“So, I watched this show on television the other day and it was all about this tribe of people who still live in a jungle somewhere – I can’t remember if it was in South America or Africa, or whatever, but the point is that they’re still living there right now.  Not some uncontacted group or anything like that, they’re aware of the outside world and all that, they just choose to continue to live the way their ancestors always lived.  And so, they let these anthropologists, or whatever they were, follow them around and observe how they lived and take pictures and videos and all that, you know, and that’s what the show was all about.

So, anyway, these people live out in the rain forest and, it turns out, their main source of protein is monkey meat.  They eat other stuff too – fruits and fish and roots and stuff like that, but the main thing, or at least the favorite thing, is monkey – which they have to go out and hunt.  And, of course, they had to film one of these hunts for the show.

So, they showed the tribesmen preparing for the hunting trip by gathering supplies and making these really sharp darts that they use in blow-guns to shoot monkeys out of the trees and they pick these special poisonous berries which they mash up into a pulp and then smear it on the blow-gun darts and then they have to sort of bake the darts on a rock that they heat up over an open fire, I guess because it helps activate the poison or something, and in the meantime the whole village has these pre-hunt rituals they go through for good luck and everybody joins in etcetera, etcetera, and so then they go out into the jungle and start the hunt.

Now, these guys could be out in the jungle and away from the tribe for quite a long time, like five days or ten days or even longer than that – however long it takes them to track down a herd of monkeys, you know?  But then when they find some, they shoot them out of the trees using the poison darts and once they’ve got a dozen or so in the creel, they start to trek back to the village.

Now remember, they could’ve been away from the village for days and now they’ve got to carry these dead monkeys back through the jungle with them all that way… carrying dead monkeys in the hot, humid, stifling heat of the jungle for days… you can imagine what starts to happen to the bodies – they’re going to start to rot and bloat almost immediately and they’ve got to hump them all the way back.

But, you can also imagine the scene when the successful hunting party makes its way back into the village with a sack-full of monkeys.  Villagers singing and dancing, kids running around – some pretending to be primates, others would be the hunters.  The young women eyeing the triumphant providers with keen interest.  The old men claiming that the monkeys of their youth had been much larger and more cunning than the monkeys of today, etcetera, etcetera.

And then great big fires would be lit and as soon as a proper bed of hot coals had been developed the monkeys would be dropped on to cook.  Fur and all.  Un-gutted.  Swollen.

And once they were cooked to the local version of ‘done’, the tribe would cut them up and mete out portions to everybody in the village according to custom and status and need.  Nobody in the village would go hungry and the people would celebrate and rejoice for the next several days, feasting on the magnificent bounty.

And so, we see that it is entirely possible for human beings to not only survive, but to actually flourish in a society whose very existence is based on the consumption of week-old, scorched, bloated, poison, monkey carcass.”

“Sheesh, all I said was that I hated eating leftovers.”

“There’s still some meatloaf in the fridge.  Enjoy.”