101 YEARS OLD AND STILL MONKEYING AROUND...

FOLLOWING the Ten Things You Never Knew About Monkeys at the foot of this page yesterday, I took an urgent phone call from a colobus monkey at London Zoo. “What’s all this about then?” he asked.

“According to the piece in the paper they’re planning to move you to the Snowdon Aviary,” I said. “But I really don’t know any more than I read in the paper. Why don’t you call the young fellow who wrote it, whose name escapes me for the moment?”

“I wanted to talk to someone in authority,” the monkey said. “Someone of wisdom and insight whose views can be trusted. That’s why I called you.”

I admit I felt flattered. “I see,” I said, “but I’m not sure how I can help.”

“Well for a start you can use your influence with the Zoological Society of London to get them to change the name of the Aviary. You can’t keep monkeys in an aviary. Or even an apiary for that matter,” he suggested.

“Definitely not,” I said. “First of all, monkeys are not apes and secondly, an apiary is for bees, not apes anyway.”

“Could you use your influence with the Oxford English Dictionary people to get them to change the definition of ‘apiary’ to ‘a home for apes or monkeys’?” the monkey asked. “That way, they’d only have to change one letter of ‘Aviary’, which would surely save a lot of money.”

“I’ll have a word with them but I doubt it will help,” I said. “The Oxford people tend to feel it’s their job to record how words are used rather than how they ought to be used. What’s most likely, I suspect, is that London Zoo will simply bear the extra expense and give the former aviary an entirely new name.”

“That’s good to hear,” the monkey continued, “but an even greater concern is the birds which at present inhabit the aviary. Will it be safe for us monkeys? I’ve heard that harpy eagles, when given half a chance, will snatch young sloths from the tops of cecropia trees. That sort of behaviour is very worrying for a monkey, you know.”

“I’m happy to say that’s one thing I have spoken to the zoo people about,” I told him. “First, they’ve assured me there will not be any harpy eagles living with you in the former aviary, though you will have to share it with some African grey parrots. They’re quite safe and they have delightful bright red tails, you know.”

“Well I’ve heard of Fifty Shades Of Grey,” the monkey said pensively, “but I’m fairly sure red wasn’t one of them.”

“Apart from the tail, the rest of them is grey,” I said rather unconvincingly.

The monkey pondered for a moment, then said: “There’s probably an EU directive of what proportion of a bird’s feathers has to be grey before it can be called by that name.”

“That would not surprise me at all,” I agreed. “Anyway, the zoo say they won’t be making the move until 2020, by which time they’ll have found homes for all the other birds in the Snowdon Aviary. By then, of course, we’ll have left the EU, so the grey parrots will no longer be bound by EU greyness statutes.”

“Hooray!” said the monkey, and we left it at that.