Monkey in a smart coat visits suburban Ikea

A monkey in a nice coat escaped from a cage inside its owner's car, opened the car door, and strolled into an Ikea in North York, a suburb of Toronto. The monkey was removed shortly thereafter. I have been stuck in that Ikea and I can testify that whatever your feelings about the ethics of keeping a pet monkey (or sticking it in a cage in your car), it is certainly a mercy to remove the monkey from that Ikea.

in the future, humour = twitter account creation
— Ikea Monkey (@IKEAmonkey) December 9, 2012

The incident spawned two parody Twitter accounts: @IKEAmonkey and @Ikea_Monkey, the former being more prolific (and having made overtures of peace and cooperation to the latter, without, it seems, any success).

At around 3 p.m. ET, the diminutive primate was spotted in the store’s upper parking lot, where it was cornered by several Ikea staff members, who also called animal control to come retrieve the monkey.

Mysterious monkey in posh miniature winter coat found alone at Toronto Ikea [National Post] (via MeFi)

(Image: Umm saw a monkey in the #ikea parking lot. by #broniewyn)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: canada • Delightful Creatures • fashion • Funny • toronto • twitter • web theory

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fuzzyfuzzyfungus

C’mon internets! There had better be an adorable monkey-antics video (set to the good Mr. Coulton’s “Ikea”, naturally) on youtube by noon.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants

It was COLD yesterday in Toronto! It snowed, freezing rain, and winds, the whole shebang. I’m really glad this little guy made a break for it and will now get to spend his life in a sanctuary. Stupid people. (Also, that Ikea, on a Sunday afternoon during the xmas season = several hours in line, morons!)
toyg

I don’t know why, but I simply cannot find any monkey “funny”, in any circumstance whatsoever. I’m either sad for their captive conditions, or scared shitless by the thought that between us and them there’s so little difference, they might be laughing at us for all we know.

I don’t care for pandas though. Pandas are dumb, deheheh.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I hate pandas. They look like clowns.
  
  And I’m not too thrilled with monkeys either. After spending time in India and Nepal where monkeys knock people down on city streets to steal their groceries, they don’t seem in the least bit cute.
  - toyg
    
    Yeah, but isn’t it sort of comforting, knowing that they’re “just” regular bullies, albeit vicious? They’re after your loot, not your life.
    
    Koalas are much scarier. They sit there, eating, thinking… and then they look at you with an empty stare, like a serial killer trying to determine whether he wants to keep eating his bamboo or would rather cut you into bloody little pieces, y’know, for the fun of it.
Mitch_M

It really becomes not funny once you process it a little. A scared, confused animal was captured and then held in a strange place separate from the people he has bonded with.
petz79

That’s what I call a monkey business!
http://twitter.com/gths Ǥɍǡḩḁᶆ Ӻᴙᴇᴇᴍᴀᴎ

I’m trying to think of a joke about monkeys, Ikea and Skinner boxes but my heart isn’t in it. Poor monkey. :(
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Watch the monkey get shelves! MONKEY!! :(
Jellodyne

The IKEA MONKË are really cute this year!
VBartilucci

How it didn’t up in the ball-pit is beyond me.

Heck, if I were in Ikea marketing, I’d have tried to get it to assemble a bookcase or two, just to prove a point.
- TheKaz1969
  
  You have to be 40″ tall to enter SMALAND…
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

He had to wind his way through the entire store before he could get out the other side.
gromit32767

North York was subsumed into Toronto in the 1998 amalgamation so it can’t accurately be called a suburb of Toronto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamation_of_Toronto#1998_amalgamation
- http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi
  
  The word suburb has varied definitions. In Australia suburb is simply is simply used where a North American might say district or neighbourhood, i.e. even inner areas of cities are referred to as suburbs. Although they’re not usually referred to in the slang term “the burbs” nor are they referred to as suburbia. The terms inner-suburb or outer-suburb are used to distinguish the two when necessary as well.
  
  It is a little surprising that Cory has used the term like that, as he’s a Canadian expat living in the UK and my experience in Toronto (where I’ve been the last 4 months) and the UK (where I’ve spent far less time) I’ve not heard the word used in the same manner as it is in Australia or New Zealand.
  - http://twitter.com/anonotwit anonotwit
    
    I hear or see people use the word “suburb” or one of its variants fairly often to refer to North York, Etobicoke, etc.
- GregS
  
  I live in Toronto and I call North York a suburb, even though it is part of the city. Most people here use the word suburb to describe an area of a city that’s (1) outside of the downtown core, and (2) relatively new (i.e. postwar). Maybe another way to think of it is that the suburbs are the urban areas designed around the automobile, as opposed to the older parts of the city that were designed primarily for people on foot.
- Jerril
  
  At least in my part of Ontario, “suburburban” is an adjective describing a neighborhood of a city that is “not urban” ie “not apartment buildings, not downtown lifestyle”, whatever.
  
  Single family or semi-detached homes, lawns (tree optional but recommended), your own driveway and even your own garage? You’re in the suburbs.
  
  If you either don’t have a car because it’s annoying, or you park on the street or in a shared lot with the other 4-400 families in your building, and everyone up and down your street is the same? You’re downtown.
  
  There’s a subset of “downtown” involving very narrow single-family brownstone buildings packed in shoulder to shoulder and usually 3 floors, that predate the automobile. These probably used to qualify as “suburban” but got overrun :)
BarBarSeven

Fake. Who dresses up to go to Ikea?
- GregS
  
  Apparently monkeys do.
TheKaz1969

Toronto is so friggin’ cool…
- http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
  
  Sure is. We got monkeys in IKEA and a baboon’s ass for a mayor.
jimh

My, but that is a very smart coat.
feetleet

How is THAT a smartcoat, Q? The coat falls conspicuously short in the hidden compartment and ejector seat departments. And it’s clearly bespoke for that monkey – probably doesn’t even take USB.
http://twitter.com/ErnestValdemar Ernest Valdemar

Monkey’s next stop: Yonge Street!

http://youtu.be/q3c2vLFJZCs

“There’s a rainbow in Toronto,
Where the monkeyshiners are bold . . .”
soylent_plaid

Damnit, that’s the Ikea near my place. WHY DIDN’T I GO TO IKEA YESTERDAY???