Evolutionary Dead Ends:  Gorilla sapiens
copyright © 2014 by Robert L. Blau

Grandpa was the last of the great silverbacks.  He was the biggest, strongest, toughest, most intimidating, chest-beatin'-est alpha male on the continent.  Right up until that little bastard strolled in and shot him dead with a lightning rod.

All that chest-thumping and charging and stuff was the way you showed your silverback back in the day, you understand.  When I say "show your silverback," I mean demonstrate what a tough, testosterone-driven male you are.  You could show what a bad dude you were without anyone actually getting too dead.  The lightning rod changed all that. You don't have to be big or strong or intimidating or smart anymore. You just have to have a lightning rod. And everyone does, now.

We've learned a lot about lightning rods since Grandpa went belly up with the most surprised look I've ever seen on an anthropoid face. Bonzo, the little bastard that shot my Grandpa, had the first lightning rod anyone in our troop had ever seen, but not the last.  Not by a longshot. In fact, it was a rather long shot by another migrating male that sent Bonzo to the great big jungle in the sky.

One thing we've learned is that not all gorillas are good.  There are plenty of bad gorilla troops in the world.  Ours, of course, is the best and most favored of Kong.  But the bad gorillas are always trying to harm us. They are violent and don't worship Kong, so we had to kick their asses, of course.  And we did just that in the first gorilla war.  Kong gives victory to the righteous and better-armed, of course.  With Kong's grace, lightning rods had come a long way.

So the bad gorillas were taught just how bad they were, if they didn't know already.  That they built yet more frightening lightning rods and attacked us again only proves how bad they are.  But you know how it is.  Kong gave us the most terrifying lightning rods, and we kicked their asses again.  So I think that's pretty much settled now.

Except that some of the erstwhile good gorillas are showing signs of badness now ... not walking in Kong's way and not acknowledging that our troop is the Best of the Best.  So it appears that we may have to administer yet another ass-kicking.  In the last gorilla war, we had to scorch a stretch of our Great Northern Jungle to teach those bad gorillas a lesson.  Some of our geographers are now calling that a "desert."  

This comes at rather a bad time.  We had been preparing to bring light to our distant brethren down in the Congo, who are still stuck in the old chest-thumping era and can't possibly progress, or even survive, without our help.  But I am afraid that will have to wait.

The current crop of bad gorillas have the same mega-monster lightning rods we used in the last gorilla war.  In fact, they have made them more mega still, as have we.  This is mildly worrying to the faint of heart. Indeed, some of our brethren are betraying the old chest-thumping roots and displaying a "silverback problem" by insufficiently brandishing their lightning rods.  However, testosterone shall prevail, I am sure, and the results shall be spread across the northern third of the continent for thousands of years to come.