This International Day of the Tropics, marked on 29 June, we celebrate the biodiversity rainforests offer.
We try to put back what we take.
Like Little Milo the Macaque.
🌴🐒🌱
The sweltering rainforest was rough. Little Milo the macaque was melting together with its other inhabitants.
“It’s one of those days when I wish I had no hair,” Miso, the leader of Milo’s macaque troop, fanned himself with a banana leaf and promptly fell off the branch he was perching on. He scrambled up the trunk, grumbling below his breath. “Someone should see to getting this untidy mess of a rainforest air-conditioned.” He paused. “I forgot. I’m the village chief. “
He continued fanning himself till the leaf tore.
Meanwhile, Milo strapped his favorite banana leaf backpack and wiped his brow. He roamed around, searching for some semblance of shade.
The forest was bright. Too bright.
He spun around. The durian tree. The usually mighty Tembusu. The flame of the forest, with gentle yellow blooms.
All gone.
The searing heat could not faze the little macaque. He was determined to fix the problem with his own monkey fingers.
He came up with a whole list of ridiculous solutions. Banana leaf fanning.
Coconut water soaking.
He got the vines to create umbrellas, the rainforest way, creepily.
Nothing worked.
The days grew unbearably warmer. And rougher. Amidst balancing coconuts on his head, a vine arrived, swinging, with leaves wilted and tired.
“Don’t you think someone stole my L’Oreal? “
Then it swung away, trying to look for leaf solutions.
Milo watched it leave. Then, it clicked.
Replacement.
No one had planted new trees to replace the missing ones.
The little macaque strapped on his Banana Leaf backpack and did a little foraging. And discovered…
Flame of the forest pods. Durian seeds. Tembusu seeds.
With meticulousness a macaque wasn’t used to, he dug holes in the soil and replanted them all.
Miso came by and nodded sagely, still fanning himself vigorously with a banana leaf.
But little Milo had created comfort…
With some rainforest savvy.
🌴🐒🌱
Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.
Read more of Milo’s adventures here:
Mirrors of the Mind by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.
