Three Way News

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Capuchin monkeys are active and noisy

Oh, Sweet Jambo, I'm sorry about the iPod thing. Well, not really, but I am thankful you alerted me to the SWAT monkey:

Send in the SWAT monkey.

It's not an order police commanders are accustomed to giving, but that could change if an Arizona police department follows through on a proposal to train a capuchin monkey for high-risk police operations.

A Special Weapons and Tactics veteran from Mesa, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, has researched the possibility of landing a $100,000 federal grant to fund a pilot program to train one monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," Sean Truelove told the East Valley Tribune, a local newspaper. "It could change the way we do business."

Plus this nugget from a different version of the same story:

Weighing only 3 to 8 pounds with tiny humanlike hands and puzzle-solving skills, Truelove said it could unlock doors, search buildings and find suicide victims on command. Dressed in a Kevlar vest, video camera and two-way radio, the small monkey would be able to get into places no officer or robot could go.

Monkey -- a law school chum of great size, talent, and wit -- postulated 10 years ago that every movie is better with a monkey. This led to two corollaries: every movie with a monkey would be worse if the monkey were removed, and every movie without a monkey would be improved by the addition of a monkey. (For film purposes, the term "monkey" really means monkeys and apes. After all, Every Which What But Loose would've sucked with a monkey and Friends would've been worse if Marcel had been a lumbering ape.)

Perhaps everything, every where is better with the addition of a monkey or ape. Imagine Road House with a Tai Chi wielding orangutan. What if Minnesota's senatorial delegation included one retiring member and one chimpanzee? What if Ann Coulter's recent appearances had been interrupted by feces-throwing macaques? (I'm against people throwing pies at Coulter. By monkeys throw feces. It's what they do. If monkey feces happens to hit Ann Coulter, I'll laugh and laugh.)

Obviously, this idea hasn't been thought through. First, the monkey needs to be armed. He can't be the only SWAT member without a weapon. The other guys will make fun of him. Second, what's a monkey going to do with a two way radio? Or are they going to train someone to translate "ooh-ooh ooh-ooh oooh-oh! ee-eee! aaah!" from monkey to English?