Loitering around Facebook earlier this week, I noticed quite a few of my friends were taking a quiz entitled (something like) 5 animals you would like to have as pets but can’t. Some people were coming up with exotic animals: tigers, zebra, gorillas; others the more esoteric: flying horses, griffins. I didn’t have a go, but I do have a list of 5 animals I would like to keep, but can’t: an elephant, a koala and three monkeys. Yes, I know you’re supposed to pick 5 different animals, but I don’t want any others, so the extra two would always know they were only there to make up the numbers, and that would sting. Poor superfluous animals

Of course, you must be dying to know why I’d pick those. Well, the reasons are purely practical. I could ride around on the elephant – it would save a fortune in bus and train fares – and I’d never need to carry my own shopping home again. The koala, to be fair, that’s not practical, but they are very, very cute – I mean, look at their little faces and the way they cuddle up to anyone, and anything. Aaw. Who wouldn’t want one? (Mean weirdos, that’s who.)

Finally, the monkeys. I had big plans for these guys. You know that thing about getting an unlimited number of monkeys, giving them typewriters and leaving them to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare? I wouldn’t want to do that – where would I keep them all? However, it did occur to me, I could give my three monkeys a computer each, and encourage them to write blog posts! How cool would that be? While they were typing away, I could concentrate on more important things such as: painting my nails and shouting at Kay Burley on Sky News*.

Except. Those typewriting monkeys, weren’t as clever as they like us to believe. They were using their typing skills to cover up for plagiarism, impressing us with their manual dexterity to hide the fact they’d never had an original thought in their lives**.  Sneaky little monkeys.  Logically, I can only assume my monkeys would do the same. They’d be trawling the blogosphere, stealing posts, and claiming them as mine.  Of course, you would be able to tell. Suddenly, everything would make perfect sense here, and posts wouldn’t start in one place, then veer off at a very strange tangent.

So, to protect your posts from being aped (sorry, couldn’t resist), when I get my monkeys, they won’t be allowed anywhere near a computer. Instead, they can stick to the traditional role of monkey butler, and keep themselves out of trouble by doing the washing up and taking greeting cards from gentleman callers. Not that I have any gentleman callers, but I’ve read Jane Austin; if you have a butler,  gentlemen call and leave their cards.  You then have them shown into the drawing room to take tea and pretend to discuss mundane matters, such as: the price of cheese and the inclement weather. However, what you are really saying is: I must politely request that you do me now, and, it would be most remiss if I didn’t.

And now I get to the point – as ever, there is one, it just needs some context. This Dear Reader is why you should never publish your Facebook quiz results into your friends’ newsfeeds; some of them will use that information to make Jane Austin prurient, and tell a bad monkey joke – and the world doesn’t need any more bad monkey jokes.

* You don’t do that? Really, you should! It’s completely pointless but a great stress reliever.

** Unless you count the time one of them decided to climb down out of her^ tree and learn to light fires.

^ Yes, it was a her, all the male monkeys were too busy trying to become banana millionaires to think of it.

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