The story is based on a real fairytale. This is a rewrite of an obviously incorrect account of proceedings.
Once upon a time there was a family that lived on the edge of a forest and on the edge of society. The household was made up of a stout mother a short father and three bad looking daughters. They were Sad Sue, Stubborn Stella and Silly Sally.
One fine day the father, who happened to be a wood cutter had an idea. He didn´t often have one so he was right proud of himself whenever he did get one. He announced his great idea over the dinner table.
“As of from now I am not going to carry my own lunch with me every morning when I head off into the forest. I have enough to carry between my axe and the wood I cut.”
“But you have a pony and cart,” said the wife, “ I don´t see why you can´t carry the lunch in that too?”
“Listen woman,” began the wood cutter, “do you want the story to develop or not, the original story has less detail than this one.”
“Fair enough so,” said the stout lady.
The wood cutter proceeded to explain how he thought it would be an excellent idea if the eldest girl, Sue, brought the lunch to him every day at noon. And of course there was no arguing with him even though it was quite obviously a waste of everyone´s time. However that´s the way the original story goes.
So the next day the wood cutter went to work as usual. At lunchtime Sue headed out the door with his lunch under her arm and a bag of seeds. Halfway into the forest she had to leave a trail of seeds in order to be able to find her way back. Now what I didn´t understand from the original story is how the woodcutter got in and out of the forest no bother, while she needed the seeds.
In the end she didn´t even find the wood cutter to give him his lunch. To make matters worse she didn´t find the trail back home either because the birds ate up all the seeds.
She sat down on a log and ate the wood cutter´s lunch. What was she going to do now?
Night fell. She wandered around a bit until she saw in the distance a cottage with welcoming smoke curling out of the chimney.
She knocked on the door. “Come in,” said an old voice. Inside was an old man at a wooden table and behind the table stood a horse, a donkey and a fox. In the original story I can´t remember exactly what type of animals they were. This is near enough.
“Can I stay?” she asked.
The old man looked at the animals, they replied, “yes, no, maybe so.”
This was interpreted as yes. The old man told Sue to go into the kitchen and make herself something to eat. She did.
The old man told her to go into the spare bedroom and make the bed for herself. She did.
Finally when she dropped off the old man came into the room and pulled a lever on the wall. Down she went into the cellar. The animals clapped.
At first, Gillespie misses the exciting life as a dairy farmer and often worries about the future of the farm. However, as the pig is an outstanding entrepreneur, together they quickly revamp the farming business.
Gillespie grows to like the new lifestyle. They never have to get up at five o´clock in the morning again. One morning, at around nine o´clock, they are having a leisurely breakfast. Gillespie looks up over the newspaper and announces to the pig and the dog,
“Cows, …who´d have them?
Lily had always been a bright spark and a bright spark among dumb cows is easy to spot.
“What the red rashers is she planning now,” sighed Gillespie.
She was forever up to no good. Last year she burnt down all the butcher shops in town and forced all the butchers to go vegetarian or she would mince them all up in their own vices. Oh she could be vicious all right and her pyromaniac tendencies were getting out of hand. Luckily she had never actually harmed anyone. Gillespie wonders where she is off to now.
Just as the farmer, the pig and the dog head back to the house to drink tea and contemplate a life less dairy farming, Lily and all the cattle involved are docking in a quiet area off the coast of India. Once inland they meet up with the local skinny cows. To their delight all the stories they heard about India are true. Cow heaven is indeed on earth.
The dog dashes away and barks at the kitchen window. Out pops the pig, glasses dangling on the tip of his snout, head deeply buried in the newspaper. He looks up at Boozer then follows him to the field where Gillespie is still standing with his head buzzing with flies.
“Read this Gillespie,” orders the pig as he points to the headline -
SLAUGHTERHOUSE BURNT TO GROUND
Gillespie borrows the pig´s glasses and reads slowly, lips silently mouthing the words. Some spittle dribbles from his chin and splashes off boozer´s head. He stops. He looks at the pig. The pig says nothing. He just points at another headline.
TWO CRUISERS HIJACKED
Gillespie can´t link the two stories together but when he reads a sentence that is repeated in both articles a ray of light emerges from behind a rain cloud and nestles itself around his head. The flies flee as he reads out loud, “ detectives suspect the culprits are cows.”
Gillespie opens the gate. Boozer barks. Then a thousand violins shrilling any old note and some idiot rattling bells sound inside Gillespie´s head. He turns around. To his horror the chickens are out of the chicken run and they are trying to play their out of tune violins. Gillespie shouts,”Go back to bed,” at them and they slink back to the run. He looks at boozer who quickly hides the bells and a conductors baton behind his back. Farmer Gillespie grabs the bells off him. “Hey,” he starts, “ these belong to Lily and the other cows,”
Then they enter the fields to investigate. The field is empty. Only a few seagulls float down onto the grass.
“Seagulls inland Boozer, that means bad weather´s coming.” says Gillespie in a very sage-like way. Boozer barks something that sounds abusive. Luckily Gillespie doesn´t speak dog, but he soon gets the message. “What the blue blazes? Where are the cows?
He roares so loudly he almost blows the trousers off himself.
“BOOZER, GO GET THE PIG. HE´LL KNOW WHAT TO DO HERE.”
The rest of the cow bells are lying embedded in the frost hard cow pats. Boozer prances back to the farmhouse leaving Gillespie standing there with his mouth dangling wide open and the flies buzzing in and out of his two ears.
She doesn´t want to draw any unwanted attention to herself as she makes these plans so she potters about the field everyday doing cow things. She obediently follows the milking routine – up at six in the morning, walk to the milking machines in single file and then back to graze a little. Then trundled back in an orderly fashion and hooked up to the milking machines at six in the evening. And once more brought back to the fields to graze and sleep. She gives no one any inkling of the startling propaganda she is spreading among the fields.
It is a bright frosty morning when Farmer Gillespie wakes at five o´clock in the morning. He needs no alarm clock to get him out of bed. He simply says to himself before retiring for the night, “get up at five o´clock.” He says a little prayer for all his family, friends and animals and then he turns in for the night.
The morning is chillingly quiet. He pulls on his rubber boots that were once green but now are so caked in mud you can´t tell what colour they are. Boozer the dog bounces out of the cabin and on up to the lush fields. Farmer Gillespie grabs an old handle of a brush that serves him well as a walking stick and trudges on up after him.
They get to the muddy tracks that have been sculptured by the tractor. The mud has frozen hard.
It´s lumpy and hard to walk on. They get to the gate. Gillespie shouts at Boozer to get the cows. He squeezes under the gate. Its only a routine, the cows know to be lined out and ready to go at this time. They generally ignore Boozer´s persuasions.
Lily Cow is fed up. She has just discovered that all her brothers are about to be sent off to the slaughterhouse and she is going to be milked senseless until the end of her days, and that is the lucky option. “Flip that anyway,” she says, “I´ll rustle me up a gang of dairy cows and we´ll get organised and bust our brothers and all the other cattle out of that hellhole. Then we´ll hijack the first boat we find and steer a course for India.”
The other cows just look at her dumbly and chew the cud, they have heard this kind of ranting before. Lily stares up into the rolling clouds and dreams of India. It sounds like a fine place. That´s if it really exists. Apparently you can be condemned to death for killing cows there. Cattle are considered sacred. It doesn´t matter if it is an accident or not, you just don´t kill cows. A little bird once told her that she had heard of a man who was punished for accidentally knocking down a cow that was crossing the road. It was too good to believe. Cow heaven is really here on earth. All she has to do now is draw up the plans for the big breakout.
After a lot of planning and hard work, Billy´s farming plan or perhaps I should say the plan his mother had, that he managed to communicate to the hairless apes, took hold and the fruits of their labour could be seen in all the fields surrounding the refuge. At the start it had been extremely difficult, especially as Billy´s dad had formed a bit of a gang that raided the fields at night and ate everything, seedlings and all. A rift grew between the anti-farming and pro-farming groups until the hairless apes put up barbed wire around the allotments. They also attached a little alarm system which triggered a rattling of pots and pans and tin cans if any intruders got past the barbed wire.
Eventually and especially after the first produce was divided up between the farming people of the forest and the hairless apes Billy´s dad´s gang changed their opinion and joined the pro farming movement although they still had a few reservations toward the hairless apes and maintained that the produce was never quite fairly shared out.
Everything seemed to be working out well and the hairless apes and the people of the forest were building a bond which increased the level of trust and respect they had for each other. That was of course until the day arrived that set their progress back years.
It was a scorcher. The unlikely companions were working together in the fields when there was an upsurge of birds from the forest, their usual cheerful chirruping had changed to that of shrill alarm. Billy and the others looked upwards. They were fleeing some predator, probably a tiger. Suddenly and without warning some of the people of the forest dropped their tools and headed toward the village lake. That made the hairless apes stop working and huddle together, shout and point at the horizon between the tops of the forest and the sky. It was glowing a reddish orange colour and white smoke billowed out of it. You could hear the forest grumble under it´s presence. Billy´s mother grabbed him and made her way to the village lake to join the other orangutans. All of a sudden a tiger ran past them and immersed himself in the lake. More creatures followed him and soon the lake was an amalgam of hunters and game, united out of their fear of fire.
From the lake the animals could see the hairless apes. Some of them were also running into the water but the majority of them appeared to have a plan of action. The forest crackled and sparked under the oppressive and looming blaze. Billy couldn´t believe it. They were going to try and attack or at least deflect the monster. They cut away the debris and cleared all foliage that lay between the forest and the village. Then with hoses squirting out water they soaked the same ground. The inferno was almost upon them. The fields that lay beside the forest had already been consumed in a gulf of flames. Tired and soot-faced they eventually admitted their limitations and fled toward the watery refuge where all the forest creatures cowered and waited for the terror to pass. They grouped together in the water, some of the hairless apes carried sticks and rifles. They thought the wild forest beasts might grab an easy meal at any moment especially as it could prove to be a last one.
The people of the forest didn´t carry any sticks. They hadn´t thought that far ahead. The fire roared around them. They could hear the screams of some creatures that just hadn´t got away in time or that had been too stubborn to leave. The air and the lake warmed. It was suffocating.
When it finally died down the animals snarled a bit at each other then raced, soaking, out into the charcoal jungle. A few shots from a rifle ensured that all the forest creatures left the village in a hurry.
The people of the forest and the hairless apes inspected the destruction. Part of the village had been burnt to the ground. The part they had attempted to save had avoided the flames. Their fields however, had been badly damaged. The people of the forest said their goodbyes and headed on to look for a new home in another part of the forest. These crazy hairless apes were already trying to fix the village up and restore productivity. Billy admired them for their tenacity but his people just saw the situation as an impossible one. They knew that food would be scarce and the predators would be coming into the village looking for any sort of meal, it was time to head into wilder denser forests. Billy hugged the villagers and then followed his people. The little hairless ape that had fed him fruit followed them for a while until one of the grown up apes grabbed her and carried her back to the village. Billy hopped that one day they could live with their new allies again and said so to his daddy. Billy´s daddy just shook his head.
A few restless days passed. Billy didn´t see his mother in all this time but he did see Scaffold and Oran outside the caged hospital. It seemed as if the apes that take everything were giving them fruit outside of the prison type hospital too. They would often stay for a chat and then flee quickly into the forest if any hairless ape approached.
Finally the day came when their mother was released. She still looked a bit battered but apart from that she was fine. They hung around together every day in the pen, eating and waiting to see Oran and Scaffold. They were content but they understood that they were completely at the mercy of these strange apes whose temperament was as unpredictable as the wind.
Weeks passed like this. They all grew bored of the routine but they accepted it and came to need it. It was around this time that Billy realised he could sort of make out what the hairless apes´noises meant. He tried to imitate the noises but it just came out like gibberish. Then he figured out a way of getting his ideas across to his captors. He would draw pictures in the ground. There were plenty of sticks lying around. These apes were helpful and in a strange way he thought they wanted to be orangutans, perhaps that was why they hung around so much. Maybe if he taught them how to find food in the jungle and make great leafy beds in the trees they would teach the orangutans how to farm. It worked for the hairless apes, why wouldn´t it work for them?
So every day when the apes came into the pen he got a stick and tried to draw his ideas out in the clay. It was difficult. He was never very good at drawing. They ignored him.
This continued for a week. Then his father and mother joined in. Whenever the guards came into the pen they all drew the same plan out in the clay. The guards ignored them too.
They took some convincing but eventually and perhaps only out of sheer boredom, all the people of the forest started drawing the plan in the soil whenever the hairless apes came in. The guards just scratched their heads in wonder. Everyone was about to give up. This continued for about a month and the guards scratched their heads for a month. Then one day the people of the forest just stopped drawing. They would huddle together as if trying to think of a way to escape this luxury jail. But Billy kept drawing and it was Billy´s picture in the sand that made the strange ape with the four eyes suddenly announce to all in the pen.
“I have a great idea. It looks as if they are trying to plough the land in here. Let´s teach them how to farm.”
Half of the orangutans ran over to say thank you and take the fruit she and the guards were giving them. The other half which included Billy´s dad, stayed away. They waited for the guards to leave before grabbing the fruit. They still didn´t trust them and they were beginning to think that the farming idea might lead to slavery.
The hot sun woke him up. He kicked his mother in the belly, she still wouldn´t wake up. There was a heap of fruit left within reach outside the bamboo cage but Billy hadn´t the heart to reach out his long hairy red arms to get it. The little hairless ape was asleep beside the cage. He poked it until it woke up. It rubbed its eyes and then rubbed Billy´s head. Billy tried to keep hold of the little ape but it just stared at Billy´s mother and muttered something. Then it broke free of Billy´s grasp and ran into its house.
Later it came back with the big hairless apes. They threw a blanket over the cage and Billy felt it move upwards. He was about to pull it off but he had learnt quickly that these apes were much better to you if you didn´t make them angry. When the dirty beige blanket was finally drawn off he couldn´t believe his eyes. Here was the largest congregation of people of the forest that he had ever seen. Some of them looked like model orangutans, their auburn red hair was glossy and they seemed content and well fed. However, he also spotted a group nearby that were badly battered and some even had severe burns. He was picked up by one of the hair only on top apes and he hung on. It passed him to the strangest looking ape that takes everything. It had an extra pair of eyes that hung off its ears and nose. These eyes were not unlike the light reflecting ones he had seen on the dust making aliens. This ape had a mass of wiry white and grey hair floating out of its head. It was female and its skin lacked pigment. It didn´t look as healthy as the other apes. He felt safe with it but then he panicked when he saw them dragging his mother away.
He was left in the pen with the other orangutans. They ignored him for the most part, some of the hairless apes sat among them, they were generally there to control everything. An enormous orangutan leaped over to him and hugged him. “Daddy!” shouted Billy. He was really badly burnt and his arms and legs were wrapped in cotton.
“What are you doing here son?” he asked,
“We came looking for you, Mother´s here too. Oran and Scaffold escaped. What is this place?” said Billy.
“It´s a refuge for injured people of the forest, it seems there are some hairless apes that want to see us alive, once you are back in tip top condition they let you go back to the forest, but never mind that, where is your mother’” said the old orangutan.
“I don´t know, they took her away, they half beat her to death and then brought us here. What happened to you?” he asked sadly.
“They beat me with sticks and then threw an evil smelling liquid over me and using their bad magic suddenly all around me was hot and hurting and hot blue, red and yellow burning streaks flew up all around me. I ran to the lake. I don´t know how or why I did it but I felt so hot I thought I was going to explode and I needed a cold liquid to kill the hot liquid, luckily it worked. Next thing I remember was this pale white haired ape with four eyes fixing me up.” he sighed. “They really are devils, trust none of them, I can´t even for the life of me understand why they fix us up in the first place, sure they will do this again to us once we are released back home.”
Billy put his arm around him. “At least now we know they are fixing Mother.” he said.