Dogman
22nd August 2012, 10:59 AM
I nominate this outlaw for Gsus membership!
the wildly popular, elusive mascot of the host city for the GOP convention
The monkey appeared behind a Bennigan’s. The Bennigan’s was one in a row of free-standing, fast-casual joints in Clearwater, Fla., just outside Tampa, that also includes a Panda Express and a Chipotle. At one end, a Perkins Family Restaurant flies a preposterously large Stars and Stripes in its front yard, as if it were a federal building or an aircraft carrier.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/08/26/magazine/26monkeyswingstate_ss-slide-HUO5/26monkeyswingstate_ss-slide-HUO5-thumbWide.jpg Slide Show (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html?ref=magazine)
The Wild Macaques of Silver River (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html?ref=magazine)
Snapshot of the elusive monkey, taken by the unidentified family that frequently feeds him. More Photos »
(http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html)http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/08/26/magazine/26monkey2/26monkey2-articleInline.jpg
Vernon Yates, a freelance animal trapper, at his house in suburban Tampa, with a couple of his 17 tigers. More (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html)
One of the cages of Vernon Yates, freelance animal trapper, near Tampa. So far, a certain rogue macaque has eluded capture. More Photos » (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html)
Someone spotted the monkey poking through a Dumpster around lunchtime. When a freelance animal trapper named Vernon Yates arrived, all he could make out was an oblong ball of light brown fur, asleep in the crown of an oak. It was a male rhesus macaque — a pink-faced, two-foot-tall species native to Asia. It weighed about 25 pounds.
No pet macaques were reported missing around Tampa Bay — there wasn’t even anyone licensed to own one in the immediate area. Yates, who is called by the state wildlife agency to trap two or three monkeys a year, was struck by how “streetwise” this particular one seemed. Escaped pet monkeys tend to cower and stumble once they’re out in the unfamiliar urban environment, racing into traffic or frying themselves in power lines. But as Yates loaded a tranquilizer dart into his rifle, this animal jolted awake, swung out of the canopy and hit the ground running. It made for the neighboring office park, where it catapulted across a roof and reappeared, sitting smugly in another tree, only to vanish again. Yates was left dumbstruck, balancing at the top of a ladder. (By then, a firetruck had been called in to assist him.) “There’s no way to describe how intelligent this thing is,” he told me recently.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (known as the F.W.C.) came to believe that the macaque wasn’t a pet but had wandered out of a small population of free-roaming, wild macaques that live in a forest along the Silver River, 100 miles away. Soon, the F.W.C. was warning that wild macaques can carry the herpes B virus, which, though not easily transmitted to humans, can be fatal. A spokesman also told the press, “They’re infamous for throwing feces at things they don’t like.”
As sightings stacked up in the following days, it became clear that the macaque was crossing the highway again and again, threading traffic like a running back. One afternoon, Yates and an F.W.C. investigator named James Manson managed to dart the animal in a church parking lot but lost track of it before the drug took effect. At one point, the two men were staring into tangled brush, stumped, when Manson tilted his head and saw the monkey perched with ninja-like stillness above him, close enough to touch. The two primates locked eyes. Then the monkey turned and was gone. “And that’s really when the story began,” Manson told me.
It was the third week of January 2009. Now, more than three and a half years later, the macaque is still on the loose. After outmaneuvering the cops in Clearwater, the animal eventually showed up on the opposite side of Old Tampa Bay, somehow crossing the West Courtney Campbell Causeway, a low-lying bridge nearly 10 miles long. (The F.W.C. posits that it hid in the back of a covered truck.) That fall, it materialized in a low-income neighborhood in East Tampa, crouching in a tree. Guessing it was a raccoon, an F.W.C. lieutenant scaled a ladder and barked at it. The monkey urinated on him and disappeared.
(Snip) The rest at link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/tampa-monkey.html?WT.mc_id=NYT-MAG-E-EXT-MAG-YAH-0822-L2&nl=el&pagewanted=all#p[VYwIdh]
Love it, this monkey has spit in the eye of authority all of these years and is still trucking! ;D
the wildly popular, elusive mascot of the host city for the GOP convention
The monkey appeared behind a Bennigan’s. The Bennigan’s was one in a row of free-standing, fast-casual joints in Clearwater, Fla., just outside Tampa, that also includes a Panda Express and a Chipotle. At one end, a Perkins Family Restaurant flies a preposterously large Stars and Stripes in its front yard, as if it were a federal building or an aircraft carrier.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/08/26/magazine/26monkeyswingstate_ss-slide-HUO5/26monkeyswingstate_ss-slide-HUO5-thumbWide.jpg Slide Show (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html?ref=magazine)
The Wild Macaques of Silver River (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html?ref=magazine)
Snapshot of the elusive monkey, taken by the unidentified family that frequently feeds him. More Photos »
(http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html)http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/08/26/magazine/26monkey2/26monkey2-articleInline.jpg
Vernon Yates, a freelance animal trapper, at his house in suburban Tampa, with a couple of his 17 tigers. More (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html)
One of the cages of Vernon Yates, freelance animal trapper, near Tampa. So far, a certain rogue macaque has eluded capture. More Photos » (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/08/26/magazine/monkeys-florida.html)
Someone spotted the monkey poking through a Dumpster around lunchtime. When a freelance animal trapper named Vernon Yates arrived, all he could make out was an oblong ball of light brown fur, asleep in the crown of an oak. It was a male rhesus macaque — a pink-faced, two-foot-tall species native to Asia. It weighed about 25 pounds.
No pet macaques were reported missing around Tampa Bay — there wasn’t even anyone licensed to own one in the immediate area. Yates, who is called by the state wildlife agency to trap two or three monkeys a year, was struck by how “streetwise” this particular one seemed. Escaped pet monkeys tend to cower and stumble once they’re out in the unfamiliar urban environment, racing into traffic or frying themselves in power lines. But as Yates loaded a tranquilizer dart into his rifle, this animal jolted awake, swung out of the canopy and hit the ground running. It made for the neighboring office park, where it catapulted across a roof and reappeared, sitting smugly in another tree, only to vanish again. Yates was left dumbstruck, balancing at the top of a ladder. (By then, a firetruck had been called in to assist him.) “There’s no way to describe how intelligent this thing is,” he told me recently.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (known as the F.W.C.) came to believe that the macaque wasn’t a pet but had wandered out of a small population of free-roaming, wild macaques that live in a forest along the Silver River, 100 miles away. Soon, the F.W.C. was warning that wild macaques can carry the herpes B virus, which, though not easily transmitted to humans, can be fatal. A spokesman also told the press, “They’re infamous for throwing feces at things they don’t like.”
As sightings stacked up in the following days, it became clear that the macaque was crossing the highway again and again, threading traffic like a running back. One afternoon, Yates and an F.W.C. investigator named James Manson managed to dart the animal in a church parking lot but lost track of it before the drug took effect. At one point, the two men were staring into tangled brush, stumped, when Manson tilted his head and saw the monkey perched with ninja-like stillness above him, close enough to touch. The two primates locked eyes. Then the monkey turned and was gone. “And that’s really when the story began,” Manson told me.
It was the third week of January 2009. Now, more than three and a half years later, the macaque is still on the loose. After outmaneuvering the cops in Clearwater, the animal eventually showed up on the opposite side of Old Tampa Bay, somehow crossing the West Courtney Campbell Causeway, a low-lying bridge nearly 10 miles long. (The F.W.C. posits that it hid in the back of a covered truck.) That fall, it materialized in a low-income neighborhood in East Tampa, crouching in a tree. Guessing it was a raccoon, an F.W.C. lieutenant scaled a ladder and barked at it. The monkey urinated on him and disappeared.
(Snip) The rest at link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/tampa-monkey.html?WT.mc_id=NYT-MAG-E-EXT-MAG-YAH-0822-L2&nl=el&pagewanted=all#p[VYwIdh]
Love it, this monkey has spit in the eye of authority all of these years and is still trucking! ;D