Mugged

So I live in one of the safest cities in the world. So safe that you can walk alone in the city in the middle of the night and there is a high probability that you will return home safe and sound without being bitten by a dog, robbed by a thug, shot by a sociopath or sold to a terrorist training camp. Living in such a place naturally makes you less aware of your surroundings. So, you go out one fine morning for a leisurely stroll in the park and get mugged … by a monkey. Not only does it remind you that low crime doesn’t mean no crime but it also hurts your rather fragile male ego.

I kept mum about this incident for a while but I finally thought I let you (my dear readers) know. So it started off as a lazy Saturday afternoon with nothing much to do than surf (on the internet). A friend of mine and I decided to do some activity and we figured that the MacRitchie reservoir was the closest to go. Now anybody who has ever been to a state park anywhere in the world knows that it is not good to feed wild animals the junk food that we have grown up on (not only is it unhealthy but also it is really bad for their survival instincts). Singapore makes it doubly sure that you do not feed animals by making it an offense with a hefty fine attached to it.

We wore our trekking shoes, geared ourselves up and decided on the 11 km route that we planned to take. Now, being in the rainforest, its always good to keep ourselves hydrated. So I bought a bottle of an isotonic drink to keep me company. Barely 10 steps into our walk we saw a monkey on our path. Now, monkeys never deter me. If I see a lion, may be I would twitch a bit (girls please take note ;) !!). So we continued our walk oblivious of its existence, till it jumped right in front of me and snarled. My dear friend had the presence of mind to run away (yeah he sprints really fast!) and in no time he was a distant spec on the horizon.

Looking at the monkey’s size and my apparent beastly appearance, I decided to be a man and fight back. So I naturally snarled back and growled (effect of seeing “The incredible Hulk” I bet). Not only did that annoy the monkey but it also made it take a rather aggressive stand (which looked like he was about to jump on me and bite my face off). I looked around for a second, salvaged all my pride and started to run. It was the first day I realized that given enough face-threatening snarls from a monkey, I can run like a chicken about to be captured. It also made me realize that I run so slow that any monkey can yawn and still catch up with me in no time. While I was running (with a rather old monkey walking leisurely behind me), I realized that the only thing on me that the monkey would be vaguely interested in, was my bottle of drink. So I yelled to my friend (who by now was standing at a distance and watching all the fun) to catch the bottle as I tried to throw it at him. However my clumsy throw was expertly intercepted by the monkey (a-la Neo from Matrix in bullet-time) and he victoriously walked to the side of the trail with his just-robbed bottle of drink.

Moral of the story? You don’t look as fierce as you think you do. You are not to feed wild animals, but they don’t really know that you are not supposed to. And finally read every signboard that you see in a State park. On my way back, I read this signboard.