Reading Notes: The Origin of Opium

I tried a new strategy this week when picking out the story I was going to read. I usually read the first paragraph or two of the stories then decide based on of that. This week I have decided to read the title of each story only and based off the title choose the story and stick with that story. The story I chose was The Origin of Opium. This choice was based on the fact of the impact that Opium has had across the world and especially in Asia and Middle East. I am a big history junkie and seeing this gave me a flashback to high school history and got me really excited to read and do some exploring in the story.
Now to the actual story, the story was sort of a surprise from the impression I got from the title. The story was more of an actual origin, in a folklore sense, of opium compared to what my mind created the idea that it would actually be about opium only. The story was a fantastic story that I really enjoyed with a lot of details and cool characters. One of the best parts of the story was the talking animals. I am a huge animal guy and the thought of animals talking made very content with what was going on throughout the story. The mouse was an interesting animal to choose to use as the animal that was going to speak with Rishi. The mouse then transforms into a cat and then a dog. This was surprising as that doesn't usually happen in stories as characters usually stay one type of animal in most stories that I have read, but this story was a nice adjustment and fresh story to read. The final transformation to the ape was surprising as I would have thought two transformations were plenty, but the third one took me by surprise. The scary part that left me on edge was the ending of the story that was left wide open and it seems that the ape may die or something may happen to the ape that isn't good.
Bibliography: Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/07/bengal-origin-of-opium.html

This is what I think the Ape looks likehttps://images.app.goo.gl/5htn89gXcQNRQzNm8