Once, seeing a troop of monkeys high up in the tall trees, I followed and watched them for a long time, thinking how royally I should feast if by some strange unheard-of accident one were to fall disabled to the ground and be at my mercy.

But nothing impossible happened, and I had no meat.

What meat did I ever have except an occasional fledgling, killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or small tree-frog detected, in spite of its green colour, among the foliage?
I would roast the little green minstrel on the coals.

Why not?
Why should he live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no appreciative ear to listen?
Once I had a different and strange kind of meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish.

I found a serpent coiled up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself with a long stick, I roused him from his siesta and slew him without mercy.