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.

What other pet monkey stories have you heard?!