Sunday, December 5, 2010

Anecdote from Natives

So, after leaving this project somewhat dead for the past few months, I had the rare coincidence of running into a former native of the Florida Keys at a Park & Recreation conference a few days ago. This guy, who was there during the early 90's would go "island-hopping" with his high school buddies around the area just seeing what they could find when they heard about this island with monkeys on it. Apparently, they heard about the island, decided to pay it a visit via outboard motor boat and witnessed from their boat at least 8-9 monkeys on the shoreline.

Out of safety concerns, the group opted not to approach the island, but rather observe the monkeys from a distance. Most of the monkeys simply walked around the shoreline, equally as curious. However, a few weeks prior to this incident, another group of high school students paid a visit to Lois Key. These visitors were much more daring in their approach, coming right up on the shore. One of them, an offensive lineman, decided it would be funny to mimic the monkey. The monkey screeched, he screeched back. The monkey jumped up and down, he jumped and down.

By this point, the monkey was getting pretty annoyed by the guy's behavior, so he did what any wild animal would do - lash out. The monkey took a swipe at the lineman's face out of annoyance, the gutsy men had a laugh at the lineman for being foolish, cranked the motor and high-tailed it out of there.

I also stumbled upon some additional interesting information that proves that Charles River Laboratories is still up and running with its usual mayhem. Apparently, about 32 monkeys were baked to death in one of their Nevada Laboratories, and yet another was scalded by hot water all due to negligence on the part of the company.