Copyright © 2022 by Ralph Robert Moore.

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It can't be a monkey because that would be too obvious, insulting to a reader's intelligence, like looking at the reader and saying, 'Onions add moisture to almost any dish they're cooked with, oh, and, by the way, kiss my ass, bitch.'

Just can't do that in Poland or Chile anymore and expect to get away with it. There's a greater strictness in those two countries after the recent pulling from the shelves of most toothpastes. And please note that it's 'toothpastes', not 'toothpasteses', no matter what mainstream media may be reporting. So instead of monkey we need a different animal. After much thought I am proposing rhinosaurus as a monkey substitute. Testing it out: "The monkey scored a 3.4bc on his driver's test, because although he did crash into a trash can, the trash can was empty (the crash occurred just after trash pickup day in that neighborhood)." As opposed to, "The rhinosaurus scored a 3.4bc on his driver's test, because although he did crash into a trash can, he bribed the driving instructor with several walnuts he found under the driver's seat when he first clambered into the car, finishing his latest banana."

(And please note that although the rhinosaurus in the test case cited above is designated a 'male' by use of the pronouns 'his' and 'he', the rhinosaurus could just as easily be a 'female', using 'her' and 'she', or designated gender-fluid by using the gender-neutral terms 'their' and 'they', or designated by the gender term receiving growing support, 'it' [citation: Casey V. Haba, PhD: Everything Should Be 'It', Journal of Acceptable Gender Signaling, revised 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2019, 2019, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2022, 2022, 2022, 2022, page 413, paragraph 3, as revised.] )

But what is not at all likeable about substituting rhinosaurus for monkey is that a rhinosaurus tends to lumber, as opposed to a monkey, which is more likely to scamper. There is a lightness to a monkey's limbs unlike the heaviness of a rhinosaurus' slow movements across a shopping mall's food court. Plus, not that any further explanation is needed, because of the very heaviness of those rhinosaurus limbs, even if a rhinosaurus were to successfully convey to a food court vendor what food it wanted to order, perhaps by pantomime, it cannot lift its thick front legs far enough off the floor in front of the vendor's stall to pay for its food.

So maybe we need to find another animal to substitute for a monkey. The obvious choice is a ladybug.

Like a monkey, a ladybug spends most of its time outdoors. Both animals can flit from one flower to another. And both a monkey and a ladybug like eating bananas.

So…problem solved, perhaps? I'm cautiously optimistic. But there's still the issue of whether or not the substitution of ladybugs for monkeys can adequately explain the widespread claims of healthcare fraud.