I'm a Marmoset. And I'm your Guest-Writer Today.
... A dispatch from bewilderness
Everything is going to hell, so here’s a nineteen-second video of a baby marmoset. Minus the video.
Marmosets are some of the smallest monkeys on Earth but very Smart. They like to eat fruit, crickets, grasshoppers and moths. I know. I am a marmoset.
My favorite thing is climbing trees. In fact, climbing to the Very Top of any tree. But especially my tree where I was born and where mama and I live. I love our tree.
My best friend is a mantis. I call him Mantis and he calls me Marmoset.
He’s way smaller than me but I have promised to never eat him or any other mantis. My not eating mantises could help save mantis-kind.
Mantis and I study humans and we are a bit concerned by the free-floating anxiety caused by the fraying of their social fabric. I mean, just look at the news. A war here, a war there, a drought, a flood, a tornado.
One of my friends is a human. Her name is J. She is a writer and has a Stack filled with tangents and asides. You are reading it right now.
Mantis and I are writers, too. We share adventures, dreams, goals, plus science and math. Especially math as it relates to food. For example, two ants plus two ants equal four ants, which is a snack, and twenty ants plus twenty ants equals forty ants which is a meal for two.
We also plan to ponder existential questions for marmosets like if you build a cricket stadium on Long Island will they come? I like crickets. I eat them.
Like J’s, our writing will be sprinkled with oddball opinions and facts, twinkly like dew on grass at dawn, obstinate in its views and acute in its observations. Mantis says he will be just as cute in his observations. He means “acute.” His human language skills are not quite as good as mine.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and are not a substitute for advice from your mom, dad or physician.
A lovely piece, J, which I really enjoyed. I find it very hard to imagine an animal’s point of view; this story about your co-writers gets it just right. This reminds me of E. B. White’s writing for children, in which the animal, arachnid, and human characters all speak in wholly believable ways appropriate to their stations in life. This new genre of yours does show your deeply creative talent, beautifully. As ever, your finely crafted prose serves you well in this new endeavor. I await with happy anticipation the writings of Mantis and Marmoset.
That last dispatch was very funny… thanks for entertaining us.