Yesterday I came across an exquisitely weird story in the Dallas Morning News about a man and his monkey. It turns out that the Plano, Texas police are a little picky about what kind of house pets a person can have, and keeping a rhesus macaque monkey, a rose-haired tarantula, a school of piranha fish, and two alligators under one roof has caused trouble for one former resident.
In early February, a police office investigating a hit and run accident knocked on the door of one Bobby Crawford, Jr. in Plano, Texas. Crawford invited the officer in where a monkey named Darwin was in plain view. The officer asked if there were any other unusual or exotic animals in the house, and Crawford said "no," perhaps hoping the nice officer wouldn't notice the 50 gallon piranha tank in the living room.
Upon further questioning, Crawford admitted the fish in the tanks were piranhas that he also owned several alligators and claimed he had no idea that having monkeys, alligators, and piranhas in his house was illegal. This ingenuous profession of ignorance of the law is, of course, hard to square with the fact that he denied owning them.
The alligator population in Crawford's house was something of a moving target: Crawford once owned three, named Godzilla, Blondie and Relentless but Relentless mysteriously disappeared last summer, apparently scaling the backyard fence to freedom, and four foot long Blondie was captured in a Plano creek last December, although details of how she got there were not provided. Whether or not the police, or indeed anyone at all, believed his story about alligators climbing fences is not mentioned. Crawford also had 100 finches and a large guppy tank (food for the pirhanas, one would suppose) and 100 finches, but there was nothing illegal about them.
All of the animals except the guppies and finches were confiscated by animal control authorities and taken to the Outdoor Learning Center in Plano, which is run by the local school district. Crawford was cited by various government agencies. Crawford, a Volvo mechanic, was distraught over the loss of his animals, particularly his beloved monkey, Darwin, whose name or likeness is tattooed on Crawford in three different places. He vowed to get his pets back, threatening to sell his house and quit his job to find a place more accepting of his pets. He left long weepy messages on at the Outdoor Learning Center. He made unannounced visits in which he begged to see his monkey.
So far we have an amusing "man and his pets" story. There was one in my local paper last week about a man who had 60, 77, or 80 (depending on which version of the story you read) sheep in his house in downtown Apex and liked to walk them around the neighborhood on leashes. Mr. Crawford's saga was not over though. He kept appearing in the papers.
Crawford missed his monkey and wanted it to be as happy as possible in his new quarters at the Outdoor Learning Center, so he sent Darwin a box containing some of his toys and an audiotape of Crawford telling Darwin how much he missed him and the steps he was taking to get the monkey back, steps that included moving out of Plano and into a friend's barn. As Mr. Crawford quoted himself, he said "I'm coming home, I'm coming to get you, Daddy's coming, he's coming to get you."
Longtime Outdoor Learning Center employee Jim Dunlap listened to the tape--we can only speculate why--and concluded that it suggested that Crawford and Darwin were more than just friends. Indeed, he feared their relationship was not platonic at all. The Plano Star Courier went so far as to refer to the audiotape as "sexually explicit." Dunlap reported his fears to the Plano police, who initiated an investigation. Contacted by the Star Courier and thinking he was speaking off the record, Dunlap said the tape described Darwin and Crawford engaging in "mutual stimulation." As his explanation for why he started this peculiar series of events, in which he suspected a man of having sexual contact with a monkey, Dunlap explained "I interpreted what I heard and saw in my own way, and I can't say what's correct. It's just me, what I think. I took it on the surface value about what he said. I just don't want to deal with it any more." Dunlap also told the Dallas paper that he suffers from heart problems and is now afraid he's going to get fired over this unpleasantness, or that someone might sue him.
After listening to the tape, the police commented dryly "Best we can tell, there's no evidence that a crime has been committed."
Darwin and the tarantula were returned to Crawford Friday, and he took them to their new home in Poetry, Texas, where the authorities are more open-minded.
I forwarded the story to several of my friends, with a comment that Mr. Dunlap had quite an imagination, and damned if one of my oldest friends didn't write back that she'd known Dunlap for years, and that if he thought there was something peculiar about that audiotape, then it was likely that there was something peculiar about the audiotape.
The Plano paper reported that the monkey is both dangerous and strong--four animal control officers tried for an hour to transfer him to an animal container before they gave up and tranquilized him. "He is very dangerous,” said Amy Early, one of the Plano Animal Services Officers who transported Darwin. “They will go straight for your face and tear into you. They have the strength of six men and inch-and-a-half incisors.” Dunlap also said that Crawford showed him scars Darwin gave him when he first started making unannounced visits after the monkey was confiscated.
So could a burly, tattooed Volvo mechanic be romantically interested in a monkey that can't be controlled by four seasoned animal control officers? Weirder things have happened. I guess.
Just another story in the newspaper.
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