Shoppers at an Ikea store in suburban Toronto were greeted on Sunday by the sight of a tiny, confused and seemingly lost pet monkey running round the entrance lobby. If this was not enough, the monkey was clad in a button-up sheepskin jacket and wearing a nappy.
Toronto police believe the animal was inside a cage in a car parked at the store in North York but managed to free itself.
“It was pretty scared. It was a tame monkey,” Staff Sergeant Ed Dzingala was quoted as saying by the Globe and Mail newspaper. “Nobody got hurt.
“The monkey was a little scared, that’s all.”
The paper quoted a Toronto city spokesman as saying the creature appeared to be a rhesus macaque.
These are not permitted as pets in Ontario, thus generating the Globe and Mail’s headline: “Stylish but illegal monkey found roaming Toronto Ikea”. If the owner is traced they will have to pay a fine of 240 Canadian dollars ($242) for having a prohibited animal in the city.
A witness, Bronwyn Page, told CTV she saw bystanders try to prevent it from running towards cars: “This is so bizarre. Like, why is a monkey at Ikea?”
It was Page who took the photographs which have spread around Twitter and other social media. – (Guardian service)