Fox and Monkey

One of the things that Digital Pedagogy Lab did for me last week was to help me give permission to myself to start writing just for pleasure again. For the past couple of years, I was pushing and pushing to find time to write in the midst of a lot of difficulty. I had to focus on projects and be very purposeful in every story I chose to work on.

That does not have to be true anymore! So I am going to keep using the DPL hashtag that I started using last week in order to post stories here that I'm writing not for an ongoing project, but just to write the story. Just grabbing a book at random from my bookshelves and finding a story to retell.

So, the book I grabbed at random today was Folktales of Chile edited by Yolando Pino-Saavedra, translated by Rockwell Gray. Bonus: it's available at Internet Archive for digital checkout! All I had to do was read the very first story in the book to know that I wanted to retell it. This is "The Vixen" on p. 3. 

Fox and Monkey

Fox saw Monkey carrying a saddle. "What happened, friend?" she asked.

"My horse died," Monkey replied, sadly.

"Saddle me instead!" Fox offered, planning to throw Monkey off and devour the saddle; the leather smelled delicious!

So Monkey saddled Fox, and off they rode.

Then Fox started bucking. Hard.

"Hey, friend!" Monkey shrieked, barely hanging on. "Stop that!"

A hunter saw them. "Go, dogs!" he shouted. 

"Ya-ooooo!" the dogs howled.

"You better run!" Monkey said, as he threw his lariat around a tree and swung to safety. 

Fox stumbled and fell; the dogs overwhelmed her.

Monkey cackled. "Go to hell, friend!" 

Note: This story was told by Clodomiro Tureo, a peasant laborer in Olmue, Valparaiso, in 1954. I had to leave out one part of the plot where they pass a flock of goats, which the fox says are dogs, and then later the monkey tells the fox those were the hunter's dogs. Stories about ride-and-rider are very popular in Africa and take many forms; here's just one example: Riding Hyena.

South American gray fox

(photo by Daniele Colombo)