Beach Party Sunday: Puerto Rico Fighting Hordes of Herpetic Monkeys

December 21, 2008 at 12:03 PM | by Victor Ozols | Comments (2)

It's cold and wet in New York today, the first day of winter, and the mind wanders to thoughts of warm tropical paradises. A trip to Puerto Rico sure would be nice. Icy rum cocktails, gentle turquoise waters, soft white sand, and the constant threat of attack by hordes of diseased monkeys. Did somebody say beach party?

Too bad the Puerto Rican government wants to capture and kill all the monkeys. According to local rangers, the monkeys are an invasive species - having originally escaped from a secret research facility nearly forty years ago - and they pose a serious threat to native flora and fauna, agriculture, and even people.

That's right, some of these randy primates have herpes and hepatitis. Fun!

So officials have begun a campaign to bust caps in the asses of the estimated 1,000 patas and rhesus monkeys from eleven different colonies in southwestern Puerto Rico. Okay, so maybe these people are "wildlife experts" with "training" who "know what they're doing," and maybe 92 different animal agencies refused to take the monkeys, but a wholesale slaughter seems kinda harsh.

After all, wouldn't you try to escape a research facility if scientists were doing weird experiments on you? We can't imagine it would be that difficult to simply train the monkeys to become butlers, who could then staff the island nation's many hotels.

Quick, somebody do a feasibility study.

[Photo: AP]

Related Stories:
· Puerto Rico Hunting, Killing Troublesome Monkeys [AP]
· Wildlife Coverage [Jaunted]

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