Saturday, January 20, 2007

Public service announcement!


Hey friends, I had to post this, because every time one of the monkey public service announcements comes out, I crack up. It's just so...foreign. I'm not saying they're irrelevant, I'm saying that, if one was to issue a "monkey menace" announcement in NYC, well...the world might stop spinning for a few minutes.

Highlights of the text, in case you can't read it: "Monkeys are wild animals, don't domesticate them with bananas" -- isn't that contradicted by the happy monkey holding a banana? Let's stay on message, department of environment, forests, and wildlife; "Monkeys are monkeys" -- no, I thought they were elephants! (OK, I know maybe they're alluding to Hanuman and his monkey-ly importance in the Hindu panoply, but still.)

All jests aside, seriously, don't feed the monkeys. When S and I were in Chail with my parents, we were loading food and stuffs into our car and left it unattended for a few minutes; when we went outside, there was a monkey in the driver's seat, and I ran at him with flailing fists, seriously alarming the hotel personnel, who were wondering just how they would explain a way a monkey-induced firang death in the peaceful mountain town. Just don't do it.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks to Sheila Dikshit for that announcement.

Anonymous said...

saw that you drove up to chail / shimla all over the way from kalka to shimla there are similar signs and lots of monkeys on the roadside and several crossing the roads, imagine if you are driving uphill and manuver one blind turn and wham monkets in the middle of the road .. . what do you do