One of the strangest things I saw back in South America when I was growing up, was people keeping monkeys as pets. At first, you think it is a good idea as they look cute and do funny stuff, but after a while they become a pest to everybody in the neighborhood. It would not take long for a monkey to start attacking other pets and kill them if they were small enough. If you kept chickens, an uncontrolled monkey would break in the coop and kill them. And forget about having cats unless they were feral and very nasty on their own.

And that lack of respect for life and orderly life soon translated to humans: Monkeys simply do not like humans other than the owner and probably because they got fed by them. Slinging poo is not just an expression, monkeys will use their own feces to tag people just for fun. Small children? You could bet a neighborhood kid would end up with bite marks somewhere in his/her body from the local ape. I knew of a case of one monkey that attacked a teen girl and ripped chunks of hair from her head.

The owners of the monkeys would try to take measures to keep them under control. They would keep them leashed and even caged, but the little bastards were smart enough to bypass the latches and other devices, run loose and create mayhem. And if they were secured in such a way that their escape was impossible, then the would turn on the owner by means of ambush during feeding time…and they were nasty about it with a trip to the local hospital mostly assured.

In the end, the owner was forced by events (and threats of bodily harm) to come to his senses and get rid of the furry bastard. Stories of having the apes poisoned or shot by their owners or neighbors were not uncommon. The enlightened souls would call the authorities who would retrieve the offending creature and either take it to a zoo or release it into the wild, far away from the original home because the little fuckers would come back to what now they considered their turf.

I guess the lesson you can take is that just because they look cute, exotic and somewhat like humans does not mean they are fit to live among us. And that if we allow them to do so, we better be prepared to deal with their shit and teeth by employing necessary drastic measures that may offend delicate and inclusive souls.