her husband and other men folk followed her back into the forest, armed with sticks. They rushed at the monkeys and one man tried to grab hold of the demon, but the monkeys - a species known as vervets, common in this part of Uganda - fought back ferociously. Screeching in alarm, one bold vervet tried to rescue the creature and pull it away. But at last they were all driven back. The terrified prey hurtled up a tree, where one of the men poked it with his stick. It yelled.
"That's when we realised it was a boy," says Millie. The small, black, smelly creature was prised off the branch and carried to her home. |
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There they took a look at what they had found - a skinny, sick gibbering thing, covered in scars and wounds, his knees hard with scars from crawling, his hair unkempt and bushy, his nails so long they were bent back round his finger-tips. He squatted in the corner of Millie's yard, making strange frightened noises. |
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| Website Donated by Don Ellis |
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Copy right 2008.All rights reserved by molly and paul chilcare foundation ©
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Website designed by bas-j Label.Email Basajjansolo: "bas_jy2kx@yahoo.com" Tel: +256-782-148730 |
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