THE BUSINESS OF MONKEY BUSINESS

I live in Canada, I live in Ontario, I live in Toronto, yet monkeys; actual live monkeys, are throwing feces all up and down the news cycle

First, some back story. Monkey back story. Ya gotta love that

Some of you may know Darwin, the Ikea Monkey. Couple of years ago this Japanese Macaque became headline news when he was found wandering around the parking lot of a local Ikea in her shearling fur coat.

Shearling coat. I shit you not. And if I did, well Darwin would fling it at you

Ewww

Anyway, Darwin became involved in a court case where the Crown wanted to remove him from his owner and give him a better place to live. In some places in Canada you can own such exotic pets, in the GTA you cannot. So the owner eventually lost Darwin. She never went after Ikea for a cut of the publicity she provided them

Perhaps Darwin did. I'm sure he has an agent

But now we get to the sticky point. If Darwin cannot stay with an owner who was capable of dressing him in high fashion but incapable of keeping him from wandering around a parking lot, where was he to go

The Crown, the gov't, that be us (well so they say) decides this woman cannot keep this animal. In my opinion a proper decision. Personally, I don't believe anyone should own a primate or exotic wild animals. I'm not sure if Darwin was "wild" in the sense he came right out of the countryside but even if he'd been bread, I would say monkeys are still many generations away from being domestic in the way dogs and horse ares. One of the reasons you can't own them in this province

But what happens to them. There are structures (although weak) to take care of unwanted pets like cats and dogs. I hate the shelter system as in the Humane Society, it is a system that is broken but there is still a possibility the animal can be rehomed. Then there are many rescue orgs such as Border Collie Rescue that takes unwanted animals, works with them and guarantees them new homes

But Darwin and his monkey brethren are a different story. Because you can't own a monkey. You can't in the classical sense rehome in. But this is not an entirely rare situation so there is a structure to deal with it. There are wild animal habitats that take animals in these kind of situations. They are private organizations, to the best of my knowledge there is no public system like the Humane Society; most of these places are listed as "volunteer" and "non profit"

Well that is soon to be determined

Darwin ended up in a place called Story Book Farm sanctuary in Sunderland. So, a happy end to our story, right? Well of course not. You see, the sanctuary is in a bit of a bind, seems like they are about to get kicked off their property. So very soon they will have no place to shelter all their animals

They need money, they are no profit or so they claim. So they need that money from us. Or the gov't. But of course the gov't is too busy spending billions trying to get money from us. So the Farm needs the money from us

To this end, they are happy to trot out little Darwin in his darling fur coat. He is, I suppose, a celebrity and they are hoping to parlay that into some interest and into some dollars. After all, poor Darwin, he just need banannas, he needs fine silver with which to eat it

BUT WAIT, WE'RE NOT DONE YET

Seems Darwin is not the Farm's only celebrity monkey. Yeh, there are celebrity monkeys.

I may need a moment

Anyway, the Farm also hosts Pockets, an artist monkey. He paints. A primate that paints. Gee, is this what happened to Jackson Pollack? OK that was cruel

No, it wasn't.

At any rate, here's the situation: Idiots buy themselves wild animals and make pets out of them. Guess what, they fail. Now what do we do with these animals. Well we take them to a rescue sanctuary. Well, what if the sanctuary fails

What happens to Darwin and Pockets

They can't go to the Zoo. The animals at the zoo may be housed but they are still wild. They were never pets. How would Darwin and Pockets fare in the primate enclosure

Pockets would be over in the corner, wearing his beret and smoking a cigarette, staring intently and all artist like at his blank canvas .. then it would covered in poop and some silverback would pound him into tar for asking one of the females to model for some "artistic paintings"

Darwin would be flouncing about and pouting, screaming for a cell phone so he could order a new coat from Milan and calling all the other monkeys "chi chi" and demanding they fell a tree so he could use it as a runway

Yeh, he'd be made into somebody's prison bitch

Not easy being a celeb these days