Brits and Yanks have a similar problem: how to get their monkeys off their backs.
Posted on 06/29/2005 9:05:29 AM PDT by OESY
Legend has it that as long as the Barbary apes roam the rock of Gibraltar, the territory will remain safely under British rule.
The British have embraced this particular piece of folklore for centuries; not even Churchill, in the throes of World War II, dared to disregard it. In 1944, with British morale battered by the war and the Rock's monkey population dwindling, he took no chances. He ordered a shipment of Barbary macaques from Morocco....
Little did Churchill envision how big the monkey population would grow, nor the shenanigans that would come along with it.
There are now nearly 230 tailless Barbary monkeys on Gibraltar, and they do not merely live on the Rock so much as dominate it. As the last free-ranging monkeys left in Europe, the macaques happily milk that privilege, oblivious to the consternation they provoke among the Rock's other set of primates, their human neighbors.
The monkeys do have a dedicated home, an ape den, at the reservoir up on the limestone rock that constitutes the bulk of tiny Gibraltar. But they are free to stray, and they do so, mostly in a quest for Kit-Kat bars, shady spaces, fruit trees, swimming pools and human toys. They have a special affinity for the purses, shiny cameras and plastic shopping bags that people tote around....
While tourists find the monkeys amusing (at least until a camera gets snatched), the hotel management most certainly does not. A sign posted at the entrance warns visitors to close their windows when they leave their rooms and resist the urge to feed the monkeys....
Once, a monkey was found sleeping comfortably in a man's bed.... (Just ask Arianna.)
If tourists and taxi drivers are permitted to feed them, despite the law, then people must learn to live with monkey mischief....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Implants. Chips for all the damn dirty apes, and tase them what steps out of line. :)
"Get Outa Here, Monkeys! Get out of Here, Monkeys!"
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