In a town, a house was under construction. Wood was also being used.
One day, a carpenter was sawing a log to split it in two parts. Noon arrived but the log could not be fully sawn.
It was lunch hour of the workers.
The carpenter also suspended his sawing task for the break. He put a wedge between the sawn parts for easy reloading of the saw. He went away to eat his lunch.
Shortly later, a troop of monkeys arrived there and began to make mischief around.
One of them was extra naughty. He monkeyed with anything he found. The elders advised the naughty one to tone down his acts but he would not listen. The grandma of the naughty one was also in that troop. She also pleaded with him to become serious and calm for her sake as she had no other one to take care of her in old age. For a few days, he would calm down but then revert to his old naughty ways.
On that day too, he was in monkeying mood. He began to wrestle with the log the carpenter was sawing. Then, he noticed the wedge between the sawn parts. It looked funny to him. He started to fiddle with it using his force to dislodge it.
An old monkey asked him not to do that. But the naughty one had made up his mind to do it.
He sat astride on the sawn part of the log. His tail hung down between the two halves. Now he used all his force to dislodge the wedge. The wedge began to yield to the force.
One big pull made the wedge pop out of the log . The sawn parts came together with force clamping the monkey tail in between. The monkey screamed in pain. There was also the danger of the carpenter coming back. None could say what the angry carpenter would do to the naughty monkey. The monkey pulled hard to free his tail. The tail snapped and the monkey fell forward. As the workers returned to work, the monkey ran up a tree in fright shedding blood from the stump of his snapped tail.
Moral : Obey your elders.
