He didn’t want to go and came up with the usual excuses: His leg hurt, his sinuses were bothering him, and there was no particular reason for going on patrol in the light of day. On the last score, he happened to be right. What he didn’t know was that I wanted to get rid of him for a while because, shall we say, I had some other business to attend to. When he was out of sight, I turned to the west and went streaking away from headquarters and out into the horse pasture. By that time I had begun conducting a serious debate within the inner sanctum of my mind: Did I want to release the monkey or did I not? Or to phrase it another way: Was there actually a monkey in the box or was there not? For you see, if there was no monkey in the box, the question of whether or not to release him became mute. Mutt. Mood. Moot, I suppose it is. The question became mute. Therefore, the logical sequence of events would be for me to determine .
