Can God work through a chimpanzee?

Sometimes the monkey has to rattle the cage!

Inspiration

By Charles Towne

About fifty years before yesterday while I was directing a zoo in the mid-west I had a prime male chacma baboon in my possession. In the adjoining cage dwelt my friend Junior, a male chimpanzee.

Now I want you to know that either of them could rip your head off and pound sand down your neck. I mean, they were powerful to the extreme. One day Junior the chimp, for no apparent reason, began to rattle his cage door, and he persisted in this rattling as if it was his sole purpose in life. I took him out of his cage and examined him, the cage, the walls, the floor... Nothing.

I placed him back in his cage, and rattle, rattle, rattle! He was driving me nuts with his infernal rattling! Then I noticed something peculiar. As he rattled the cage, he stared at me, and then he stared in the direction of the baboon’s cage all the while making low moaning sounds, almost as though he were crying.

Well, I don’t know about the crying, but he was surely trying to tell me something, but what? I looked at the baboon’s cage, looked closer, and that is when I saw them. I had bolted the hinges on the cages with three-quarter inch carriage bolts and lock nuts and tightened them with wrenches. No way could they be removed without wrenches, and certainly not with fingers alone, but there they were, three of the locknuts, under the bottom hinge had been removed and were stacked ever so nicely against the wall! That darned baboon, with his dexterous little fingers alone, was methodically dismantling his cage, one bolt at a time! Now I want you to know, as I have already alluded too, baboons are dangerous to the extreme!

They have razor sharp, self-sharpening, razor like two inch long canines and have been known to kill leopards, their traditional enemy. If you get my meaning, you don’t want to be attacked by a baboon. Junior the chimp was warning me of a potential danger and it's good that I listened. I ended up welding those hinges in place and never had any more problem. Junior? Well, he never rattled his cage again. God is trying to warn us all of the time. It might be said that he is rattling our cage!

God is trying to warn us all of the time. It might be said that he is rattling our cage!

Are we listening?

Live simply,

Love generously,

Trust God, and make a difference, today.

Charles Towne is a longtime Apopka resident, member of Insp!re Church and a published author.