Monkeys Be Losin' They Minds

First it was monkeypox and now this.I noticed a news headline not long ago that read "Australian Zoo Evacuated After Orangutan Escape." The ape showed no aggression, but the newsworthy part of the story was the 27 year old primate breached an electric fence by using a branch to scale its' way to freedom and avoid being shocked. Coming so close on the heels of the recent, hideous chimp mauling in Los Angeles, I saw a pattern and decided to do some research so you wouldn't have to. What I found is jaw-droppingly shocking. We are in the midst of no less than a covert, global monkey jihad. Especially among so-called pets or otherwise kept monkeys. Consider this:

5/17/08, Los Angeles News"An orangutan named Bruno escaped from his enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo and went on a 25-minute jaunt...Bruno got out through a hole in his wire mesh enclosure...Zoo officials were not sure whether Bruno made the hole..or if the wire broke some other way"
1/30/09,blog.nola.com"Using only a stretched green T-shirt and powerful upper body strength, a Sumatran orangutan named Berani escaped from his Audubon Zoo enclosure..Employing a level of cunning that could come from a prison movie, the primate stretched the shirt, scaled a 10 1/2-foot wall to the top of the moat, wrapped the shirt around the "hot" electrical wires surrounding the exhibit and swung out."
5/11/09 Monkeyday.com"An orangutan in Heidelberg Zoo has attracted attention after teaching himself to whistle. Now the 14-year-old ape has recorded his first CD. Entitled "Ich Bin Ujian," The CD single by Ujian will go on sale in June. The song, a jaunty pop-rock number with reggae elements, features Ujian's melodic whistling..and a chorus including the lines: 'I am Ujian the orangutan, I am so cool, man, I am a star.'"

Obviously, the captive orangutans are up to something. They escape their Escarpments with ease, causing chaos but never harming anyone, but just to brazenly show us they can do it at will. Some are learning skills involving the disarmament of locked gates and electric barriers, while others are learning to whistle "(Sittin' on)the Dock of the Bay," and releasing CD singles to distract us from what's really going down and have us believe that they are cool with our values. This orangutan song-and-dance is really a smokescreen to cover-up what is happening at the tip of the spear of the monkey revolt; the angry, malicious, and revengeful violence of the world's chimpanzees. In this battle against their human captors, they are the guerrilla warriors of the simian movement; "The Simianese Liberation Army."

The Kolkata zoo in India reported that a mother and her six-year-old daughter were injured by rocks thrown from Babu, a male chimpanzee, who became "furious and retaliated" when visitors threw pieces of bricks at him. Zoo officials confirmed that Babu escaped his enclosure last year by breaking the lock. The victims were treated in the hospital and released. More ominous were the plans of the chimp named Santino in Sweden's Furuvik Zoo, who was observed "chipping at concrete to create discs to throw at visitors. He even made weapons at night to throw...in the morning." Santino impressed Swedish scientists who believe "this is the first evidence of a non-human animal being capable of making plans for the future." Thousands of miles away in Thailand, the monkey murders have already begun. Nature and Conservation reported in March that Leilit Janchoon purchased a monkey for $180 dollars to climb trees and fetch coconuts, but when the exhausted beast tried to take a break, Janchoon beat the monkey until he returned to his task. The primate, named Brother Kwan, promptly re-climbed the tree and "hurled a coconut straight down on Janchoon's head, killing him instantly."

Most pet chimp stories end badly, including Elvis' monkey, "Scatter," who amused the boys for awhile before becoming too aggressive. People who can't find human contact and acquire a monkey instead, often treat chimps like children, until they discover their pets are feral beasts with great strength and not a lot of conscience. The latest gruesome mauling of a woman in Los Angeles by Travis the Chimp is an example. We discovered to our immense discomfort that Travis' female owner bathed and slept with the chimp. (Isn't that how AIDS got started?). But might she not have imagined that giving drugs to the animal could cause problems? Did she not think that the simian brain reacts differently to Xanax than humans and, just possibly, her pet may become confused? She may as well have given the monkey LSD and turned on a strobe light.

Travis' owner might have consulted with St. James and LaDonna Davis, who put their pet chimp, Moe, in a California primate sanctuary in 1999 after he bit off someone's finger. The couple went to visit Moe on his birthday in 2005, bringing a cake to celebrate the occasion, when two chimps in an adjoining cage went berserk, broke free and viciously attacked the Davis's. St. James took the full measure of the apes' fury, who bit off a foot, chewed off his nose, and ripped off his balls, while his pet Moe merely sat back and watched. Something sinister is going on around the ape grapevine, and it doesn't seem to be good, but there's a lesson in this for humans. Remember when our government invaded Iraq and disbanded the army, the police, and the Ba'ath party, in effect disenfranchising tens of thousands of Sunnis? The result was an unforeseen and bloody insurrection. The moral being; When you go to a primate party, you better bring enough cake for all the monkeys or they'll be having your testicles for canapes and your face for an entree.