the march to civilization

I don't know about no ticks, but I had a moth in here last night.  Buddy was eyeing him intently but these cats just don't have the killer instinct, so I was able to trap the bug between my open palms, walk out onto the balcony and release it .  It didn't fly off right away, it crawled across my fingers a bit, maybe the way, we great apes, apples of God's eye, look around to make sure we have all our crap before we get off the train or the plane. And then it was off, free and unburdened.

We're burdened by crap, us modern humans with our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes, unlike our brothers, the orangs, the gorillas, and the chimps. who don't get to drive those streak of lightning cars, but on the other hand are unburdened by fancy clothes, who are free to fling their feces wherever and whenever they want and not get kicked out of some fancy restaurant or local bar.

Not that I have ever flung a feces (it seems there is some controversy over this plural noun, wiki speaks of plurale tantum, which looks latin to my eye, but I don't think anybody in these univied halls knows any latin. We should recruit a Catholic, they always maintain a smattering of latin.), nor is it the sort of thing I would wish to do, a simple fuck you is sufficient and much cleaner.

But maybe I would like to be unburdened.  I hate to even carry an umbrella, you know it's stuck in your hand and you have to set it down when you walk in the bar, and then you have to remember to pick it up when you leave, nagging little details that can trammel the free flow of conversation when your pals are rapt by your thrilling tales.  And most of the time it's not raining all that hard, and you can pull down your hat and hunch your shoulders forward, and you look kind of cool, manly even, compared to those dorks with their umbrellas, who are staying dry, to be sure, but are burdened. They'll have to find someplace to put that thing when they get where they are going, and remember to pick it up when they leave, and if the occasion should occur for tossing feces while they are there, they shall just have to smile nicely with empty hands.

I think the chimps, and probably the gorillas, probably not the orangs who I don't know who let them into the hallowed halls of great apes, know how to use some tools, basically just sticks or a rock or two, and the thing is they just use whatever is at hand.  But somewhere along the path to that handsome Cro Magnon, one of our ancestors realized that that was a pretty good stick or rock that he had just used, probably better than whatever might be at hand the next time he wanted to crack open a nut or whatever, so why not just take it along with him?

And thus burdened, our species began the long climb to civilization and towers in cities where one might have to rescue an innocent moth from a savage beast, but one need never fear those loathsome blood sucking little bugs.