I n the pitch darkness of the night, Orange O. Gutan sat on a high branch of a large tree in the forest of Borneo. He was restless. He tossed and turned in a nest of leaves that his mother Mrs. Orangutan had made for the family to sleep in. His baby sister and mother slept soundly. He was woken up by the hooting of owls, the eerie screeching of bats and the agitated calls of other birds that ought to have been sleeping. Orange stepped out of the nest, wondering why there was such a hullabaloo that night. He was a bit scared yet excited. Could there be something mysterious going on, he asked himself. If there was, it would be time to call in the Hopper detectives, whose cases he avidly followed in Young World . He climbed down the tree and stepped gingerly on the soft forest floor.
Orange felt uneasy, as he knuckle-walked on a bed of fallen leaves, twigs and vines. His mother had taken them around the forest only on its canopy. She had never brought him down but he was curious to explore the mystery-ridden rain forest. He stopped to pull out his smart phone and torchlight from under his arm pit.
“Hello,” whispered a voice close to his ear, which made him jump out of his skin. Trembling, he asked, “Who is that?”
“It’s me, Gibby. Want to join me in my ‘Play-the-detective game’?” asked the small, white-bearded gibbon.
Orange let out a muffled ‘yes’, quite relieved that he had company in the creepy world he was in.
The two continued on their quest to find a mystery. Sure enough, one wafted their way. They wrinkled their noses in disgust when they got the smell of rotting flesh. In the light of Orange’s torchlight, Gibby’s eyes sparkled in excitement.
On the trail
“It is the smell of a dead body. Perhaps, the victim was murdered by a cruel stalker or umm… maybe he committed suicide…”
Orange was quite impressed by Gibby’s logical thinking but he had a doubt.
“Gibby, if it is the smell of a rotting corpse, surely the body must be somewhere here. If we find it, we can continue our investigation.”
Gibby nodded. Orange shone his torch around while the gibbon took pictures of the ‘crime scene’. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except one unusual, strange-looking flower. It was over a metre in diameter with five large, thick, reddish-pink petals that had white spots on them. The flower seemed stuck on the trunk of a tree with no leaves and no stem of its own. The amateur ‘detectives’ were puzzled.
“Hey, let us WhatsApp this to the Hoppers. They can surely solve this mystery,” suggested Orange.
Back at the Hoppers’ office, Rock the penguin and Rana the frog pored over the pictures they had received.
“Hey, Let-it-be, the Internet genius,” called out Rana, “can you solve this case?”
“Sure,” said the grasshopper with a smile. “These are pictures of rafflesia, the largest flower on the planet. It is a parasite. It emits a foul odour to attract flies. When the flies are trapped inside the flower, they are digested by the enzymes in it.”
“Interesting,” conceded Rana grudgingly. “I am going to give the two young wannabe detectives a few tips on cracking a case!”
The first rays of the sun lit up the canopy. The forest was alive with happy calls of birds and animals. “We have solved our first case!” cried the two apes, as they bid farewell to each other.
