The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

incident in Alphus’s past. No doubt because it involved the museum, the paper took the liberty to malign the poor beast with half-truths and out-and-out distortions of what happened. To begin with, Alphus is not a “wild” animal, though try telling that to the troglodytes of the
Bugle
. (Come to think of it, the epithet in this case should be considered a slur against members of that species.)
    Anyway, the incident occurred last spring, at just about this time. Alphus, who is a thirty-two-year-old chimpanzee from the remaining population we keep in the Pavilion, feigned a medical emergency and, while en route to the animal hospital at the Middling County Zoo in an ambulance, overpowered his attendants and escaped into the leafy refuge of Thornton Arboretum. There he eluded several attempts to capture him in a humane way. At one point the Seaboard Police Department’s SWAT team apparently had him cornered in a large tree. But even their best sharpshooter, encumbered, it’s true, by a lot of high-tech protective gear, couldn’t bring him down with one of those dart guns.
    The animal rights groups took up his cause. They filed for a cease-and-desist order in Middling County District Court, which a judge promptly issued. Alphus’s supporters, a well-intended group of young idealists, brought him food and water and generally stood watch to make sure no harm befell him. Theywere, however, under the mistaken impression that
Pan troglodytes
is an herbivore when, in fact, like us, chimps will eat just about anything. And who’s to say that what happened wouldn’t have happened even had they brought him steak tartare on a regular basis?
    Because early one warm summer evening, Royale Toite, one of those wealthy, adamantine club women with a sense of entitlement bordering on the pathological, decided to walk her querulous toy poodle through that part of the arboretum where Alphus led his largely arboreal existence. As they passed under a tree where Alphus sat minding his own business, the dog began yapping at him. Alphus swung down, grabbed the noisy dog, and climbed back up to a stout limb well out of reach. Had the poodle been secured with one of those leashes that play out, it’s possible that Ms. Toite might have been able to yank it back to safety. But that appears not to have been the case.
    A tourist who had been looking for Alphus happened to be there. He videotaped the whole sorry scene from beginning to end: the barking dog, the swooping grab, and the owner, mad with anger and grief, shrieking at Alphus as he calmly strangled her wriggling dog before peeling back its hide with marvelous strength and eating a good deal of the exposed bloody flesh.
    The video made it onto the national news, and an awful ruckus ensued. A militia group from a remote part of the state set up camp in the parking lot of the arboretum and, labeling Alphus “a demented, dog-eating pervert,” vowed “to protect the neighborhood and if necessary take out the killer ape.” Animal rights groups again came to Alphus’s defense, mounting a watch around the area where he nested. One of the more pongiphilic opined that Alphus may have been provoked by the poodle, which the video shows barking insultingly at him. I and the museum, of course, were caught right in the middle andcame in for most of the blame for allegedly having created the situation in the first place.
    Litigation ensued. According to her attorneys, Ms. Toite, whose name, incidentally, is pronounced in the English fashion, remains in the throes of traumatic shock disorder and wants several million dollars for the pain and suffering of watching her pet get killed and eaten by “a rogue chimpanzee.”
    Through my connections with the SPD, I know I could have had Alphus destroyed one way or the other. But I desisted because I could not bring myself to order the killing of a chimpanzee, a species very much like us, after all. I and the museum got pelted from both the dog and ape