The laws of a tribe of monkeys are dictated by their fear of coconuts. They live in a cycle of bondage to their laws and fears until a unlikely solution presents itself.

“Beware of the coconut, do not touch a coconut or allow your brother to touch a coconut. If you encounter a coconut, return and warn the tribe of the coconut …...” the student monkeys were reciting the coconut laws as they did every day in school. The spider monkey tribe had many rules and almost all of them had to do with coconuts. Every monkey in the tribe had to learn the rules starting from the time they were very young, and they studied the coconut laws for most of their lives. For all of the other jungle creatures, coconuts were nothing to worry about, but for this particular tribe of monkeys it was a matter of life and death. No one could remember a time when there weren’t any coconut laws; they only knew that it must have been a long, long time ago. For as long as anyone could remember, the monkeys had to be on the lookout for coconuts and they always tried to have the coconut laws on their minds wherever they went. It would have been easy if coconuts were rare but these monkeys lived in the middle of a jungle that had coconut trees everywhere. There were banana and mango trees around also but there were just as many coconut trees and they were hard to avoid. So, throughout their lives, when they would come across a coconut on the ground they would (most of the time) avoid it and try to go around it. Sometimes, these curious monkeys would fearfully look at the coconut until they got the courage to poke at it. Of course nothing happened. Then the braver monkeys would poke some more or roll the coconut around until another monkey reminded them about the law and they would leave the coconut alone to avoid the eventual doom that would surely come. The law was there for a reason, of course, to protect the monkeys from the evil coconut. There was a time, long ago when the monkeys did not have coconut laws. Back then, monkeys played with coconuts, they collected them and if they could manage it, they ate them. Then one day, the hunters started coming and that changed everything.

The author is a computer technician living in Palm Springs, California with his wife and twin boys. He previously worked in a group home for boys where he began telling stories to the boys there and decided to write down those stories for others to enjoy. He is the author of the children's book, The Monkey and the Coconut and is currently working on further tales in that series.