Thursday’s Trifles

Thursday’s Trifles are based on what I’ve read in our local newspaper, the Dagblad van het Noorden

Monkey Rugby with pacifiers

Monkey zoo Apenheul in Apeldoorn hands out pieces of string so parents with small children can tie their pacifiers to the buggies. A necessary action, because otherwise the 128 Saimiri monkeys (squirrel monkeys) that are roaming around freely, nick them.

(the Saimiri monkey in the video below is obviously looking for the real thing)

So, our fun loving newspaper editors interviewed someone from the Apenheul about this:

“Isn’t it a better idea to buy 128 pacifiers? One for each squirrel monkey?” ”We could have done that, if they do actually use the pacifiers for suckling. But they don’t.” ”What dó they do with them?” ”They see it as a sport to nick them and then they play sort of a rugby game with it. Chasing each other while trying to capture the pacifier.” ”And do they hand the pacifiers over to the keepers?” ”Not always. If only one of the monkeys has captured a pacifier, they all try to snatch it. We can usually hear from their squealing that they have something and we will try to get the object back.” ”Do they only nick pacifiers?” ”Unfortunately they nick all sorts of things. We hand out monkeyproof bags for people to put their things away safely if they walk through the part of the park where the monkeys are roaming around freely.” ”Once the pacifier of my girlfriend was stolen by one of your monkeys. Lots of tears of course!” ”That can’t have been too long ago. Perhaps we still have it.” ”Are you pulling my leg?” ”I’m only joking. Sometimes we’ll find a pacifier, but if it is somewhere high up in a tree we can’t get to it.” ”So… what sort of string is it that you are handing out?” ”We are still looking for real pacifier strings or ribbons. For now we just give the parents a piece of normal string.” ”What do the monkeys think of this?” ”They hate it! They have been demonstrating against it for days. No, wait, I’ll ask the keeper. Ah. He says they haven’t approached him about it yet.”

Quite a spectacle

A 35-year old man from Helmond (which translates to Hellmouth. Imagine living there.) has been arrested for stealing 100 spectacles from an optician’s store. He broke the window, nicked the 100 spectacles and fled the premises on his light moped. Somewhat later the police noticed the suspect sputtering away on his moped, but he ignored their stop sign. At which point one of the police officers got out of the police car, borrowed a bicycle from an innocent bystander and continued the chase by bike. The suspect was eventually stopped. He didn’t give an explanation for the theft of the spectacles and has been jailed pending further investigation.

Orang-utans give get master class gymnastics

Orang-utans in Ouwehands Dierenpark Rhenen (a Dutch zoo) will be given a master class in gymnastics Friday afternoon by Olympic gymnast Epke Zonderland. The Orang-utans have recently moved to a new accommodation, which is higher and houses 8 tree-shaped poles that go up to a height of 10 meters. Those poles are new to the Orang-utans and the apes don’t really master the art of climbing anymore. Epke will do his gymnastic exercises in an ape free zone underneath the trees, but they can see him. The zoo hopes the apes will learn the ‘tricks of the trade’ from Epke.