PAUL ROSOLIE on trees, turtles and the last generation that can save it all
JUNGLE
IS CHURCH
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Photography by MARK SELIGER Words by KERRY SHAW
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Paul Rosolie manifested his exceptionally exciting life from an early age.
There’s a tribe of Indigenous people in Peru who call him family. He’s saved acres and acres of vital forest, which in turn will help to save humanity from climate change. Millions of Instagram followers swoon over videos of him saving drowning spider monkeys or baby toucans and actually speaking their language. Some parts might sound a little nightmarish, you know, the gigantic snakes and bugs (“Don’t be racist against insects. It’s not their fault they have exoskeletons,” he jokes). Now he’s here with his new book, Junglekeeper, encouraging us all to have a go. Because time is running out and life can be Treasure Island if we can just persuade Long John Silver to become a forest ranger. That’s what he does - he turns the bad guys destroying the forest into its protectors through his Junglekeepers programme. We don’t mention that episode where he nearly let an anaconda swallow him alive. Paul Rosolie is not afraid. And he has zero ethical dilemmas.
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CARHARTT pants, VINTAGE top, PAUL'S GRANDMA jacket.
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KERRY SHAW Let’s start with the new book, Junglekeeper.
PAUL ROSOLIE OK. Well, I think first of all, the most important thing to mention is that right now, after 20 years, this whole thing is coming to a head. This book tells the story of everything so far. I mean, since I was a child, since I was, I might say, five years old, I was asking my parents to take me to the streams. I was looking for red-tailed hawks. I was looking for the snakes and salamanders, and I was more interested in the little creatures that lived around us than I was in the human world. At the Bronx Zoo they’d show you the trees going down, you’d hear the sound of chainsaws, and they show you the forest being cut and the logging trucks taking away the rainforest and saying, it's all going to be gone. But then you walk through these exhibits where you see these beautiful birds and these incredible arrow frogs and jaguars and harpy eagles, and it looks like heaven on Earth. So as a kid you’re told that there is part of this vast matrix of interconnected biodiversity, but we're killing it, and it's going to be gone before you get to see it. And it was so unacceptable to me. After sophomore year of high school I dropped out and bought a ticket to the Amazon. So by 18, I was in the Amazon doing research and living with a tribe and learning to walk barefoot.
I was a terrible student, dyslexic, but I was great in the woods. I mean, on my way, literally 10 minutes before starting this call with you, I was watching a red-tailed hawk eat a squirrel. Wild animals seem to gravitate, or the other way around… we intersect. And it's always been like that. I think we're just on the same wavelength.
KS Was there never a part of you that thought, am I tough enough to do this? I love red-tailed hawks but I also love squirrels, and I just wouldn't be able to deal with seeing the animals that were suffering.
PR Yeah. Well, being a kid from Brooklyn, where people are scared of everything outside of New York City, I wasn't scared. I was excited. You're a young man. You want adventure. You want to have your life put at risk. You're sick of people trying to keep you safe and on the rails – it's so annoying. So the Amazon was exciting. Anything is possible. You can go into the swamp at night and catch anacondas. You might get shot by poachers. There are uncontacted tribes. This is a young man's dream. It's like Treasure Island.
What you're talking about is something like the first time you try to rescue a squirrel or a spider monkey or a baby toucan or whatever you're doing, most of the time they die and you get used to it. Just because you said you hate suffering, I don't like suffering. And so a lot of times I won't tell you the things I've seen, but I've ended the lives of hundreds, if not over a thousand animals because they've been half alive. No one else is going to put them out of their misery. So yeah, no, I have no problem with the red-tailed hawk and the squirrel and the cheetah and the gazelles, and I have no problem with nature being nature. That's part of it.
KS I could talk about Lucas, the toucan you rescued, forever. Oh my God, he's so cute.
PR It all comes down to those individual animals to help get the word out and inspire people. And Lucas was such a mascot for people to understand. First of all, you can take something that looks like it's on death's door and bring it back, which is beautiful. Lucas was so resilient. And that the jungle is made up of these little heartbeats. They're the ones that make the jungle. But that toucan, along with, again, the brutality of nature, he's out there right now, brutalising, going into other birds' nests and pulling their babies out and just eating them.
KS No. Is that what toucans do? Oh.
PR That's why they have a long beak, so they can reach into bird's nests.
KS Oh my God.
PR And then they smack the babies against the branch until they die. And then they swallow them whole.
KS Oh my God, I don't believe it.
PR Yeah, Lucas was a terror. If he was like 10 feet instead of six inches, he would've eaten us. He's cute because he's small, because he can't eat us. If he was larger, he'd be like a tyrannosaurus rex.
So this book is this story of leaving home, being dyslexic, kind of having a fundamental problem with the world of not understanding. We're losing our ecosystems that give us fresh, clean water to drink and that make our oxygen. I first get there, we go on adventures. And then kind of early on in the book and early on in my story, I described that once I'd fallen in with the locals and we were walking barefoot and going catching anacondas, we saw the smoke on the horizon. They said, yeah, we're in the wildest place on earth, but they're coming for us. It’s so beautiful, it’s as though the river and the sky are flowing through you. This whole concept of this beautiful interconnectedness and then you’re watching people cut that down.
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PAUL’S GRANDMA jacket, CARHARTT pants, PAUL’S GRANDMA OWN gloves.
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CARHARTT pants, VINTAGE top, PAUL'S GRANDMA jacket.
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KS It sounds very simple when you talk about it like that, but since you started going there, you must have found that you've been on quite a journey ethically as well, because you want to film the forests and show it to people widely to improve conservation. But at the same time you're dealing with a lot of Indigenous people who are under threat and might be very private, right?
PR No, I haven't had any ethical problems. I've never even really thought about it because all of my Indigenous friends are, I mean, JJ, who's been my teacher the whole time, his full name is Juan Julio Duran, he has been instructing everything that we do. So he explains how we go about turning loggers and gold miners into rangers who protect the forest. He explains which parts of the forest we have to protect first. There are layers of complexity. I will jump in a river to save a drowning spider monkey one day, but another day I’ll go to sit in an Indigenous household where they're serving spider monkey for dinner.
KS What do you do when someone tries to serve you a monkey?
PR You eat it.
KS But was not that a bit of an ethical dilemma for you?
PR Do I want to eat this spider monkey? Nope, not at all.
But think of this. First of all, in order to be culturally sensitive to these people and their way of life, they eat monkeys. They’re Indigenous people and it is their right to eat monkeys, and they always have. Now, as an outsider, if I was to go, Ew, I don't want that, that's gross, I would not only offend them, but I'd also put myself in a box of being kind of a silly foreigner.
KS But supposing you said, like these monkeys over here, though, we know from tracking them that they're getting really scarce.
PR It’s the middle of the Amazon, and nobody cares about that. It's a land of shock. They would laugh at you and tell you to go back to watching Downton Abbey. They would be like, you are a cupcake and you should leave. I mean, they make fun of you, dude, the guys I hang out with track and kill things for a living – so until you've stabbed a wild boar to death or fought another human where your life is at risk, I mean, worrying about what you eat is not an issue. These are men hardened by years in the jungle, who've lost children. They don't give a fuck what you think about their diet. So when I sit there, I eat the monkey. Now, here's the thing. I have also rescued numerous monkeys. The reason I'm able to rescue those monkeys is because I live with the local people. When they shoot a mother monkey and they eat it, I take the baby and I say, listen, let me raise this one and rehabilitate her. I'm such good friends with the locals and they trust me so much, and we've lived together and bled together for 20 years, and we're brothers,
I employ them all, and we're all friends and family. And so now we're just protecting 130,000 acres of rainforest and for the amount of tens of thousands of spider monkeys in there, one or two monkeys is worth it.
KS It sounds very simple when you talk about it like that, but since you started going there, you must have found that you've been on quite a journey ethically as well, because you want to film the forests and show it to people widely to improve conservation. But at the same time you're dealing with a lot of Indigenous people who are under threat and might be very private, right?
PR No, I haven't had any ethical problems. I've never even really thought about it because all of my Indigenous friends are, I mean, JJ, who's been my teacher the whole time, his full name is Juan Julio Duran, he has been instructing everything that we do. So he explains how we go about turning loggers and gold miners into rangers who protect the forest. He explains which parts of the forest we have to protect first. There are layers of complexity. I will jump in a river to save a drowning spider monkey one day, but another day I’ll go to sit in an Indigenous household where they're serving spider monkey for dinner.
KS What do you do when someone tries to serve you a monkey?
PR You eat it.
KS But was not that a bit of an ethical dilemma for you?
PR Do I want to eat this spider monkey? Nope, not at all.
But think of this. First of all, in order to be culturally sensitive to these people and their way of life, they eat monkeys. They’re Indigenous people and it is their right to eat monkeys, and they always have. Now, as an outsider, if I was to go, Ew, I don't want that, that's gross, I would not only offend them, but I'd also put myself in a box of being kind of a silly foreigner.
KS But supposing you said, like these monkeys over here, though, we know from tracking them that they're getting really scarce.
PR It’s the middle of the Amazon, and nobody cares about that. It's a land of shock. They would laugh at you and tell you to go back to watching Downton Abbey. They would be like, you are a cupcake and you should leave. I mean, they make fun of you, dude, the guys I hang out with track and kill things for a living – so until you've stabbed a wild boar to death or fought another human where your life is at risk, I mean, worrying about what you eat is not an issue. These are men hardened by years in the jungle, who've lost children. They don't give a fuck what you think about their diet. So when I sit there, I eat the monkey. Now, here's the thing. I have also rescued numerous monkeys. The reason I'm able to rescue those monkeys is because I live with the local people. When they shoot a mother monkey and they eat it, I take the baby and I say, listen, let me raise this one and rehabilitate her. I'm such good friends with the locals and they trust me so much, and we've lived together and bled together for 20 years, and we're brothers,
I employ them all, and we're all friends and family. And so now we're just protecting 130,000 acres of rainforest and for the amount of tens of thousands of spider monkeys in there, one or two monkeys is worth it.
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KS So it's not an ethical dilemma whatsoever.
PR It's just eating. My only hard line is I would never eat a whale or an elephant. I would never, ever eat those things. I believe that elephants are non-human beings and just so intelligent. I can make a valid case for that. They are. I mean, obviously I wouldn't eat a gorilla or a chimpanzee either. Again, you're talking about something that's as smart as an eight-year-old human. You have to draw the line somewhere. But I make my rules according to the experiences I have.
I sort of had to carve out my own path in life. And so you look at someone like JJ, and you go, well, are we eating the monkeys? Are we not eating the monkeys?
Like when you see poachers with an endangered species of land tortoise, which is another story I tell in the book. You're not supposed to buy stuff off poachers ever. You're supposed to just let the animals die because you don't want to support the poaching industry. And I had this little girl with me, and she was like, but you're the guy that saves the animals. And I was like, I know, but I can't. And she had tears in her eyes. She was like, wait, but are you really that cold that you're going to let this happen, because they had them tied up with their heads jammed into their shells, and they're just going to put them on the fire, a turtle, in the pot. And so she just pleaded, you have to do something. So now what's the ethical dilemma? Do I not support the poaching industry because somebody told me to do that? Or do I bargain with these local guys, buy the turtles to show this little kid that good can be done in the world? And I chose option B.
KS Do you get a lot of criticism?
PR I get all kinds of criticism. Yeah. People, how could you eat a monkey and call yourself a conservationist? How could you fly on an aeroplane and not flagellate yourself for the carbon? Why aren't you a vegan? I mean, there's all kinds of people that have all kinds of twisted things. And I'll tell you the truth, after living in the wild, the rocks in the water will tell you exactly what the rules of life are when you're out there, which is why I don't really care what anybody says.
My other trump card at the end of the day is anybody who has anything to say about my work, I say, how many acres are you protecting? Because that's all that matters. If you look at our planet, we're losing probably the greatest physical feature on our planet, a rainforest, the greatest contiguous rainforest, the greatest tapestry of biological diversity that's terrestrially existed in the history of the planet, and we're the last generation that's going to have a chance to save it.
Once you destroy a thousand-year-old tree, that's a skyscraper of life that you can never get back again.
KS On a lighter note, do you talk to the trees?
PR I do. I kiss my big trees. Also, when you have hands like mine, my hands are usually too rough to feel much, but the trees need kisses. A thousand-year-old tree, that's like a mega grandma.
KS Have you ever seen anything like a mythical creature that you didn't even think existed?
PR Yeah. I'm from Brooklyn and so I don't believe anybody who says anything about anything until I get a picture of it. But in Peru there was a story where I did learn that the locals are never wrong. This guy kept telling me that in our water tank he kept seeing a snake that had spikes. And there’s a rhinoceros viper that has two spikes on, but that's in Africa; a bushmaster has curled scales, but certainly not spikes. He said, no, this snake has spikes, big spikes coming out of it. I said, then it's not a snake. I said, are you talking about a centipede? I'm trying to understand this guy. And he's saying, no, I know snakes. I'm not stupid. I'm a local man. I'm a tracker.
Long story short, one night he called me and he said that the spiky snake was out. I looked down with the flashlight and, sure enough, there was a spiky snake down there. It was about a metre long and it had these beautiful green spikes coming off of it. It looked like a dragon. I'd never seen anything like that. And then the snake kind of got scared and it swam, and all of the spikes folded into its body and became streamlined. And I went, it's algae. The algae had grown off the snake like grass.
Civilisations rise and fall…
Trump is a blip.
He's a fart in a tornado.
He doesn't matter.
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SOCIETY ARCHIVE sweater
KS Tell me about meeting Jane Goodall.
PR Jane is on so many levels the reason I'm here, the reason we're talking. My parents used to read me Jane Goodall's stories when I was a child, and her adventures and how she didn't listen to anyone, she broke the rules. Now, that's important for me, right? She just went out there as a girl in her 20s and just did all this research at a time when that was unheard of. She's done so much for science, for wild animals, for women, I mean just for young people, for the next generation of conservationists.
I saw her, I think I saw her at NYU, or maybe it was Columbia. I don't know. It was somewhere in New York City, early in my 20s. And I had just started writing chapters about my life in the Amazon and about meeting JJ and about catching anacondas and about our dream of protecting this forest, this really, really, really wild forest that no one had been to. And I printed them out and I put them in a manila envelope. And I mean, hundreds of people had lined up to see her, the queue was so long. And each person takes a picture with Jane, and then you move, you have five seconds. And in that five seconds, I felt so dumb doing it, but I just said, I'm so inspired by your work. My parents have read this my whole life, blah, blah. Please read this if you can. I live in the Amazon and it reminds me of your… and then you move on. And then 48 hours later her team messages, and they said, Jane read both of your chapters on the train. She actually read it.
And she says that as soon as you find a publisher, tell the publisher that Jane Goodall's going to endorse your book.
KS That's incredible.
PR: Yes, incredible. Jane waved her wand in my direction. And then when I went out with the chapters, all of a sudden people took it seriously. I said, hey, by the way, Jane Goodall thinks this is a good idea. And all of a sudden I had an agent. All of a sudden I had a book, and my first book, Mother of God, came out. And that is what started bringing people to our project. And that is what brought in our first funding for Junglekeepers.
KS And is the world getting worse, do you think? I mean, now Trump's invading Venezuela and freaking out the whole of South America?
PR Civilisations rise and fall. Trump. Trump is a blip. He's a fart in a tornado.
He doesn't matter. Even if he tries to deregulate the national parks, we'll get somebody in the next administration that'll cut down what he did. It's like we just need to keep moving forward, have a long-term vision. We need to be thinking on a hundred-year term, not getting outraged at the news cycle of the week. Someone's always stabbing. They've stabbed Caesar, Aaron Burr had a duel, whatever. Politics has always been politics. There's always going to be a war.
KS How much time are you now in the forest and how much time are you in New York?
PR Well, I live in upstate New York now with my wife, but for the last five years I've slept more nights outdoors in the Amazon than I've slept indoors. Last year I think it was eight months of the year; I was straight up just in the jungle living with no walls, no windows, no doors, just on a deck in the jungle. So if the jaguars want to come in at night, they can come give you a kiss.
All we have to do is stop destroying the oceans, stop cutting down the forests, and all of these things will survive on their own
KS Tell me about meeting Jane Goodall.
PR Jane is on so many levels the reason I'm here, the reason we're talking. My parents used to read me Jane Goodall's stories when I was a child, and her adventures and how she didn't listen to anyone, she broke the rules. Now, that's important for me, right? She just went out there as a girl in her 20s and just did all this research at a time when that was unheard of. She's done so much for science, for wild animals, for women, I mean just for young people, for the next generation of conservationists.
I saw her, I think I saw her at NYU, or maybe it was Columbia. I don't know. It was somewhere in New York City, early in my 20s. And I had just started writing chapters about my life in the Amazon and about meeting JJ and about catching anacondas and about our dream of protecting this forest, this really, really, really wild forest that no one had been to. And I printed them out and I put them in a manila envelope. And I mean, hundreds of people had lined up to see her, the queue was so long. And each person takes a picture with Jane, and then you move, you have five seconds. And in that five seconds, I felt so dumb doing it, but I just said, I'm so inspired by your work. My parents have read this my whole life, blah, blah. Please read this if you can. I live in the Amazon and it reminds me of your… and then you move on. And then 48 hours later her team messages, and they said, Jane read both of your chapters on the train. She actually read it.
And she says that as soon as you find a publisher, tell the publisher that Jane Goodall's going to endorse your book.
KS That's incredible.
PR: Yes, incredible. Jane waved her wand in my direction. And then when I went out with the chapters, all of a sudden people took it seriously. I said, hey, by the way, Jane Goodall thinks this is a good idea. And all of a sudden I had an agent. All of a sudden I had a book, and my first book, Mother of God, came out. And that is what started bringing people to our project. And that is what brought in our first funding for Junglekeepers.
KS And is the world getting worse, do you think? I mean, now Trump's invading Venezuela and freaking out the whole of South America?
PR Civilisations rise and fall. Trump. Trump is a blip. He's a fart in a tornado.
He doesn't matter. Even if he tries to deregulate the national parks, we'll get somebody in the next administration that'll cut down what he did. It's like we just need to keep moving forward, have a long-term vision. We need to be thinking on a hundred-year term, not getting outraged at the news cycle of the week. Someone's always stabbing. They've stabbed Caesar, Aaron Burr had a duel, whatever. Politics has always been politics. There's always going to be a war.
KS How much time are you now in the forest and how much time are you in New York?
PR Well, I live in upstate New York now with my wife, but for the last five years I've slept more nights outdoors in the Amazon than I've slept indoors. Last year I think it was eight months of the year; I was straight up just in the jungle living with no walls, no windows, no doors, just on a deck in the jungle. So if the jaguars want to come in at night, they can come give you a kiss.
All we have to do is stop destroying the oceans, stop cutting down the forests, and all of these things will survive on their own
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Top vintage, pants CARHARTT, watch Paul’s own, shoes Paul’s own.
KS What about the insects?
PR Insects are pretty bad. There's some pretty bad insects in the Amazon, but the ecosystem regulates itself. The Amazon is so regulated that the pests don't go out of balance with the rest of the ecosystem. Elsewhere, when you cut down a forest or you destroy a wetland and there's no more frogs, well, then the mosquito population skyrockets because there's no frogs and there's no more dragonflies living in the marsh grasses to regulate the mosquito populations. That’s when the mosquito populations go up. All of a sudden you have far, far more mosquitoes transmitting things. So if you have one person with malaria, suddenly everybody has malaria. So human disease goes up because we've dysregulated the ecosystem, and these are the things that drive me crazy that people aren't understanding. And so your question of is it getting worse or is it getting better, it's gotten really bad.
And that's why I think that right now, the message of this book is catching on with people. I've been there. I've been in the burning Amazon, I've been with the elephants on the front lines of where the farmers are fighting them in India. I’ve seen it for myself, and I would still say that we have a chance to turn it around.
All we have to do is stop destroying the oceans, stop cutting down the forests, and all of these things will survive on their own. They've been doing it for millions of years, and we've seen tigers come back by several thousand in the past 20, 30 years. We've seen humpback whales surge back to almost pre-whaling numbers because we've stopped killing them.
When I grew up, I had never seen a bald eagle. Now I see bald eagles about once a week because they live here and they're safe. I think that it is the most exciting time in history. We’ve never before had a global crisis like this. We've had world wars that have been concerning, but this is the fate of the planet, And I always say, imagine if the day before D-Day, Winston Churchill was like, oh, it's just terrifying. It probably won't work. Right? I mean, we got to persuade people.
KS If someone is reading this interview and wants to help, what's the first thing they should do?
PR Read my book so they understand the context of why this is so important, why this river at this time in history can be saved. And it's not a forever project. We're going to make a national park and we're going to save millions of heartbeats, and then they're going to go to junglekeepers.org because it's the most direct way to save the Amazon rainforest. We have a little bit of administration costs, and we don't advertise at all. We depend on the veracity of our story to propel it forward. The work we're doing is just so damn important – we're protecting the wildest place on Earth – that we don't need to promote ourselves.
I think the story in this book is the story for people who want to understand, is there still hope for the natural world and is there still adventure out there? Growing up, I so badly wanted to know Jane Goodall, Teddy Roosevelt. These people had had such meaningful, adventurous lives, and I wanted to find my adventure. And then I've spent the last 20 years riding anacondas and walking with elephants through the forest, and it's out there. It's all out there. And I think the new kind of adventure is finding a way to make the world better.
KS What about the insects?
PR Insects are pretty bad. There's some pretty bad insects in the Amazon, but the ecosystem regulates itself. The Amazon is so regulated that the pests don't go out of balance with the rest of the ecosystem. Elsewhere, when you cut down a forest or you destroy a wetland and there's no more frogs, well, then the mosquito population skyrockets because there's no frogs and there's no more dragonflies living in the marsh grasses to regulate the mosquito populations. That’s when the mosquito populations go up. All of a sudden you have far, far more mosquitoes transmitting things. So if you have one person with malaria, suddenly everybody has malaria. So human disease goes up because we've dysregulated the ecosystem, and these are the things that drive me crazy that people aren't understanding. And so your question of is it getting worse or is it getting better, it's gotten really bad.
And that's why I think that right now, the message of this book is catching on with people. I've been there. I've been in the burning Amazon, I've been with the elephants on the front lines of where the farmers are fighting them in India. I’ve seen it for myself, and I would still say that we have a chance to turn it around.
All we have to do is stop destroying the oceans, stop cutting down the forests, and all of these things will survive on their own. They've been doing it for millions of years, and we've seen tigers come back by several thousand in the past 20, 30 years. We've seen humpback whales surge back to almost pre-whaling numbers because we've stopped killing them.
When I grew up, I had never seen a bald eagle. Now I see bald eagles about once a week because they live here and they're safe. I think that it is the most exciting time in history. We’ve never before had a global crisis like this. We've had world wars that have been concerning, but this is the fate of the planet, And I always say, imagine if the day before D-Day, Winston Churchill was like, oh, it's just terrifying. It probably won't work. Right? I mean, we got to persuade people.
KS If someone is reading this interview and wants to help, what's the first thing they should do?
PR Read my book so they understand the context of why this is so important, why this river at this time in history can be saved. And it's not a forever project. We're going to make a national park and we're going to save millions of heartbeats, and then they're going to go to junglekeepers.org because it's the most direct way to save the Amazon rainforest. We have a little bit of administration costs, and we don't advertise at all. We depend on the veracity of our story to propel it forward. The work we're doing is just so damn important – we're protecting the wildest place on Earth – that we don't need to promote ourselves.
I think the story in this book is the story for people who want to understand, is there still hope for the natural world and is there still adventure out there? Growing up, I so badly wanted to know Jane Goodall, Teddy Roosevelt. These people had had such meaningful, adventurous lives, and I wanted to find my adventure. And then I've spent the last 20 years riding anacondas and walking with elephants through the forest, and it's out there. It's all out there. And I think the new kind of adventure is finding a way to make the world better.
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CARHARTT pants, VINTAGE top, PAUL'S own shoes and watch.
Nobody has it better than us. We have the most fun…. We are capable of art and language and this type of beauty and love and inspiration and analytical self-awareness that no other animal on earth has.
Nobody has it better than us. We have the most fun…. We are capable of art and language and this type of beauty and love and inspiration and analytical self-awareness that no other animal on earth has.
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KS Are you religious at all?
PR Jungle is where I go to talk to God. That's as simple as that. I mean, that's church for me.
KS If you were reincarnated as something else, what would it be? Having hung out with anacondas and toucans…
PR Yeah. I mean, let's be serious. Nobody has it better than us. We have the most fun. People take biocentrism too far where they're like, humans are just one species. No. We are capable of art and language and this type of beauty and love and inspiration and analytical self-awareness that no other animal on Earth has. Even Jane knew this. Even Jane said this.
KS So you'd be really pissed off if you came back as a manatee?
PR Oh, I'd be so bored as a manatee. That's a great life, but I'd prefer to be an elephant. They have it pretty good. Something like a giant river otter where you're kind of a gang and a family and you just eat fish all day and you don't really have any predators. That's cool. You don't want to be a deer or a minnow.
KS I don't want to be a toucan now, having to smash baby birds against a branch.
PR Oh, you do. Toucans don't have a lot of predators. They are the predators, so you just get to brutalise everyone else. It's great, it's just pillaging, I'm telling you. And ask the pirates. Pillaging is fun. We don't get to do it anymore because we've all become so tame and politically correct, but I hear pillaging is the way to go.
KS OK. Wow. I'm going to end it on that.
So there you have it. Buy the book. Start the adventure. Eat the monkey. And don’t let the toucan near your rescued parrots, if you value their lives.
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PRADA hat from Society Vintage, VINTAGE top.