Monkey training (Singapore)

We had just re-turfed our lawn with what we called “carpet grass”, a fine-blade variety that felt like a carpet to the eye and to the derrière.  This is presumably what the modern astro turf is based on.  My uncle had a lawn planted with this grass, so we got a block of it from him, split it up into little strips, each about six inches long, and planted them at regular intervals.  The idea was to wait for them to grow sideways and eventually meet.  

In the meantime, however, weeds would colonise the gaps in between, so all hands were called to the deck to remove them.

After a few weeks of this back-breaking work, my father thought, “Monkeys can be trained to pick coconuts, so why not to weed the lawn?”  He put Mietsy to the task:  led him to the lawn, pulled out a few weeds himself, and said to him, “This is how you do it.  Now you do it.”

To his credit, Mietsy actually seemed to understand what was expected of him, and did gamely try to emulate and please his master.  Unfortunately, his horticultural knowledge didn’t extend to the finer distinctions between green bits that were weeds and green bits that were the much-prized carpet grass, so he pulled up the lot.  My father’s yelling and shouting could be heard from across the road.  The free labour project was abandoned.

The idea, however, wasn’t totally abandoned.  One of my brother’s Tiger Club mates, Michael, decided to save himself the trouble of having to climb up our rambutan* tree to get the fruit.  After all, like my father said, monkeys could be trained to pick coconuts, so why not rambutans?  So he took Mietsy to the tree, and following my father’s lead, pointed up the tree and said to Mietsy, “There you are, Mietsy.  Here’s the tree.  Up there are the rambutans.  Go and fetch them!”

Mietsy duly went up the tree, and Michael sat back down below, waiting to collect the fruits of Mietsy’s labour.  A few minutes went by and no Mietsy re-appeared.  Michael thought, “He must be busy with so many bunches of rambutan to collect, give him a few more minutes.” 

Then, rambutan skin started to rain down on Michael’s head.  Michael looked up to find Mietsy sitting comfortably up in the branches, stuffing his face (literally, into his cheek pouches) with rambutans.  To add insult to injury, he chucked the rambutan skin down at Michael.  Luckily for Michael, it wasn't a coconut tree.  That training programme also died an early death.


(Singapore 1960s)

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*The rambutan tree is about the size of an apple tree.  The fruit is like a lychee in flesh and taste, but twice as big, with a red, hairy skin.