The Free Souls

Winter winds whistle through Auckland, New Zealand at this time of the year, but even New Zealand's chilly days are not enough to winterkill the dreams of freedom that bloom eternally in the hearts of men and monkeys. Three weeks ago, despite the weather, six bonnet monkeys decided to give up the comforts of a warm cage in the Auckland Zoo and take up residence in a pine grove just down West View Road. Zoo authorities tried in vain to lure them back, but the free souls in the pine trees only mocked their efforts.

In time most of the children of Auckland took up the monkeys' cause, and the local fruit dealer did a land-office business as moppets flocked around to buy bananas. Mingling freely with all who came offering food and genuine friendship, the monkeys would eat their bananas with relish, and then, with unerring aim and discernment, shy their skins at whatever furtive zoo keeper chanced to be lurking near by. At last, frustrated, the zoo men went to a base stratagem: they left a plate of rum-soaked food standing near, to tempt the refugees. One poor, pusillanimous monkey fell for the dodge, and as the keepers dragged him off drunk and disorderly in a sack, the other monkeys took to the trees and aired their disapproval in derisive jeers.

At the end of two weeks, two more foolish monkeys were caught--one by following strategically placed bits of orange peel straight into the mouth of a zoo keeper's sack--but the three remaining holdouts had grown shrewder than ever. In the end, it was only the perversity of fate and their common simianity that brought them down. One day last week, unused to the perils that abound in freedom, one of the monkeys was hit by a passing automobile. As he lay in the road, stunned but unhurt, a lurking keeper took him captive.

Racing to the rescue and rendered careless by the fate that had overtaken their friend, his two comrades ran straight into the arms of the law. In the monkey house at Auckland, freedom was once again only a dream and a memory.

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