My apologies for missing my publishing deadline today, but with Mother Nature grabbing us firmly by the toque and giving us a good shake, all things are still out of whack.

By way of recompense, I give you the strange story of a young woman who fell in love with a monkey in Thailand and just HAD to find a way to bring it home.  Like a souvenir, but you know, of the living indigenous species kind instead of the T-shirt kind that you and I buy.  She and her mother decided that the best thing to do would be to drug the monkey, hide it in her shirt, and pretend she was pregnant to get the thing through customs.  If this sounds like crazy talk, it is.  Even better?  While they were removing their shoes, surrendering their water bottles, and generally playing their role in the security theatre, somehow the security officers managed to miss the fact that she HAD A MONKEY SLEEPING IN HER SHIRT.  At least they didn’t have a monkey AND a water bottle, but wow.  She and her mom (who was smuggling live scorpions in her undies and pretending to have Tourettes) somehow made it through customs without incident.

Then the story takes a strange turn.  

Once they got home, monkey-encumbered, apparently they were able to live for a whole year in complete normalcy.  With a monkey.  Apparently after a year this master criminal was unable to contain herself any longer: 

They were arrested after Lawson boasted to a clothing store clerk about the airport escapade.

A clothing store clerk?  You just succeeded in pulling off the biggest monkey heist ever, have been sitting pretty for a year, and then you have to go and open your banana hole to the first teenager you see at the Gap?  Even better, that teenager then proceeds to drop a dime on your butt, and someone believes them?  

Gap Teenager – “Sir?  You don’t know me but I have important information about a smuggled monkey.”

SA Dorsmacker – “This is Special Agent Dorsmacker of the Illegal Primate division.  Don’t move a muscle, we’re sending the chopper.”

Did they need to spend their time on this sort of thing?  Is this really what “security” has been reduced to?

Sigh.

Oh, and never fear:

The monkey is now at a primate rescue facility in Oregon.

Primate rescue facility, huh?  That’s code for “Monkey Gitmo” just between you and me.