The Wooden Monkeys

A village on a riverbank was home to a very talented wood carver. The people of the village marveled at the figures he carved, they seemed so lifelike. He was a very clever man, and the toys he created were magical indeed. One day he fell asleep under a palm tree after many hours of carving. In a dream, the jaguar god came to him and said, "Carver, you are very tired. You need a helper or two, to do menial tasks for you. I will give you a gift: make a wooden monkey, tell it what it's job is, and it will do that job for you." The dream ended and he woke.

   

The carver thought it was silly, but the dream seemed so real that he just had to try. He carved a little wooden monkey, and whispered in its ear, "Sweep the floor!" Then he set it down. After a moment, the monkey seized the broom, many times its size, and began to sweep. The carver laughed out loud and was very pleased. He quickly set about carving many more monkeys, charging them to wash the dishes, do the laundry, make the bed, tend the garden, cook the meals, and so on. Soon he had no tasks to do at all, and could carve all day from sunrise to sunset.



The villagers soon found the secret of the carver's abundance of free time. Several of his friends asked for just one monkey, and he agreed; then they asked for more monkeys, and he agreed; then people he didn't even know asked for monkeys, and he made them for these people, but made them pay for them. The monkey business expanded, and all he did anymore was make monkeys to work for the people of the village. This gave the villagers all the free time they could ever want, and they quickly became lazy.



No men farmed or fished or hunted any longer; the monkeys did all that. The women didn't clean or cook or tend to their children any more; the monkeys kept their houses. Soon the villagers became very fat and very lazy. They couldn't even rise from their hammocks to leave gifts for the gods, or to wash themselves or feed themselves. The carver was the only person still able to work, as he had stayed quite busy carving monkeys.



One day when one of the villager's monkeys came to him to request more monkeys for the villager that owned him, the carver had an idea. He carved a monkey and whispered in its ear, "Carve more monkeys!" and it did. The carver didn't need to work anymore either, and he went outside to roam the village. What he saw dumbfounded him. He had no idea the effect the monkeys had been having on the village.



"Get up! Get up!" he urged the villagers. They didn't want to, but eventually he got them on their feet. He talked to them and helped them to see what they had become; some villagers didn't care, but others saw his wisdom.



"What shall we do? Let's destroy the monkeys!" they cried, but when they tried to catch the monkeys and burn them (after all, the monkeys were only made of wood), the monkeys bit them and leaped away, coming back eventually to resume their assigned jobs. But every time a villager tried to capture a monkey, it jumped away quickly.



"They have taken over the village. It isn't our village any longer," the carver said. "I am sorry I ever made that first monkey!" The villagers decided they had to leave, and let the wooden monkeys keep the village along with any people who didn't want to leave. So, one day, they packed up all their belongings -- except the wooden monkeys, of course -- and moved to the other side of the river to rebuild the village.