DanMargarita.com

One day after the Boston Globe featured a story about the problem of gorillas escaping from various wildlife sanctuaries, a 300-pound gorilla named Little Joe bolted for the second time in two months from the Franklin Park Zoo and cut a 2-year old and bit a zoo worker. Zookeepers say that Little Joe posed less of a threat to humans than Hoss or Adam would have (a "Bonanza" reference that few people under 35 will get unless they're "TV Land" addicts).

In his most recent adventure, Little Joe made it off the zoo premises and into the surrounding neighborhood, with one resident claiming to have seen Little Joe at a bus stop. Little Joe, perhaps lacking "exact change," then wandered to a nearby wooded area, where he was captured with the help of four tranquilizer darts---the same number it used to take to bring down Dan Blocker.

Some zoo workers took refuge in a ticket booth where Little Joe menaced them by banging on the booth and pressing his face up against the glass. The workers said they often deal with such behavior before pointing out that the sign says suggested donation.

Little Joe may have escaped in the same manner as he had previously when his long arms and lean body enabled him to scale the moat and a wall designed to separate him from the general public, which zoo officials apparently didn't make sufficient effort to remedy.

The Globe piece states that "young males can start to become a problem between the ages of 10 and 19 when they start to become more interested in females." And to think that creationists don't believe that humans are related to apes. The gorillas also tend to pay less attention in school and play their music loudly.

The article goes on to quote Victor Camp of Minnesota's Como Zoo, or Victor Como of Minnesota's Camp Zoo, I'm not sure which is which, as comparing the problem to the "bar male syndrome." That is when guys are getting along fine in a bar until the women arrive and the males begin "strutting their stuff." Camp also notes that the gorillas love to play "pull my finger" and argue "tastes great" versus "less filling."

This is somewhat ironic considering that my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary opens the definition of "gorilla" with (and I'm not making this up) "deriv. of Gk Gorillai, believed to be the name of an alleged African tribe of hairy women." A tribe of hairy women in a bar are probably the last ones that a bunch of guys will hit on.

Little Joe's escapes are by no means the first. A male gorilla named Hercules escaped from the Dallas Zoo in 1998 and bit a zookeeper before dragging her down a hallway. Of course, any self-respecting gorilla would've carried her to the top of the highest building.

The Franklin Park Zoo had attempted to deal with the increasingly aggressive gorillas a few years ago by giving them antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. That proved to be ineffective and the zoo is considering psychotherapy.

Let's hope the Franklin Park Zoo gets its act together and starts keeping the wild animals IN the zoo.

Two citizens have been injured and no doubt a lawsuit will be pending. It's pretty easy to imagine what the plaintiff's testimony will be:

YOU MANIACS! DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!