Rash Deeds
Warned twice and listening to neither, a monkey climbs into a half-sawn log to see what a carpenter's wedge is for.
Curiosity that outruns caution finds the trap that was never meant for it.
Narration voiced with OmniVoice (k2-fsa), CC-BY-NC.
Carpenters working on a temple's new gate had left a great log half split at midday, a wooden wedge jammed in the seam to hold the cut open until they returned.
A troupe of monkeys found the empty yard more interesting than the trees around it, and made a playground of the sawdust and the silence.
Elder MonkeyPlay where you like, but not on that log. Unfinished work has a temper. Leave the wedge alone.
One young monkey, who had never yet met a warning he found more interesting than the thing it warned him from, settled himself astride the seam.
Young MonkeyIt is only a piece of wood. I want to know what it is holding closed.
He gripped the wedge with both hands, braced his tail, and worked it loose the way the elders had told him, in detail, not to.
The log did not wait to discuss the matter. The seam it had been holding open closed the instant the wedge left it, and closed on exactly what was between the halves.
The carpenters returned to find their tool sprung and their unfinished gate finished, in its own way, by a curiosity that had outrun every warning sent to catch it.
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