Excited
UPDATE: My brother informs me I have some details wrong in my monkey story, so I am editing for further accuracy.
—
I have quite a few Taiwanese blogs showing up in my RSS reader and every so often a post will catch my eye. Over at IslaFormosa.com, there was an interesting post entitled Orangutan Alert and Other Strange House Pets
IslaFormosa teaches English in Taiwan and…
I was teaching apologies and excuses to my students. I gave an example of a lousy excuse: “I really wanted to but I had to look after my pet monkey.”
Being Canadian, I thought this was really ridiculous and far-fetched. One student looked perplexed though. I asked her what was up and she said that, in fact, her neighbor across the street actually had a monkey.
“Are you sure?”, I asked.
“Yeah, it’s orange.”
Orangutan immediately came to mind. I probed a little further but she started to become quiet after I mentioned that orangutans where banned as pets (and in Taipei city no less!!!).
The post goes on to mention that 1,000 baby orangutans were smuggled to Taiwan from Kalimantan on Borneo between 1985 and 1990 and sold as exotic pets.
The reason for this surge in orangutans as pets? A popular Taiwanese television program that featured a live orangutan as the perfect pet and companion!
Not surprisingly, smuggling and poaching was how baby orangutans got into Taiwanese homes. Also predictably, the cute and cuddly baby orangutans grow up and become not-so cute and totally unmanageable adult oranugtans. In 1990, the Taiwanese government made it illegal to have orangutans as pets, but I guess some of them are still around.
This reminds me of a story that my Mom told me about her older brother (my uncle) when they were growing up in Taipei. Mind you, this was a different time, so Taipei wasn’t as urban then as it is now, but basically, my uncle had a pet monkey (I don’t know what kind; my Mom just said it was a “猴子,” she didn’t say it was an orangutan “猩猩”). I guess my uncle LOVED this monkey and raised it from from it was baby. As it got bigger, no one could control this monkey and it would run around the house getting into everything and throwing its doody all over the place, but my uncle loved the monkey so much that he let it do whatever it wanted. And since my uncle was the oldest boy, anything he wanted went.
One day, the monkey was doing its usual uncontrollable thing and it got outside and some school kids (neighborhood kids?) were picking on the monkey… throwing rocks and stuff at it. The monkey freaked out and it tried to get away by climbing the electric pole. My uncle was yelling at the monkey to get down, but of course the monkey didn’t listen to him. It was jumping around and then swinging from place to place until it reached up and grabbed some electrical wires where it was promptly electrocuted to death and fell to ground into a lifeless pile in front of my uncle’s eyes.
My Mom said she had never seen her older brother cry over anything before and never forgot that monkey or how it died.
Anyway, I guess the point of all this is that people have different ideas about what animals are appropriate as pets. You would think in this day in age that people know that monkeys aren’t appropriate pets. But even in modern day in urbanized places like Taipei, some people still have wild boars chained up in front of their homes/stores.
What are some of the strange pets that you’ve encountered?
How does this post make you feel?
- Fascinated
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry
NOTE: 8Asians.com is a community, and we thank you for being a part of it. While we welcome and appreciate differences in opinion, if you're rude or you're promoting spam, we have a right to edit or delete your comment. Read our comment policy for more information.
If you see a comment that violates the 8Asians.com comment policy, you may flag the comment by mousing over the comment and clicking "FLAG."
For a long time I've wanted a pet ocelot, which is sort of like a leopard shrunk down to house cat size (they're quite gourgeous--do a google image search). They are semi-endangered, but its actually legal to keep them in some places with proper permits. I mentioned to my dad that I wanted one. His response was "You think you do, but you don't." I also mentioned it to a friend whose dad is a zoo keeper. His response was, "That is absolutely the worst idea I have ever heard in my life." I should mention that this particular friend kept as pets, among other things, several dozen black widow spiders and a rattle snake (which I caught for him). Anyway, the story...
My dad knew a guy in college (Grinnell) who had an extensive record collection, but someone kept breaking into his dorm room and stealing records. He wasn't able to get the school to do anything about it, so he took matters into his own hands. His dad was some sort of zoologist-type guy who raised ocelots and some other endangered animals to be reintroduced into the wild. So the friend brought one of his dad's ocelots to stay in his dorm. Ocelots are extremely territorial, and unless socialized to humans from infancy (and this one wasn't, since it was supposed to go into the wild), quite anti-social. It was only safe to be around (in relative terms) so long as the owner was around. Even he couldn't really handle it. If you needed to move the ocelot, you put sedatives in its food and transported him in a locked cage once he was asleep.
So it turns out there were a couple of high school students who were friends with someone on the janitorial staff who had given them a key to get into this guy's dorm room. They would steal his records, a few at a time, while he was in class and pawn them off at record stores. He had so many records that it could be days or weeks before he realized that they had gone missing. Anyway, the ocelot fixed that. Both of the kids were hospitalized, and one almost died of blood loss. The families of the thieves tried to sue the guy, but those were somewhat less litigious times then and the judge dismissed the case.
PS. Is this post in the discrimination category because of discrimination against monkeys, against monkey owners, or simply because it involves asian[-american]s, who it can be safely assumed are targets of discrimination?
PPS. I found this blog via Jaden's Steamy Kitchen.
For a long time I've wanted a pet ocelot, which is sort of like a leopard shrunk down to house cat size (they're quite gourgeous--do a google image search). They are semi-endangered, but its actually legal to keep them in some places with proper permits. I mentioned to my dad that I wanted one. His response was "You think you do, but you don't." I also mentioned it to a friend whose dad is a zoo keeper. His response was, "That is absolutely the worst idea I have ever heard in my life." I should mention that this particular friend kept as pets, among other things, several dozen black widow spiders and a rattle snake (which I caught for him). Anyway, the story...
My dad knew a guy in college (Grinnell) who had an extensive record collection, but someone kept breaking into his dorm room and stealing records. He wasn't able to get the school to do anything about it, so he took matters into his own hands. His dad was some sort of zoologist-type guy who raised ocelots and some other endangered animals to be reintroduced into the wild. So the friend brought one of his dad's ocelots to stay in his dorm. Ocelots are extremely territorial, and unless socialized to humans from infancy (and this one wasn't, since it was supposed to go into the wild), quite anti-social. It was only safe to be around (in relative terms) so long as the owner was around. Even he couldn't really handle it. If you needed to move the ocelot, you put sedatives in its food and transported him in a locked cage once he was asleep.
So it turns out there were a couple of high school students who were friends with someone on the janitorial staff who had given them a key to get into this guy's dorm room. They would steal his records, a few at a time, while he was in class and pawn them off at record stores. He had so many records that it could be days or weeks before he realized that they had gone missing. Anyway, the ocelot fixed that. Both of the kids were hospitalized, and one almost died of blood loss. The families of the thieves tried to sue the guy, but those were somewhat less litigious times then and the judge dismissed the case.
PS. Is this post in the discrimination category because of discrimination against monkeys, against monkey owners, or simply because it involves asian[-american]s, who it can be safely assumed are targets of discrimination?
PPS. I found this blog via Jaden's Steamy Kitchen.
That is a pretty good pet monkey story, breathsmilestears!
Do any of them get eaten?
My family had a pet monkey when we were in the Philippines. It didn't like children. My uncle used to hold onto it, then release it while all my siblings ran to get to the house before Ungoy attacked them.
oh, i have tons. but none of them die at the end.
Thank you, Moye.
What other pet monkey stories have you heard?!
That was like the best monkey pet story I've ever read.
Trackbacks
Custom Search
Recent Posts
- Chinese New Year Lanterns
- Is Kim Jong Un Dead? Assassination Rumors Hit the Internet
- Help Fight Stereoptypes With Asian Crew Clothing
- Deftones’ Chi Cheng Wakes Up From His 3-Year Coma
- SXSW 2012 Has a Nice Handful of Asian Movies
- Woman In China Gives Birth To 15 Lb Baby
- Naruto & Dragonball Now Available On Barnes & Noble Nook
Recent Comments
- : No one should ever feel "bound by the shackles of" their own heritage/culture. To feel burdened by your roots is to have the wrong attitude... – White Tigers: Being Caught Between Western And Asian Cultures
- : Thanks for making my day Akrypti! Too often I see Asian girls with such low self-esteem that they embrace this crap when condescended upon by... – To The White Guy Who Tried To Give Me Pointers On How To Snag A White Guy
- : Ouch, looks like despite all the infrastructure investments they've made they still need more! When I was in Beijing and Shanghai a couple of summers... – China Tries (And Fails) To Fix Rail Tickets Problems Online
- : What a fascinating lead! Please keep us in the loop once you find out more. If nothing's being done about it, maybe we can start... – The Ruins of Calico's Chinatown
- : If jeremy Lin weren't Asian, that is, if he were Black, as almost all NBA players are, then Jeremy would've been drafted quickly with offers... – What if Jeremy Lin Weren't Asian?
APA Events
Feb 16: Adam WarRock and Kirby Krackle: West Cost Tour Dates!!!
Feb 16: (New York, NY) Amar Chitra Katha: Monica Ferrell, Chitra Ganesh, Keshni Kashyap, and Himanshu “Heems” Suri of Das Racist
Feb 17: (Los Angeles, CA) All My Sons
Feb 18: (Stanford, CA) Stanford’s 16th Listen to the Silence Conference- Feb 18: (San Francisco, CA) NAAAP-SF Lunar New Year Gala 2012
Feb 25: (Los Angeles, CA) Past Present I Future Imperatives: Queer Space Time
Mar 3: (New York, NY) Vong Pak’s ‘Electric Shaman’ Concert
Apr 30: (Sacramento, CA) California Asian Pacific Islander Policy Summit 2012: iAdvocate
Staff and Contributors
- Editors
- Ernie Hsiung - Founder, Editor-in-Chief
- Moye Ishimoto - Co-Editor, Editorial
- Joz Wang - Co-Editor, PR & APA Outreach
[...] actually posted this of a year ago at 8Asians, but didn’t post it on my personal [...]