I’m pretty sure we no longer need to create CGI-filled remakes of movies in the Planet of the Apes universe. The reality in India is already proving to have a better plot and the actors have demands that are more reasonable. Take, for instance, the monkey that stole a bus last year. The latest simian criminal mastermind is undoubtedly related, but far more daring. Rather than joyriding in an empty bus, this monkey robbed a jewelry store in broad daylight.
Workers at the jewelry store, located in the south Indian city of Guntur, were going about their business when a guava flew in through the front door. As they looked around, they noticed an irate monkey standing outside. An employee rolled the fruit back to the monkey, but that wasn’t enough to stop the heist. The monkey burst into the shop and attacked the employee who had touched the guava. He escaped with minor injuries.
At that point, the furred burglar settled on a chair near the cash register. It sat, staring at the desk, for twenty minutes. Other employees attempted to shoo it away without success. Finally, as if concluding there were no heroes in the crowd, the monkey opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a wad of money. As the shop owner approached, the monkey put the cash in its mouth, leapt from the chair, and ran out the front door. The owner followed, but soon learned the pursuit was useless. In all, the monkey made off with $144.
Speaking afterward to police in Andhra Pradesh, the employees explained that they had felt like hostages. They’d even bargained for the monkey to leave them alone. They offered him a banana but he refused, realizing a bundle of money could buy him a truckload of bananas. Police have no leads toward finding the culprit, despite the entire incident having been recorded on CCTV.
Monkeys are considered sacred in India. This helps explain their free-range crime sprees across the country. Two weeks ago, word spread that at a Hindu temple in Vrindavan, money was falling from the sky. While worshipers flocked to the site, there was a great deal of suspicion that there was some sort of monkey business going on. That belief turned out to be true. A monkey had stolen a visitor’s purse and was dropping money from a tree high above the temple.
