The institutional mouthpiece of Kjel.org

Stay on your toes, people: the monkeys are up to something.

Woodland Park Zoo shut down briefly by loose monkey
The Woodland Park Zoo was evacuated and locked down this morning after a small monkey escaped from an enclosure and ran off, zoo officials said.The Woodland Park Zoo was evacuated and locked down this morning after a small monkey escaped from an enclosure and ran off, zoo officials said. By 11:25 a.m., zookeepers had found the 12-year-old male Debrazza’s monkey named Riktus and hit it with a tranquilizer dart, said zoo spokesman David Schaefer. No one was injured and there was no indication anyone was in any danger, he said. The zoo has been reopened.

CHIMP VICTIM HANGING ONTO LIFE
The Connecticut woman viciously attacked by a 200-pound chimp who inexplicably went bananas remains in critical condition this afternoon and faces “life-changing, if not life-threatening injuries” to her face and hands, officials said. The chimpanzee, named Travis, was shot dead by police in Stamford after the violent rampage Monday left a friend of its owner badly mauled. Sandra Herold, who owned the 15-year-old chimp, wrestled with the animal after it attacked her friend, Charla Nash, 55.

. . .

“There was no provocation that we know of,” said Conklin. “One thing that we’re looking into is that we understand the chimpanzee has Lyme disease and has been ill from that, so maybe from the medications he was out of sorts. We really don’t know.” After the 3:30 p.m. attack, Travis ran away and started roaming Herold’s property until police arrived - setting up security so medics could reach the critically injured woman. But the chimpanzee returned and went after several of the officers, who retreated into their cars. Travis knocked the mirror off a cruiser before opening its door and starting to get in, trapping the cop. That officer shot the chimpanzee several times. “The animal had cornered him,” Conklin said. “He had no other recourse.”

The wounded chimpanzee fled the scene, but Conklin said police were able to follow the trail of his blood down a driveway, into the open door of the home, through the house and to his living quarters, where he died of his wounds. Herold and two officers also suffered minor injuries. Cops had dealt with the chimp in the past - including an incident in 2003 when he escaped from his owners’ car in downtown Stamford for two hours. At the time, officers used cookies, macadamia nuts and ice cream in an attempt to lure him, but subdued him only after he became too tired to resist.

At the time of the 2003 incident, police said the Herold assured them that the chimpanzee - who was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a glass - was not a threat to others. Colleen McCann, a primatologist at the Bronx Zoo, said chimps are unpredictable and dangerous even after living among humans for years. “They are unpredictable, and in instances like this you cannot control that behavior or prevent it from happening if it is in a private home,” she said.

The lede from a certain article in today’s Seattle Times contains a lot to get one’s mind around:

Monkey that bit 3 has a history of being “mean”
SPOKANE — A monkey accused of biting three people after escaping from its owner’s South Spokane home is the same one blamed for hurling feces at federal agents investigating a diploma mill operation a few years ago.

I’m a little bit conflicted: one the one hand, if a monkey is going to take it upon himself to bite me or mine that furry little bastard better hope he can outrun buckshot. On the other, I tend to support any creature who has actually “hurl[ed] feces” at a federal agent. Especially if the agent is investigating an occupation I might someday take up: I’ve often thought that starting a diploma mill operating a “university” that is not necessarily “accredited” (Fortress College — you would see ads for it on daytime TV) could be quite lucrative. Just call me “Dr. CEO”. “Professor” would also be acceptable.

Come on humans, wake up! Now they’re targeting our leaders!!

NEW DELHI: A senior government official died Sunday after falling from a balcony during an attack by wild monkeys at his home in the Indian capital, media reported. New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by the gang of Rhesus macaques, but quickly succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall, the Press Trust of India news agency and The Times of India reported. . . .Over the years, city authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs — a larger and fiercer kind of monkey — to scare or catch the macaques, but the problem persists.

That last part is just an excellent example of putting off dealing with a medium sized problem until today’s half-assed ’solution’ becomes a larger problem. Mark my words: your grandkids and mine will someday contemplate the merits of launching a war to liberate our human brethren on the Sub-Continent from their evil langur overlords. I hope they do.

The CFO on the phone this morning with an advice nurse regarding the possibility of the Jr VP having an ear infection: “Well, he says that his ears hurt, but then again he also says that there are monkeys playing in our living room.”

Turns out that the lad does have an ear infection. I’m going to go home soon and check out the monkey report.

Look, I’ve bitched before about people I’ve had to sit by on airplanes, but at least none of them (as far as I know) was smuggling a monkey under their hat. Or was it a monkey stow-away, testing human airport security? Hmmmmmm.

Passenger hides monkey under hat, smuggles it onto airplane
NEW YORK (AP) - A man smuggled a monkey onto an airplane Tuesday, stashing the furry fist-size primate under his hat until passengers spotted it perched on his ponytail, an airline official said. The monkey escapade began in Lima, Peru, late Monday, when the man boarded a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Alison Russell. After landing Tuesday morning, the man waited several hours before catching a connecting flight to LaGuardia Airport. During the flight, people around the man noticed that the marmoset, which normally lives in forests and eats fruit and insects, had emerged from underneath his hat, Russell said. “Other passengers asked the man if he knew he had a monkey on him,” she said.

Man it would suck to have a monkey on you and not know about it. I’m not sure whether the other passengers were considerate to mention it, or if the monkey might have been one of those things that would be more polite to just ignore, like you would an unruly nose hair or an undone zipper.

Jr. has his two stuffed puppies; they are his pals. He likes to carry them both around and feed them and make them talk and fly (fly puppy!) and generally be good little puppies. But now, he has also acquired two nemeses (nemesises? nemisi? Had to look that one up: n. pl. nem·e·ses (-sēz’) ) as well. Meet the Flying Monkey:

Like his two canine pals, his two primate nemeses arrived separately but within short order of each other. He got the first monkey as a gift from the CEO about a month ago (I got it free at work). I figured that he likes monkeys, and liked to throw things, so this would be a perfect toy. Not the case. When you launch the monkey using his slingshot tubed arms he lets out a blood-curdling screech which scares the ever loving crap out of the Jr. VP. “NO MONKEY!!” The monkey is not allowed to touch his other toys, neither Mommy or Daddy can touch the monkey, but we also can’t hide it because it makes Jr nervous to not know where the monkey is. The monkey currently hangs on the HQ’s mantelpiece, on a hook originally intended to hold a stocking. Jr. glances up at him every once in a while to reassure himself that the monkey is not on the move.

The CEO’s parents sent the lad a small Easter basket this year. It had some tasty candy inside, but it turns out that the candy was guarded by a second flying monkey! My parents probably thought along the same lines I did: he likes to make monkey sounds and throw things — he’ll love it! Not the case. In fact, I’m not sure that Stinkboy has ever been more conflicted: he loves candy and will do most anything to get it, but he couldn’t get past the monkey guard. It was time to teach Stinkboy a lesson about teamwork. And small squad infantry tactics: I was gonna fix the monkey in place by hitting him from the front, enabling Jr to make a flanking move for the candy. We were about to launch our attack when for some reason the CFO just went ahead and removed the monkey. My teachable moment was gone; not really sure why she did that and I was a more than a little bit unhappy about it. Monkey #2 now hangs on the mantle next to his cohort. They look quite nice up there, if a little bit confusing.

So anyway, if you are at the HQ and notice two stuffed monkeys with masks and capes hanging above our fireplace, please don’t take them down unless you want the Jr. VP to have a conniption. Conversely, if you are over and really want to see a toddler freak out, grab one of those monkeys and launch it at him. You won’t be disappointed.

Is this is where we’re headed?. So long though as they stop with spears and don’t learn to build something better (like a 12 gauge, for instance) I still like our odds. Best to keep a close eye on this development I think.

For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals — the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans. . . . Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a “power grip,” they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies — small, monkeylike mammals — sleep during the day. In one case, after repeated stabs, a chimpanzee removed the injured or dead animal and ate it, the researchers reported in yesterday’s online issue of the journal Current Biology.
. . .
In a typical sequence, the animal first discovered a deep tree hollow suitable for bush babies, which are nocturnal and weigh about half a pound. Then the chimp would break off a branch — on average about two feet long, but up to twice that length — trim it, sharpen it with its teeth, and poke it repeatedly into the hollow at a rate of about one or two jabs per second. After every few jabs, the chimpanzee would sniff or lick the branch’s tip, as though testing to see if it had caught anything.

Eventually, this is going to come back and bite us humans in the ass.

Another man to put on the Kjel.org payroll:

Disgraced scientist says he tried to clone mammoth
(AP) — SEOUL, South Korea. Disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk denied Tuesday that he had spent research funds for personal use and said part of the money was used in failed attempts to clone mammoths, extinct relatives of today’s elephants.

When you succeed with something like this of course you pretend to be an utter failure, otherwise media and government would be all over you. Mr. Hwang, I salute you. Mammoths are awesome of course, but if you come work for me I will appoint you to head Task Force Sasquatch. Since I’ve had no luck catching one I’m about ready to try my luck at creating my own, and you sound like the man for the job. A few Velociraptors would be nice too.

A troop of mischievous monkeys at London Zoo have had to be re-trained after showing too much interest in mobile phones. The ring tones and bright lights proved just too attractive to the squirrel monkeys in their new no-barrier enclosure. Visitors who held out their phones to video or take photographs attracted attention from the monkeys who attempted to take the object. . .Malcolm Fitzpatrick, curator of mammals at the Zoological Society of London, said: “The new barrier free enclosure means the monkeys are in closer proximity to visitors.

Barrier free enclosure? This does not sound like a good idea to me.

I was wondering why he hadn’t come around much lately. Now I know — he’s in Malaysia.

Remember that time machine I talked about? Going back in time maybe is not as cool as I thought.

Researcher: Early Man Was Hunted by Birds

A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds. “These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared,” Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand, said as he presented his conclusions about a mystery that has been debated since the remains of the possible human ancestor known as the Taung child were discovered in 1924.
…
Researchers had speculated the Taung child was killed by a leopard or saber-toothed feline. But 10 years ago, Berger and fellow researcher Ron Clarke submitted the theory the hunter was a large predatory bird, based on the fact most of the other fossils found at the same site were small monkeys that showed signs of having been killed by a predatory bird. Berger and Clarke had until now been unable to show damage on the child’s skull that could have been done by a bird. Five months ago, Berger read an Ohio State University study of the hunting abilities of modern eagles in West Africa believed similar to predatory birds of the Taung child’s era.

The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets.

Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before.

If I do finally get my flux capacitor working (unlikely as I am still missing my sawzall) , I hope I remember to bring a helmet back in time with me. A giant bird poking a hole in my skull, waiting for me to die and then eating my brain is something I’d like to avoid if at all possible.

Aw, who am I kidding? The CEO will be armored like a tank and armed to the gills once I get that baby up and running. No reason to risk an unarmed run-in with a hungry Velociraptor, a ticked-off Neanderthal, or an angry Mongol. A marauding Viking Horde though? I might try to join, or even start one of my own.

Kjel.org is back from Christmas in Seattle and Bellevue. It was lovely, and everything logistics-wise worked out well too, which plays no small part in fostering a pleasant holiday.

We got to see plenty of both families, and Jr. was in full “charm-the-grandmas” mode. He played his part perfectly. Nice work young man.

Kjel.org played tennis with the CEO’s family on Friday night, and the CEO even played, which is a rare occasion indeed. My devastating topspin forehand was in full effect. The family is still shaking, with fear or laughter though I cannot be sure.

Below is a picture of the CFO and I cuddling Jr. on a cold Christmas night. You can tell by my face that the eggnog was good this year.

This is just too cool:

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Hundreds of human footprints dating back to the last Ice Age have been found in the remote Australian Outback, an official and media reported Thursday.

The 457 footprints found in Mungo National Park in western New South Wales state is the largest collection of its kind in the world and the oldest in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.

The prints were made in moist clay near the Willandra Lakes 19,000 to 23,000 years ago, the newspaper reported ahead of archeologists’ report on the find to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

State Environment Minister Bob Debus said the site showed a large group of people walking and interacting.

“We see children running between the tracks of their parents; the children running in meandering circles as their parents travel in direct lines,” Debus told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

“It’s a most extraordinary snapshot of a moment or several moments in the life of Aboriginal people living on the edge of the lake in western New South Wales 20,000 years ago,” he added.

Jeebus H how I wish I had a time machine. Someday. Perhaps someday soon: I’m working on a time machine out in the HQ’s car hold. It’s slow going, especially since my sawzall was borrowed some months back and hasn’t been returned. I still have some drills, hammers, duct tape, and so forth, so work continues.

Aside from the missing sawzall, I’m also having trouble acquiring the plutonium required to fuel my time machine. Stupid Patriot Act.

Does this look right? Of course not. I don’t see a helmet . . .

Sweet Jeebus. Will we ever learn?

Another great picture of the Jr. VP, this time as a newborn.

These guys should have come to me for advice: Bear law happens to be a specialty of mine. I’m good with monkey, ape and Sasquatch law too.

COOS BAY, Ore. — For nine days, Rocky and Jonathan Perkett heard a lone black-bear cub wail from its hiding spot in a Coos County logging site.

They could drop a tree on it or rescue it. They chose the latter, and for two years the bear was like family. But when the authorities got wind of it, there was trouble a-bruin.

The father and son named her Windfall and raised her for two years. The men shared pizza and Dr Pepper with the bear and gave her free reign of their home in the woods outside Coos Bay. The bear slept in Jonathan Perkett’s bed, took showers and even had her hair blow-dried, Rocky Perkett says.
…
“Is there a law against a bear running around in your yard?” Perkett says. “Doesn’t she have rights as a bear?” The Perketts plan to hire an attorney and hope a glitch in the Oregon State Police’s search warrant will get the case tossed out, and in the best of cases get Windfall returned to them.

“The law says you can’t hold wild animals in any way,” says Wildlife Administrator Ron Anglin of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

The Perketts maintain Windfall never was “held” or locked in a cage. They simply opened their house to her, Rocky Perkett says. She could come and go at will, he says. She learned to work the doorknobs, he said. “Everything they done here was unlegal,” Rocky Perkett says. “Since it’s all unlegal, I hope they will bring her back.”

Best of luck, Rocky. I hope you get her back too.

Jr. VP went to the doctor today for a regular check-up. The M.D. confirmed what, in my heart, I had already known: Jr. suffers the same malady as the CEO. He has what doctors call “Sasquatch Foot”. Note below the subtle difference in the normal foot (left), and my foot (right). There is no known cure.

He’s doomed to a life of never finding dress shoes or ski boots that fit, and ruining many pairs of socks. Already, at the tender age of 9 months, it’s tough to find shoes that fit him.

Jr. VP, I’m so very sorry. You can head butt me tonight all you want and I won’t complain.

Most people don’t know this, but the CEO loves a nice poem, especially a haiku. I spotted this one over at IMAO and it spoke to me:

12 gauge in my hand.
Eyes in the trees upon me.
Must kill the monkeys!

New ongoing site feature: Monkey Watch. This one is wearing blue pants if you happen to see him.

At least that monkey doesn’t know sign language. Simians communicating with humans freaks me out: I don’t like thinking that Koko has an inner monologue. I’m not sure entirely why this makes me nervous, aside from the obvious danger of her or another sign language trained ape or chimp escaping back to the wild, training the apes how to communicate with signs, and then launching an interspecies war against mankind. We couldn’t even defend ourselves without violating the Endangered Species Act. Anyway, besides that I’m really not too sure why Koko and her kind make me nervous.

I really didn’t like the monkey flashback scene in Being John Malkovich, either.