Posted on 11/13/2007 8:01:20 AM PST by ElkGroveDan
Delhi's monkey business takes sinister twist A monkey roams the streets of Delhi
A rogue monkey has been blamed for terrorising a slum area of eastern New Delhi, biting children and even grabbing a two-month-old baby from the arms of its mother.
Women and children queued up to show off their wounds after being treated in hospital after the monkey attacked in the Shashtri Park area of the Indian capital, breaking into houses through roofs and along balconies.
"I thought it was a man at first," one resident told The Times of India. "It got hold of my son's leg and was carrying him away but I managed to snatch him back.
"I then found a broken car axle nearby and brandished it at the monkey, scaring it away." advertisement
Rumours of the aggressive lone monkey swept along the neighbourhood's narrow alleyways as male residents mounted street patrols, armed with iron rods and axe handles, to prevent further attacks.
Stories of the monkey attacks appeared to get wilder and wilder - one woman told how the monkey reached through a hole in the roof of her lavatory and snatched away her child as she cradled it in her arms.
Others had wounds to prove their stories. "I was talking to someone at my door when the monkey appeared," another resident, Naseema, said, "the monkey followed me in and buried its teeth in my baby's leg."
With its shrinking forest cover, Delhi has been suffering growing problems from troupes of wild rhesus macaque monkeys, who are unafraid of humans and will bite and snatch food from the hands of pedestrians.
It is less than a month since the Delhi's former deputy mayor was killed after falling from the balcony of his New Delhi residence as he tried to fight off several monkeys who had ganged up on him.
The monkeys were even blamed for breaking into India's ministry of defence and carting off several armfuls of secret files which they sprinkled liberally around the government quarter.
Experts said the Shashtri Park attacks, which occurred over the Diwali weekend, were unusual because they were caused by a lone monkey separated from his family group.
Dealing with the monkey menace is made more difficult because many Hindus worship the monkey god Hanuman and so feed monkeys with nuts and bananas when they see them in public places.
The city authorities, which have been criticised for not doing enough to tackle the problem, employ five monkey catchers but experts estimate there are as many as 22,000 monkeys roaming the city.
"I then found a broken car axle nearby and brandished it at the monkey, scaring it away."
If someone tough enough to 'brandish' a car axle is afraid of monkeys, then those must be some really big monkeys.
Similar story posted here, but without the axle-wielding hero.
I can’t imagine it would be that hard to break the back or leg of one of these things.
Bring them on!
I love the fact that there are just broken car axles lying around to be picked up. If the zombies ever come, I’m moving out there, since I may need a handy weapon to cave in a skull at short notice.
Never bring a monkey to a car axle fight...............
Paging Charlton Heston... the heat-packing version, please...
You really don’t want to tangle hand to hand with a pissed monkey no matter how strong you happen to be. I’m curious as to why someone hasn’t just shot it. Someone in Delhi must have a gun.
My uncle told me a story about baboons. He saw a man that had his arm torn off by a single baboon (the man was dead of course) and he had been driven off by baboons throwing rocks (very accurately he said).
I am not sure I would want to mess with one of those cute little monkeys : )
The problem is they worship the little buggers as messengers of their monkey-god, Hanuman. Killing one (like killing/eating a cow) is blasphemy, or somesuch.
“I was talking to someone at my door when the monkey appeared...”
Man, sounds like a GREAT first line to a novel.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue come to India.....
ehhhh?
This is but a glimpse of the evil we will see when Hillary unleashes her army of flying monkeys.
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