Two Very Different Monkey Stories Have Me Very Confused On Where To Stand On Monkeys
Story 1: A bizarre story in Elkhart County tonight-- police are investigating after a pet monkey was stolen from an Elkhart County home.
The break-in happened just before 4 a.m. Tuesday morning. We spoke with the owner of the monkey, who's desperate to get her back.
Beth Garber purchased her monkey named Gia just a few weeks ago. She says they were inseparable until early Tuesday morning, when she was snatched in the middle of the night.
Beth Garber has owned monkeys for the past few years and has had a fascination with them since she was a child. She brought home her newest primate, Gia, on Mother's Day weekend.
Then this past Tuesday, she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and found someone breaking into her house.
They believe the burglar got in through a side door before making his way into the basement to grab Gia's crate, and then taking off out the back door. Beth and her husband chased after him, but came to the realization that she was gone.
Source here
Story 2: A band of marauding monkeys has attacked a laboratory technician and stolen three Covid-19 test samples, raising fears they will infect themselves and then spread the deadly disease to humans.
The worker was attacked outside a medical college in Meerut, northern India, while transporting samples from patients suspected of having coronavirus. The monkeys ran off into a residential area.
The employee is said to have been unharmed, but has angered officials after filming the aftermath of the attack, rather than attempting to retrieve the samples from the fleeing monkeys.
Source here.
These stories have put my mind in an absolute pretzel. I have no idea how to feel about monkeys after reading both of these. On one hand we’ve got a monkey, kidnapped by a seemingly psychopathic burglar. Who does that? Who steals a freakin monkey, man?
On the other hand we’ve got a marauding band of monkeys that apparently are stealing Covid tests and trying to infect themselves to take us all down with them. WELL WHICH IS IT INTERNET?
My first instinct was to be a little taken aback by the fact that this monkey allowed itself to be kidnapped. Now before you go ahead and call me a monster, hear me out. The masseter is the strongest muscle in the human body. That’s the muscle that allows you to close your jaws with the force of 200lbs on your molars. That’s a lot of force! I’m going to assume that monkeys also have incredibly powerful jaws. Why wouldn’t this monkey just bite this burglar? Now before you backfire on this me, let me backfire this on myself. “Would you criticize a child for not biting their kidnapper?” In this case, dear, albeit condescending, reader, that’s not a relevant question. 1. What type of kidnapping are we talking? We talking candy out of a van? We talking playground snatching? Get your facts straight before you come at me. 2. We spend a great deal of time teaching our children not to bite. And while I imagine we also spend a great deal of time teaching monkeys not to bite, I’d wager that lesson takes a little quicker with kids. Thanks for bearing with me as I think through this, guys. So long story short, I gave the monkey kidnapping a little bit of a side eye.
Blame is a big, nasty word, and obviously the the party at fault for this kidnapping is the kidnapper. But was I surprised the monkey didn’t bite the shit out of the bad man? Yes.
But then my soft, bleeding liberal heart won me over. I went down a deep hole, my friends. A week long bender. I’m talking several cases of Diet Coke, several masturbating marathons (standing record is 1), and many embarrassed glances in the mirror. I broke my diet and ate an entire package of multicolored potato chips because I thought they were delicious veggie chips. I came out on the other end of this bender at my mom’s house and did some real reflection. “Are you victim blaming?” I asked myself. “Are you seriously questioning this monkey’s defensive drive and instincts, when you should really be questioning what would drive a person to kidnap a baby monkey?” I wondered aloud to the reflection in the mirror. “Could this have been an inside job? Meaning that the monkey wouldn’t have bitten its aggressor because it didn’t know it was being kidnapped?” I demanded from the shadow in the corner. Regardless, I emerged from that darkness with a fresh perspective on the monkey-kidnapping situation that fell firmly in the non-kidnap-victim blaming camp.
But then I see this other story. I see this band of monkey rogues that have overwhelmed a lab technician and stolen all of his Covid samples. I read about a group of marauders so tactical in their approach and so brutal in their execution that the victimized party doesn’t even give chase! And suddenly I feel the old, dark ways creeping back. I hear that voice, so long ignored, whispering in my ear; it’s telling me that the monkey could have, nay should have bitten its kidnapper. Evolution demanded it! You just can’t tell me that we’re talking the same species, genus, DNA, whatever. These monkey examples have to be mutually exclusive. One of these is off, it doesn’t belong. One of these monkeys in question is not acting to its evolutionary guidelines, and I’m not going too far out on a limb to say it’s probably the one in the bib.
