Primate behavior

I just watched a fascinating display of nature in action.

I was on my way to the SchmelvenElven to do a little tidying up in the cooler, and as I was passing by Voertman's book store on Oak Street (the parking lot of which is commonly used by sprunciled duncelings as a vehicle repository during the small hours, since it's only about a hundred meters from the bars on Fry Street), about eight young troglodytes bouldered into view, fresh off the Night Train.

They were loud and boisterous, and I watched as two of them began to wrassle in a competitive manner, as sapient homos are wont to do when they're falling down drunk after a hard night of strutting around and without any females in hand to show for it.

As the two hominids wrassled, what began as a game escalated into a bona fide competition, which quickly became a tangle of arms and legs and shouts, all of which collapsed into that ditch area between the Christian campus center and Voertman's.

One of the spectating homos, yelling "Break it up, break it up!" jumped into the fray, and I watched as his mighty leap delivered the momentum of his outstretched fist right into the jaw of one of the wrasslers in the ditch. That's when all hell broke loose.

Suddenly it was an amalgam of pinwheeling arms and legs as the other five or six males joined the melee. Lots of tussling followed, the action of which quickly formed into two groups trying to pull away from each other. It reminded me of cellular mitosis, when chromosomes stretch and divide down the middle. As the two sides were about to come apart, a fist from one side connected with a nose from the other side, and chaos erupted once more.

Most of what followed consisted mainly of taunts, threats, insults, and lots of chest inflating and bowing up of one side to the other. It was then that I was reminded of a couple of packs of chimpanzees going at each other with a lot of bluster, but very little real bite, and I laughed out loud. As I was thusly occupied, a stranger strumming a guitar appeared and stopped next to me to witness the spectacle.

"What's happening over there?" he asked me.

"Primate behavior," I replied, after I'd caught my breath.

The guitar guy busted out with his own laughter and walked away strumming.