It used to be that having a pet chimpanzee was a sign of enviable wealth. A golden retriever was okay if you were middle-class and owned a gazebo, but for those who wanted something better in the 1980s, a pet chimp was a must. And what transpired in those early days of Michael Jackson’s untroubled bliss with Bubbles never made us question the practice. Elizabeth Taylor never had her face torn off during a trip to Neverland.
We have since learned, however, that owning primates as pets means taking on more responsibility than officiating wedding ceremonies between them as you ask “Daisy” if she takes “Skippy” to be her lawfully wedded poop-flinger, to have and to hurl poop at. In our book, TMWSASTDAOTTODD (the acronym-unfriendly The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery–and incidentally, no apes were harmed in the writing/editing of that work… none that didn’t deserve it anyway) we recounted an instructive tale of what can happen when you go on vacation and leave behind a chimp with an unlocked liquor cabinet.
Shark Guy Noel lives in Bangkok, an hour’s drive from two cities where they let monkeys run wild and he has had enough 7-11 bags snatched from his hands by psychotic, hissing monkeys to know these creatures are not the types that you can put dresses on and force to reenact Romeo and Juliet for 10 cents on the dollar in a public park with electric prods for punishment and food for both nourishment and reward.
Following the horrific story of how a woman was mauled by a pet chimp, we are coming to terms with the fact that chimps are more than just our close genetic cousins with more body hair than a Speedo-clad beachgoer who could stand a trip to Brazil. Letting a chimp loose in your house is akin to letting something go wild that is five times stronger than any human being you can imagine, and one with the moral compass to not distinguish between a coconut and your head.
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Comments: 4
About the chimp tghat went bezerk, I am not sure he was not provoked. Do we know the whole story?
People even those with good intentions do cause damage to animals and to themselves.