The “Top-Man” mode of approach to alleviate any attack of the munchies had been gleaned from a recent encounter with a large group of Plan’s Lions, that had been spotted disporting themselves some safe distance away, whilst our humanoid group were out hunting……again. Luckily, or so it seemed at the time, the group of lions had been in clear view, almost as if they didn’t mind being seen, and some three-hundred yards distant from the now emboldened hunters. Even those as sportingly challenged as our ancestors could run to safety if an attack was launched from that distance, and the single tree the hunters had gathered under gave them an ideal position from which to tease their permanent enemies; here was a chance for pay-back, albeit from a distance of three-hundred yards; it was sweet at any distance. So began trunk-call babbling as the gang sent the stone-age equivalent of “Yahhhhh, Booo, Bollocks to you, you fat lion-pig!” echoing across the plains………… Eventually one of the group of lions stood up, stretching and yawning, and the hunter’s attention was locked onto him in case a fast exit was called for……………
Some heard it, some even saw it, some definitely felt it as, from the uppermost branches of the tree the men were gathered under, the six-hundred-and-fifty-pound male Plain’s Lion plummeted into the assembled, pre-occupied thicket of humanoid stupidity flailing its clawful way through four of the assembled yobs before it hit the ground. It only remained for the other decoy Plain’s Lions to get up, stretch, yawn, then amble across the three hundred yards distance that separated them from their newly laid dinner table for them to enjoy an impromptu al fresco meal, all of them grinning like Cheshire’s at the fast-lane departure of those once so brave and the pit-lane remainder of these now so dead.
There was one good thing to come out of this debacle, however, for the surprise of the attack was not lost on the escaping group, and had they have been capable of having a collective thought, they’d’ve realised their stupidity in being caught out like that; but when you’re this stupid it’s difficult to think you’re stupid. Nevertheless the level of shock had made its mark on them; claw-mark in fact, on three fleeing rumps and an escaping chest. It was the entire grunt around the rudimentary fire of that night’s gathering, the element of “surprise”. Here was a potent weapon that could help in the never-ending search for a full belly, could turn the tide of failure and make something else out of it, there being no word for success then as showbiz agents and the English language was sadly lacking; however, what the opposite to failure was occurred a few days later.
Out one day, the group had been gathering berries as they struggled to find enough to eat and berries were less of a struggle than a large antelope would be, when they surprised a very irate female wild pig and her brood as she was sheltering under a particularly thick bramble. As one, the group of berry-collecting humanoids scattered leaving all to fend for themselves. Our leader of the pack, who was standing at that moment under a tall hawthorn, clambered up it in three deft movements; he quickly fell to earth with a scream as his hand found a particularly vicious and uncompromising thorn. With twelve feet between him and solid ground it could have ended badly, but fortunately his fall was broken by the convenient placing of a fourteen-week-old piglet underneath him just as it was scampering off after the rest of the family. It didn’t take long, three weeks in fact, before the correlation between the death of the piglet (and the succulent meal it made) and the surprise attack by the Plain’s Lion that dropped from the tree hit them! They had done the same thing, ambushed the enemy (lunch) from a lofty position; “surprised” it in fact.
This opened everyone’s eyes to possibilities beyond previous thinking. Our leader took the credit, and for that also that neat little blonde he’d had his eye on for a week or more, and as he departed behind his rock with her, he grunted that he’d deliberately dropped on the piglet, meant it all along in fact, that the Plain’s Lion attack had set him thinking and he’d been waiting for the opportunity to try the tactic out. He returned to the impressed group after forty-six seconds of frenzied love-making and, when it was suggested by the group that the same “dropping-from-height” tactic be undertaken on tomorrow’s bear-hunt, our leader was sharp enough to offer the signal honour of overhead tackler to his deputy, the next in line for chiefdom should anything happen to him; (over someone else’s dead body it would). Our leader’s grunting made sense, at least to them, as he described how important it was for everyone to try the tactic so that complete role-reversal became an available option to the group; and you can imagine the intricacies of the grunt in order to explain that little lot.
Not wanting to seem un-deserving of leadership (after all it’d worked on the pig) the next in line agreed. So, the following day our present leader, at a single stroke (well, four actually, the bear’s aim was off that day) rid himself of any immediate challenge and invented the ‘Double Whammy’. Those who remained, after that day, the day that would be forever known as “the bear-hunt day that claimed six lives”, had to sort out a pecking order amongst themselves before they could get organised enough to mount any fresh challenge for leadership; now, back to our other pig.
No comments:
Post a Comment