A monkey screamed with righteous rage
At those who locked him in a cage.
So sad for him, he didn’t know,
They’d chopped his home down long ago.

This was one of the very first Zoo Rhymes that I wrote, but it seemed so melancholy that I sat on it until now.  It emanates from the films of the last Orang Utan climbing to the very top of the only tree left standing in the middle of a burned out forest.  The pictures are excruciatingly sad,  particularly as the Orang is pretty much as close as we get to a family in the wild.  The real selfishness of the human race is that it puts its own needs so far above the needs of every other species, whilst it salves its conscience by preserving the last of the line in a zoo…

NB I do know the difference between a monkey and an ape, but it’s just a little rhyme after all, isn’t it…