Best Friends

They say a dog is man’s best friend. Nonsense. Who wants a best friend who shits on your carpet and then bites you?

Cats are no better. I don’t want to be brought gifts of half digested rodents. Expensive hi-fi equipment yes; mauled animal corpses no.

Those seeking intellectual stimulation might consider one of the higher functioning primates. But beware: befriending an ape who turns out to be more intelligent than oneself will almost certainly lead you to resentment, bitterness and ultimately murder.

Unfortunately this principle applies both ways; there’s nothing an ape hates more than a smart-arse human. So one way or another it’s a relationship doomed to end in murder. You have been warned.

Ideally a soul mate should be selected from within one’s own species.  However, if I was compelled to select a companion from the animal kingdom I would chose one that was kindly, undemanding, emotionally stable and short-lived. A butterfly would be ideal.

Indeed I had one such friend a few years ago. Barry was a lovely little fellow and surprisingly intelligent for an insect. Obviously he couldn’t operate complex machinery like a fork-lift truck (that would be ridiculous). But he could count to eleven in German.

Tragically his life was cut short after he fell in with a mean crowd of monkeys and was crushed to death under the wheels of fork lift truck driven by a jealous chimpanzee who struggled to count to nine in Spanish.

See what I mean about primates?

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