The newest pet fad in suburban Paris is the Barbary Ape, an endangered species that is imported illegally from North Africa. They start out as a sweet, cuddly pet, but grow up into powerful, aggressive adults, with murderous teeth and claws. Youth gangs in poor sections of town like to keep the adults as a kind of guard animal, especially now that pit bulls and other aggressive dogs must be kept on a leash.
Despite their popularity with gangs, most ape owners get rid of their pets when they grow up and become unmanageable. Over the past month, police captured one of the apes running wild in a park near Paris and a pair of apes in Lyons. A court in Versailles fined a 20 year old man approximately $300 after he was caught with a young Barbary Ape he?d named Kiki. “When we lived in Pakistan, we used to own one of these apes and it was very wise,” he told the court. Kiki is now in an animal sanctuary, but authorities say these sanctuaries are being filled with the apes. They cannot be killed because they are an endangered species and zoos do not want animals that have been raised in such unnatural circumstances, because they tend to be hard to handle.
According to urban legend, large numbers of pet alligators were flushed down the toilet by frustrated pet owners, once they outgrew the bathtub, and are now living in the sewers in major cities of the U.S. But that?s nothing compared to aggressive apes running loose in public parks!
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