This is Deputy Digby Pancake.  Do you ever feel like maybe you are in a book written about your own life?  Like, sometimes, you think, how did I get here?  Why am I here?  Why is there a monkey in the tree?  Who wrote this?

There we were, on a Florida trail, minding our own business and doing our business, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw it.

Yep, I suppose that now you can see it too.  I can’t make this stuff up, even if I tried.  I never thought that we would go across the country five times to end up seeing a monkey in a tree in Florida.  I mean, alligators, yes.  Snakes, double yes.  But a monkey?  Nope.  Were we in a jungle?  I had to really think about this.  What was happening? Who was he?  What chapter in my book was I on?  Should I skip to the next one? Because this was a little scary.

As you know, the Sheriff is always on pawtrol.  But apparently, he was too busy to notice this fellow because he was gazing at someone else on the trail.  Here came another character in our book of the day.  A girl person that I will call the Book Worm Person.

Sheriff Brickle had noticed her coming from a mile away.  She was talking to herself while wearing high heels and she had a book in front of her.  As she walked in her high heels in the dirt and sand, she read her book.  But every time someone would come near to her, she would raise that book way above her head.  Yet, she didn’t look at anyone.  Nope.  She just continued reading it, as apparently, the invisible pages to us were actually in front of her.

Right about this time, as the Book Worm Person walked past us with her book above her head and Girl Person and Sheriff Brickle turned around to look at her, they noticed the monkey.  In the tree.

They weren’t sure who to look at.  The giant monkey in the tree, or the Book Worm Person.  As the Book Worm Person passed the monkey in the tree, she didn’t even look at it.  It was like she had seen it before.  The monkey didn’t look at her either.  So we began to wonder.  Was it us who was out of place here?  Maybe we had just walked into a book. Like Alice in Wonderland or something.

As the Sheriff attempted to arrest the monkey in the tree, he quickly realized that even his tall, skinny legs were no match.  He could not reach it, and as the monkey gazed down at him, the Sheriff thought a moment.  Was it worth it? What would happen if he got this monkey down?  Would the monkey in fact chase us all out of this jungle? Would the Book Worm Person have to drop her book?  If she dropped her book, what other characters would fly out of it? Would we want that?  No.  No.  This jungle was better left as is.  If we could make it out alive.

We stopped at looked at our options.  We could either go back on the same trail, or swim across the swampy marsh.

We decided that just to make this chapter of our book a little interesting, we would try to finish this trail.  It was a loop.  We were loopy. We could do it.  If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter where you go.

So.  We started walking, and a little bit up the way, we saw it.  A book attached to a tree with a rope and chain.  It seemed to be the same book that the Book Worm Person had been reading.  And we knew it.  We were in a jungle.  The jungle of life in a book that no one else was taking the time to read.  It seemed to us that there are stories happening in the woods every day.  There are stories happening in the forest, on the beach, in cubicles, in offices, in houses, on streets.  The Book Worm Person had taken a moment to grab the book of this jungle and read it.  She had taken a moment to create her characters and walk with them.  She was noticing what was around her more than we had been.  We had been so focused on finishing the trail, that we almost didn’t notice a big monkey in a tree.  What are YOU missing in your book of life?

As we decided that this chapter of our book was getting a little too suspenseful for us, we picked up our speed.  We saw the Jeep up ahead, and decided that we would leave this jungle book for someone else to read.  For someone else to enjoy.

Isn’t life about the little things like monkeys in trees and Book Worm Persons?  Aren’t the funniest chapters in life the ones that were unexpected?  Life is not a complicated book like an encyclopedia.  Especially not Digby’s.  I think his book only has two chapters.  And both are entitled Pancakes.

If your book of life hasn’t been read for awhile, and you have forgotten all of the characters in it, don’t you think it is time?  Isn’t it time to dust it off and read it again?  The beauty is that by reading our own book, we can add more chapters to it until we reach The End.

-Deputy Digby Pancake

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