The glorious, but wild and

wooly

snow monkeys of Japan’s

heights,

with their four fingers

and thumbs so

much like ours as they swing

from tree to tree

and endure the four seasons

and winter as harsh as it could be

in the highest places are

99.9% like we

are; they care lovingly

for their young, but unlike we

are, their pecking order is about

arguing, fighting, and shooing away

wannabe

leaders of another day

and making up by grooming

bugs away,

but not warring, slaughtering,

obliterating, ethnic cleansing

in the dirtiest ways.

Here we have much more in

common with Chicago’s sewer

rats any day

and, most unfortunately

but predictably,

the

macaque,

the Snow Monkey

is, also, our prey.