“Santino the chimp would calmly collect stones and fashion discs made out of concrete even when the zoo was closed, to throw at visitors when they returned.”

Unfortunately, this is not the opening line of a story I wrote. The facts of the matter can be found here.

It’s not the throwing itself that’s exciting, but the planned and actual manufacture of weapons. If I was a monkey in a cage, who was constantly being stared at and commented on  (not as big an imaginative leap as you might think, given that I lived for two years in China, where I was the only foreigner in a city of almost a million) that is precisely what I would do. Though certainly not what I did.

In other news: Monkey kills cruel owner with coconut thrown from tree.