A Feral Child

In 1967, Disney released the animated film The Jungle Book. The film follows Mowgli, a young human boy raised by a pack of wolves in the Indian jungle. A seemingly far-fetched thing, that. But something only a decade before that, a real-life adventure much like this occurred in the Colombian jungle. Not with wolves, but with monkeys and a small girl who now goes by the name Marina Chapman.

Marina Chapman says she was abducted from her home in Colombia at age four and abandoned in the jungle. She awoke to find herself surrounded by nature. She remembered: "I realized it's a forest and then I realized an animal... one monkey came, and then some more followed him, and they came closer to me and they were staring at me. I was quite upset and one of them came and start to pop my ears and they start to touch me."

The black-and-white capuchin primates eventually lost interest but continued to return to check on her. They didn't immediately welcome her, but gradually began climbing onto her shoulders and playing with her hair. Eventually, they accepted her as part of the troop.

She somehow survived for several years in the company of capuchin monkeys, learning to communicate with them through whistles and screeches and scavenging food they left behind. She came to regard the monkeys as family. Once, when she became ill after eating the wrong seeds, an older monkey dragged her into a pool of water, where she drank until she began to feel better.

One day, Marina found a piece of mirror and saw her reflection for the first time. She was shocked, having come to think of herself as one of the monkeys.

Some years after living with the monkeys, a group of hunters found Marina. She was transported to Cucuta, Colombia, where she was taken to a brothel, but she managed to escape. She lived on the streets until a couple in England took her in and raised her. Learning to function among people was difficult, and learning to trust them was harder still.

Marina went on to marry, raise two daughters, and become a grandmother. Remarkably, she says her greatest regret was leaving the jungle for what turned out to be an often brutal civilization.

Marina Today

—Mitchell Hegman

Touchscreen Technology

On a drive into town, I decided I wanted a jazzier display on the car’s touchscreen. That’s when it occurred to me that the inventors of this technology failed to consider people like me. It’s not that I struggle to manage the screen or have allowed it to intimidate me. The problem is more profound than that. I’m a kid from East Helena, Montana, and I typically wash my hands only when my mom tells me to. And she has not been available to admonish me for a long time.

So, for me, I’m often working with smearscreen technology.

—Mitchell Hegman

Late Bloomer

As a Montana native, I’m prepared for the weather to yank me out of summer and flop me directly into a snowbank at any given moment. As a matter of survival, I have a coat stashed away in my car and truck at all times.

Plants, on the other hand, face all of this harsh weather treatment shirtless and with their pants pulled down.

This is not always a winning strategy.

So, a week ago, here at the ragged end of fall, I discovered that one of the native soapweed yucca plants in my yard had shot forth a flower spike with an array of flowers preparing to bloom.

A little late, pal.

Flowering is a June activity for yucca. A bloom stalk appearing in early October is therefore a botanical curveball. I’m not sure how to explain it. We have been unusually mild this fall. I'm wondering if this has somehow fooled the plant in some manner.

I’m sharing a photograph of the yucca. Given our upcoming cold, I wonder how far the flowers will develop before the entire collection of us is flung into a snowbank.

Late Fall Yucca Flower

—Mitchell Hegman

Mitch Altered

Social media is now awash with better versions of everyday folks. Thanks to AI, you can ship your photo off through the mysterious blue tubes and have it altered to your preferences.

Question.

Why not me?

The other day I grabbed a photo (electronically speaking) and handed it off to ChatGPT with firm instructions to “make me handsome.” That’s quite a cliff to climb, I realize, but ChatGPT made a valiant effort by removing wrinkles and giving me a tan.

Desiree also took a run at handsoming me up with an app on her droid. Apparently, that application deemed a mean-looking version of me would be more attractive.

As it stands, I think I’ll stick with the features I inherited from the thousands of years of questionable selective breeding and occasional bouts of heavy drinking.

I’ve posted my original photo along with the altered versions.

—Mitchell Hegman

Perpendicular

Long before I landed in my career as an electrician, I danced through a host of other jobs, including a stint at a local department store. While there, I had the good fortune of being responsible for the toy department, which fit me beautifully. My boss, however, walked with a waddle and said strange things to me. Often, he would stop by just to say, “Everybody loves a duck, Mitch.”

He was my boss, so I never tried to get to the bottom of that.

Years later, I got even in my own fashion. The sprinkler fitter foreman on a big commercial job proved an apt target. He was nearly too friendly and an obvious drug abuser. I liked him a lot. He smoked a pipe, which refused to stay lit for him, and he stared at the wood-framed walls for an inordinately long time before drilling the holes required for his system. I often strode right up to him just to say “perpendicular” with raised eyes before briskly walking away in silence.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Peckish Pirates Complete

We finished our quirky Peckish Pirates puzzle. Toward the end, Desiree fell into something strikingly near an obsession to finish piecing it together, which gave me ample room to sip on a single-malt Scotch and throw a piece in now and then.

I must admit, I enjoyed the mental steeplechase the puzzle put us through with all of its unique features. And once we had the puzzle fully assembled, we opened a sealed package and tackled a second round with puzzle magic.

Good stuff, that!

I won’t divulge details on the second round with The Peckish Pirates. It’s a scoundrel-of-the-seas secret. But I can share a photograph of the puzzle before we applied the magic and a photograph of the unopened magic packet.

Finished Puzzle

Magic Package

—Mitchell Hegman

The Uncharged Battery Thing

I hope there is a place reserved in hell for people who don’t recharge cordless tool batteries when they run them down. And I hope it’s a place where everyone desperately needs to go to the bathroom but finds themselves stuck for eternity negotiating a series of intersections where nobody uses their turn signal.

—Mitchell Hegman