(Via Youtube)
The former owner of the well-dressed monkey found wandering around a Toronto IKEA entrance has said she’s writing a book to raise funds to get him back.
Yasmin Nakhuda, the lawyer who once owned the Rhesus macaque named Darwin, had the monkey taken away when it escaped from her car in an IKEA parking lot, to the delight of several onlookers.
Darwin, nattily-dressed in a shearling coat, was handed over to animal services.
It is illegal in Toronto to keep macaques as pets, but Nakhuda later protested the seizure, saying she’d been tricked into surrendering him.
In addition to writing a children’s book titled Darwin, Nakhuda will be holding a dinner at a Mississauga restaurant to raise funds for her lawsuit against the animal refuge where Darwin now lives.
i wonder what the ikea monkey is doing right now
— waffles+falafels (@wafflesgirls) March 19, 2013
She is said to have sold 250 tickets already at $75 a piece.
Nakhuda told the Toronto Star:
It’s very expensive to fight for him; we’re looking at $200,000 to $300,000 to get it done. You can love and you can try all of that, but at the end somebody has to write the cheque and pay the bill.
She claims to have already spent more than $138,000 in legal costs.
Darwin currently lives at the Story Book Farm primate sanctuary in Sunderland, Ontario, and is said to be doing well.
98% of Canadian IKEA stores are getting complaints about their lack of monkeys
— Stats Canada (@stats_canada) December 10, 2012
The only time Toronto makes international news is when our Mayor falls over or someone finds a well-dressed monkey.
— Nicholas Hune-Brown (@nickhunebrown) December 10, 2012
Here he is! Darwin, the @ikeamonkey at his new home at the Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary!twitpic.com/bkw2ee
— Melissa Grelo (@melissagrelo) December 10, 2012
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