It's a good day for monkey stories

The Monterey Peninsula was apparently crawling with simians back when America was great

There was a time, not so long ago, when monkeys ran wild on the Monterey Peninsula.

And, yes, I know that rampaging monkeys should be the furthest thing from our minds right now. The world is falling to pieces, after all, and God only knows the societal calamity ahead. But bear with me, please, because there are days when we must unleash the monkey in our lives. And today, January 20, 2025, feels like the right day.

There was that time when the Monterey chief of police, Charles Simpson, woke up one August morning in 1958, gazed out the front window of his home on Spaghetti Hill and saw a monkey frolicking in his front yard. Obviously the monkey didn’t belong anywhere in Monterey, much less wandering loose in the neighborhood.

Being as how Chief Simpson was smarter than the average knuckle-dragging primate, he knew he could befriend, subdue and capture the mysterious yard monkey by offering it a delicious English muffin. Sure enough, it worked. Simpson then called the station to summon patrol officers to take the monkey off his hands.

Unfortunately, the arrival of men in uniforms spooked the monkey, who sprinted up the hill, with a couple of monkey-chasing officers on foot in hot pursuit. The cops were no match for the frightened monkey; they lost sight of the silly thing after 20 frustrating minutes. Soon after, a woman on Roosevelt Street, identified as a “Mrs. Kiernan,” was astonished to see the monkey rummaging around in her garden from her own front window. She stepped outside to find out WTF, and the monkey jumped into her arms.

Mrs. Kiernan was immediately charmed, according to the newspaper account.

The officers arrived shortly thereafter, took the monkey into custody, and promised Mrs. Kiernan they would take good care of the little simian.

This bit of monkey business was recorded in the pages of the Monterey Peninsula Herald. Two days later, the Herald reported that Mrs. Kiernan showed up at the SPCA soon after the cops took the monkey out of her arms and successfully convinced the folks there that she would like to adopt the little bugger.

And thus the monkey found a new home.

I hope that reading this monkey story provided a moment of levity for you on this bleak day. Sure, a simian-like simp will place his hand on a Bible sometime today and the shit will hit the fan. But I’ve found that a bit of comic relief can serve as a balm against common communal angst.

We could all use a laugh today, and in my opinion there’s nothing like a good monkey story to bring a smile to your face.

Like, how about the time a monkey in a Seaside pet store broke out of his cage and ransacked the shop? This happened in November of 1957. The monkey’s name was Junior, and he was an 18-month-old cinnamon ringtail monkey from South America.

According to the pet store owner, Junior was apparently pissed when the owner put a collar on him one day and then went home for the afternoon. So Junior slipped the lock on his cage and wreaked pet-shop havoc in a way that only a bonafide ringtail monkey can.

In short order, Junior put the turtles in the parrot’s cage, let the myna bird out and shattered a fish bowl. He also tipped over an empty canary cage and broke a neon sign, apparently while using it to climb to a shelf near the ceiling. By 5 p.m., a crowd had gathered outside the store to watch Junior’s antics through the shop window. Police showed up soon after and summoned the owners.

“(Junior) could have done a lot of damage if he had let all the animals loose,” one of the owners, Gay Bricker, told a Herald reporter. Among the other animals in the shop were an otter-like grison from Arabia, two honey bears, an ocelot, some puppies and a 6-month-old Gibbon ape.

Watching a monkey go nuts in a pet shop must have been a hilarious event to witness, don’t you think? I mean, it’s got to be a lot more entertaining than whatever the hell is going on today in Washinton D.C. Right?

Have you ever seen or thought about a monkey without smiling? If not, I don’t think I want to know you. I can think of at least one person in the world who is probably incapable of laughing about monkeys, and he placed his hand on a Bible today.

The yellowing pages of old Monterey Peninsula Heralds are full of loose-monkey stories. To be sure, some of them are not all that funny. For instance, in 1957 the Herald reported that a 7-year-old boy in Seaside was bitten on the hand when he tried to play with a monkey he found wandering around the yard of his family home.

And then there was the monkey that broke out of his owner’s house in Fort Ord and terrorized a woman in Seaside after it somehow slipped into her home. The cops were called and the monkey was captured when officers slipped a sack over its head.

And let’s not forget the organ grinder at Fisherman’s Wharf, back in the day, who managed a beggar monkey that wore a little straw hat and a vest.

But we can’t leave today on a sour note. Not with so much other dread and bullshit in the world.

So how about we close with the story of a monkey who went by the name “Monkey?” In 1955, Monkey escaped from the backyard monkey house that a Pacific Grove woman named Ann Beecher built for him. For two days, Monkey led police and SPCA officers through the foliage and trees of Pacific Grove.

Monkey was reportedly sighted in yards, a woodshed, under porches and crossing streets. His freedom aggravated leashed dogs.and delighted neighbors, young and old. The SPCA officer who tried to capture Monkey became a minor celebrity in town. At one point, Monkey ran between the feet of bystanders who tried in vain to corral him in an open field. He couldn’t be caught.

Finally, on his second day of freedom Monkey was found on a residential rooftop on Wood Street. He was eating bananas that someone cleverly left out for him. He was apprehended without incident and returned to Mrs. Beecher’s monkey house.

Good monkey stories are hard to find these days. And that’s a real shame because monkey stories once made America great.

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