The rain has not fallen for a long time. There was draught and famine in the land of the animals and everyone was suffering.
The king therefore passed a law that every animal must start a trade, an occupation or learn artisan work. This was a wise idea and immediately every animal started doing something to enable them have food in their homes. Some started farming, some trading, some building and others embarked on every kind of odd jobs. All, that is with the exception of the monkey. The monkey in his house thought “What a bunch of fools. Why do I have to break my back working? I would rather become a thief. Whatever they produce I will steal.
So, it came about that thing started missing in the village. In the face of the suffering of the people due to the draught and famine, this is a big problem as no one can afford to lose anything now.
The hardworking dog who has decided to be a groundnut farmer advised his wife to become a groundnut seller, so that this way they can easily make ends meet and keep their products and profit within the family. However, much to the dog family’s annoyance and frustration they became the greatest victims of the nifty thief’s exploits. After a particularly large loss the dog who happens to be the greatest hunter in the land decided that enough is enough, it is time to bring this mischief to a stop. The thief must be caught and brought to face the consequences of his nefariousness.
However, the style of the thefts puzzled even the clever dog. Who could be this thief that strikes without leaving foot prints or even lingering scent? At first, they suspected the birds. This idea was soon discarded as one of the food items that have been stolen over time are yam and other tubers. These, birds do not eat. They are food of land animals and rodents.
What the animals did not know was that while others were learning every kind of trade and occupations, the monkey was learning how to climb trees. Now he has cut for himself a long vine rope which he ties to the lower branch of trees, then swings from it and snatches whatever he wants to steal from the ground and swings away. This way he does not set his feet to the ground and therefore does not leave footprints for the dog to track nor scent for him to follow.
The dog then came up with a plan to catch the clever and elusive thief. What he did is start storing all his ground nuts in calabash gourds. Around the neck of these gourds, he ties a rope. Next, he attaches bells to this rope and at the end of the rope he secures a large pole in his store house. This means therefore that if anyone tries to move the calabash the bells will jingle and the dog and his family will hear it and will come and catch the thief.
It came about then that one night, the monkey came again to steal the dog’s groundnuts but saw that they were now stored in a gourd. This of course did not deter the greedy monkey. Looking around furtively like a thief does and seeing no one, he stuck his hand into the gourd, grabbed some nuts and tried to bring out his clenched hand full of nuts. It could not come out as the neck of the calabash is too narrow.
Now, the monkey has a greedy nature that is beyond description. He knows that if he tries to bring out his hand without the nuts, it will easily come out, but with the nuts still in them it will be impossible to bring it out. Yet he
refused to let the nuts go and continued quietly trying even as the morning was coming. As he therefore heard the first cock crow to herald the coming of the morning the greedy monkey got desperate and started to struggle wildly. This set off the bells the dog had attached to the gourd jingling noisily. At this the sleeping dog and his family woke up and rushed into the storehouse to see who was jingling the bell. Lo and behold, it is the monkey with his hand inside the calabash of ground nuts.
Any other person at this stage could have released the nuts and made good their escape, but not the foolish greedy monkey. Instead, he held tighter to the nuts and struggled more wildly. The dog and his family then descended on him, and as he did not want to let go off the nuts, they started beating him there.
As the luck of the devil would have it, due to the excitement of the beating the gourd of groundnuts with the hand of the monkey in it smashed and the silly monkey’s hand was released. Immediately the agile thief took a dive at his dangling vine rope and promptly swung up a tree with his right hand still clenched full of ground nuts, much to the frustration of the dog and his family. They just stood on the ground barking at and threatening the escaped monkey.
The monkey on top of the tree after licking the wounds he had sustained from the beating settled in the hook of a branch and started eating his ill-gotten nuts. The birds and the squirrels and other tree dwellers flocked around to beg him some, but he rudely chased them away.
“Shoo, shoo, all of you long throats, if you know what I had to undergo to get these nuts you wouldn’t dare to beg me of them”
The greedy monkey relaxed to eat his nuts alone. However, as he tried to put the first one in his mouth, it fell off his hand and started bouncing down the tree. What did the greedy and foolish monkey do? He started struggling to catch that one seed and in that foolish attempt all the other seeds he was holding all flew off his hand and fell down the tree in a shower. The silly monkey tried to catch all of them at once and of course could not catch even one. The birds and the other animals whom he had refused to give all went down and had a feast of his loot. The monkey on the other hand could not go down as the dog and his people are still down there waiting for him.
And that is the way it is till this day.
