My flight from Montreal (where I do not live) to Amsterdam (where I currently live, although I live in London) passes uneventfully, despite having to apply some force to the removal of the lid on my "Breakfast Crunch". This leads to the shocking expulsion of strawberry yoghurt against the aeroplane window, with a light spattering reaching the top of the head of the passenger in front. But what is this? I am picked up at the airport by Ralph, the tiny football playing Mercedes driver who always picks us up from the airport. He has two types of boiled sweet in his car, both vile (one is menthol liquorice, the other menthol liquorice orange), and he always plays a Buena Vista Club re-mix of Clocks because he thinks I like it.
I am lolling on the back seat, picking flakes of dried yoghurt off my lapel, when Ralph asks me the question I have been waiting all my life to hear.
Ralph: Have you heard about the mooonk-ey?
Me: Mooonk-ey?
Ralph: Mooonk-ey. Big one. A gorilla. In Rotterdam Zoo.
Me: No. What monkey?
Ralph: Big one. A gorilla*. In Rotterdam Zoo.
Me: Yes?
Ralph: It stole a lady, like King Kong. The problem was she went there quite a lot, and looked at him in the eyes. So he ran through the water and stole her, then bit her one hundred times. Broke her ankles and her wrists. Then he went and threw over the tables and the chairs in the cafeteria!
Me: Is it wrong to laugh?
Ralph: Yes, she is very ill, and in her late forties too.
Me: Yes.
Ralph: So the moral to that story is: never look a monkey in the eyes.
We fall into a companionable silence whilst we contemplate the possible ramifications of this statement, stirring only to exclaim in fear when we are cut up by a lorry carrying sausages.
* Yes, I know gorillas aren't monkeys. Ralph is Dutch. He speaks five languages. He is allowed to not know the distinction. I am not.
6 comments:
Life imitating art.....?
Altogether now, Brother Gorilla!
Apparently he is now behind glass! He did it once before in Berlin apparently.
May 23, 2007
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- An orangutan escaped from a Taiwanese zoo and terrified patrons at a nearby restaurant Wednesday, overturning picnic tables and motorbikes and forcing terrified diners to cower inside the eatery.
Motorbikes in a restaurant, whatever next?
I was in the supermarket queue yesterday with a girl whose neck had been chewed and she didn't seem to mind, it matched the tartan flesh of her exposed belly.
Poor love starved gorilla.
Maybe he'd had a double expresso in the cafe beforehand.
I hate zoos with big animals, the poor beasts tracking back and forth and back forth like they're stir-crazy. Nothing bigger than a merkat should be allowed.
apprentice - yes I agree. Frankly anyone who goes to zoos deserves to be mauled by a gorilla.
Naughty Philip!
Maybe he didn't like being stared at, like this person, helpfully brought to us by the good people at Lamebook:
http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/fan19-6.png
But there is a solution:
http://boingboing.net/2009/04/17/gorilla-viewing-glas.html
HB
Post a Comment