My entirely unnecessary banana

Bramble & Briar #111

Berating myself for the inexplicable absence of this year’s honesty among the goldenrod

I have neither monkeys nor bananas in my garden, but somehow this story, which I came across in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living, resonated deeply within my gardener’s soul. (There’s a similar account of the monkey trap in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though that version swaps out the banana for a handful of rice, which isn’t half so much fun.) Here, for what it’s worth, is my own retelling of the tale.

A man whose crops were being eaten before he could harvest them realised that he had a monkey problem. The issue was, he could never catch the monkey in the act. One day, realising he’d need to outwit the impudent creature, he took an empty coconut and drilled a hole in one end, just big enough for a monkey’s paw to fit through. In the other end, he drilled two more, small holes, and through these he threaded a length of thin rope, the other end of which he tied to a tree. Finally, he placed a banana inside the empty coconut shell and, having set his trap, he retreated for the evening back to his home. As night began to fall, the monkey, fully sated from munching on the man’s crops, passed by the tree, and noticed the coconut with its tempting contents; a sweet little treat after a busy evening chomping on someone else’s plants. He put his paw through the hole in the coconut and reached for the banana but, on taking hold of that delicious fruit, he found he couldn't pull his paw back out. Try as he might, no amount of wriggling, or squeezing, twisting and turning could set him free, and he got himself into all sorts of contortions in the effort. In fact, all the monkey had to do in order to free himself and go upon his way was to let go of the banana, since while the hole was too small to allow the passage of a clenched fist, it was more than big enough for an open paw. After all, that’s how it got there in the first place. But, even though he had no real need for extra pudding, the monkey refused to abandon his prize, and so he remained resolutely trapped by his desire for an entirely unnecessary banana.