Chopping Away The Extras

For some, not all days begin happy. For Ponginae, every day was a dark cloud her eyes would open to. She would wake-up and the first thing she would see were the things that caused her the most misery – her arms. Her long, stretchable arms with their beautiful opposable thumbs.

Now orangutans were known to have extra-long arms. Unfortunately for Ponginae her limbs were Xtra, Xtra long. They got in the way all the time. She would very often trip on her fingers and plummet 4921 feet down. For someone who particularly doesn’t like bungee jumping it was a nerve-shattering experience.

The final blow came when Ponginae fell in love. His hair was a sunset red and his longcall was the sweetest heard. To add to this vision of perfection he had the most impressive flanges of the pack. With those kind of of cheek pads he could have chosen anyone in the group but he had picked her. They were out on their first date, the topmost branch of the tree, when in a fit of romantic impulse, Ponginae plucked a flower, which was growing near-by and handed it to him. Well, that was the plan.

She had once again underestimated the length of her arm. While handing over the flower to lover-boy, her arm overreached, biffed him in the face with the flower causing him to topple and fall off the tree. He didn’t die but he did take some time to get back to dating.

Ponginae looked at her arms again. They were three times her body length. She could twist it around her and still have flesh to spare. Suddenly a thought struck. It was a horrible, nasty, evil one. Her lips took on a ghoulish grin.

She got down from the tree and marched to a nearby rock. There, with her right foot she picked-up the sharpest stone she could find and chipped away at her left arm. In some time it fell off. Then she switched the stone to the other foot and chopped her right arm. Voila! Done.

It did hurt and the blood did flow. Ponginae knew all this pain was temporary, it was just a matter of time before the blood clotted and the body healed. In a week she was fit again. She had gotten a bit thin because of the blood loss and lack of appetite but otherwise she seemed quite happy.

Since her hips had the same flexibility as her shoulder and arm joints, Ponginae was very easily able to invert herself and use her legs as her arms. Once her pack got used to her sans two limbs they stopped being grossed-out and continued with their fruit-chewing lives.

As for Ponginae she soon found another true love and had her first set of babies. When they got old enough to ask questions, the first thing one sparky fellow demanded to know was whether Mama missed her hands. Patting Junior’s curious head with her opposable toes, she smiled, shrugged her limbless shoulders and said ‘hands-free is better.’

Moral: To make a path, amputate what gets in the way.

Ponginae is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com