Being a baboon is like a lifetime of middle school.  I would hate being a baboon.  We all had varied middle school careers – some of us were popular, some of us were dorks – but I can think of no one who looks back at that time and thinks, “Those were the good old days.”  Kids are just old enough to be really cruel without having discovered empathy.  They are also so afraid of being on the bottom that they will crawl and scrabble over anything and anyone to climb the social hierarchy, tossing bodies before them like stones so as not to be low man on the totem pole.  Well, that’s exactly how baboons operate.

Let me give you an example.

There’s a new guy in AC troop.  He’s got a square jaw and a long body, but he’s not particularly big.  Nor is he particularly young.  We missed his entry – new males attempting to join a troop is a bit like a fraternity gauntlet, with all sorts of beatings and baring of teeth until the resident males throw up their hands – but now, feeling more or less at home, he’s ready to find his place in the hierarchy.  And he’ll be damned if it’s at the bottom.  Yesterday, brimming with spite, he did his darnedest to get Ahavazi, the former ranking alpha (Shikoku unseated him last month), to team up with him against Massive Headwound Maat.  Now Maat, for obvious reasons, is already at the bottom of the heap.  But new guy seems intent on making that clear, so he puffs his chest and sweeps the ground, eyebrows raised defiantly at Ahavazi, saying, “Wanna get him?  Let’s get him!”  I was following Ahavazi at the time and watched these two exchange glances and glares like two football players trying to psych themselves up before the big game.  I also looked at poor Maat not 30 feet away, mostly oblivious, and found myself saying aloud, “Really, guys?  Really?”  And then, testosterone pumping through their veins, Ahavazi and the new guy took off after Maat, who can’t even turn his head – he has to turn his whole body to look around him – because his whole neck and skull are one massive, suppurating wound.  I rolled my eyes and couldn’t help but be a little indignant.

Maat ran off as they grunted after him, new guy losing steam immediately while Ahavazi charged ahead.  Then Hayat came flying out of the bushes, like an avenging angel, and Ahavazi turned tail and ran, Hayat nipping at his heels.  Maat hid behind some leaves.  I did a little skip, grinning as I scurried after Ahavazi, wanting to high-five Hayat in the worst way.  Or at least give him a banana.

As I finished up my follow of Ahavazi, I decided that Hayat is a supremely moral baboon.  The other day he could have bore down on me and snatched my banana.  But he didn’t.  He just politely waited, like a well-trained dog, perhaps hoping I would drop it.  He could have ignored the brewing massacre of poor Maat (the scientist in me chides in the background that he probably had all sorts of motivations that had nothing to do with raising up the downtrodden), but instead he joined the fray.  No, Hayat is a man among boys.  He is leader for the ages.  He’s at least in high school.