By Jimmy Palmiotti

Its been a relatively quiet week and I was thinking I wouldn’t have much to write about and for the most part I was right, except this morning something happened that… well… was not a everyday thing to say the least.

For the past three days some giant Everglade-type bird has been sitting in one of my Florida home’s trees and it was acting the part of a rooster. As the sun came up each morning, this thing would screech on and off for the next few hours like someone got its nuts in a vice and was trying to extract information. Each morning it has done this and I was dealing with it like any Brooklyn boy would do… I would open up my window and yell at it to shut the hell up. Well, my neighbors found that very funny at least.

So, this morning, the bird is doing his usual “sun up” song and I go to close the windows thinking I might be able to reduce the shriek a tiny bit. I slid back into bed when suddenly I hear a loud thump on the roof of my home. At first, I thought it might be another drunk bird that had their flight path fatally interrupted by the location of my house, but this time it sounded a little bigger in density and I figured I would take a look and see if I could spot what was causing the disturbance.

So, I look out the window on to my deck and walking across one of he branches is… a monkey. At first I did the mother of double-takes… I couldn’t process what it was I was seeing and had to look closer… and there it was, making its way not 20 feet from me across the branch to another tree. I don’t know about you, but seeing a monkey in my tree made me both very excited and freaked at the same time. I woke Amanda up and we both ran to the other side of the house to get a glance, but as quick as it was there, it was gone. I ran downstairs and got on to the Internet and found this story… from the Tampa Bay Times:

January 14, 2009

Monkey on the lam in Clearwater

CLEARWATER — The search is over, at least for the moment, for the rhesus macaque running through Clearwater.

Officials are waiting for a tip from the public before they resume the search for the monkey, last seen Tuesday night at a strip mall.

“If I knew he was staying in that complex, we would probably go in with 12 traps and bait him,” said Vernon Yates, a trapper working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “I’ve got a sneaking feeling he’s already left and gone somewhere else.”

If you see the monkey, you can call the FWC wildlife hotline: 1-888-404-3922.

Yates said that when the call first came in Tuesday about 1:30 p.m., he was told it was a baboon. But when he arrived at the strip mall on the north side of Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard and the east side of U.S. 19, he saw a picture taken by a bystander. The photo looked like a macaque.

Yates spent the rest of the day in the shopping center and office complex, but the creature was elusive in the 60-foot-tall oak trees.

Authorities believe he is an unlicensed, escaped monkey and can be dangerous if cornered.

Yates said he guessed that Dumpster diving attracted the monkey to the complex on the northeast quadrant of U.S. 19 and Gulf-to-Bay. The strip mall has two Mexican restaurants, a seafood restaurant and a Chinese fast-food chain.

Yates said the monkey was “very streetwise” and seemed to know how to avoid people.

They were not able to shoot the monkey Tuesday with a dart gun because the darts could be deflected by the leaves on the trees.

“If you see the monkey, you should stay away from it,” Gary Morse, spokesman for the FWC, said this morning. “When a monkey is on the loose, it’s not the most pleasant thing.”

The monkey could carry hepatitis, Morse said. And that’s not the only reason to stay away.

“Monkeys’ social behavior can be pretty lewd,” Morse said. “They’re infamous for throwing feces at things they don’t like.”

FWC officers tried to trap the monkey Tuesday afternoon with a bucket truck and a dart gun.

“The wind was too much,” Morse said. “It fled.”

The monkey is an adult male thought to have escaped from an unlicensed source.”There is no one in the area licensed to have a rhesus macaque,” he said. “So where this one came from is up to speculation.”

The rhesus macaque species is known for swinging around Silver Springs, as well as for its role in medical research. As far as monkeys go, the rhesus fall in the medium range, about the size of a small child, Morse said.

Unlike the patas monkeys that escaped in April from former Lowry Park Zoo executive Lex Salisbury’s Safari Wild property in Polk County, rhesus monkeys are less terrestrial, Morse said.

“They hang out in trees,” he said. “They are very powerful.”

Jonathan Abel and Kameel Stanley, Times Staff Writers

Yeah, duh… they sure do hang out in trees! Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like poo being thrown on me for any reason… I’m just not that kind of kinky. I told my neighbor Dean about the monkey and one of the first things he said was that we can now flick lit cigarettes at it… man, don’t know why we would, but I found that very funny. My other neighbor asked me if I caught the monkey… equally as ridiculous. Honestly… what would I do with him once I caught him… teach him to type? Do Amanda’s backgrounds? We did give much thought about reporting it and all, but honestly, we live near a huge lake and wildlife preserve and isn’t that the job of the place to preserve the safety of animals? Unless there is another monkey lurking around, its not like he is going to repopulate the area with monkeys… but what a thought.

Well… whether it’s a good idea or bad, I’m not telling anyone in the government about my new little friend. I wish him the best of luck and offer up my grapefruit trees to him.

WATCHMEN: Saw it with Amanda, her parents and two friends and I enjoyed it for the most part, but its obvious how it might not work for people not into comics, and specifically Watchmen. There is a ton out there on this film as is, but my two cents is that I would cut all the Nixon scenes ASAP and put in TV footage with voice over. Nothing pulled me out of the film quicker than all those lousy fake politician shots. I do hope it makes a ton of business all over the world, but at the same time the filmmakers should take a good look at all the comic material they have to adapt in the future and understand the reasons comics work and the reason films work and try to keep that in mind. I personally enjoyed the film and will see it again. Anyone that knows me knows I support any R-rated film across the board, so it was cool to see a mature superhero film.

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT: Remake of the original and I thought mission accomplished as far as storytelling and suspense. Nowhere near as disturbing as the original, but fun nonetheless. It loses stars for the simple fact that they showed the last scene in the movie in the trailer. What a disastrous choice there. Its what kept most people I know from seeing it. What happened to the trailer that only shows us a “hint”?

THE REALM: This is an ad/flash comic for Cisco that I worked on and Mike Mayhew did art for it, which is stunning as usual… give it a look, its pretty cool.

PLAY MAGAZINE: Did an interview over there talking about all sorts of things with writer David chapman. Really cool web site for games comics and media. Check it out by clicking here.

ORIGINAL ART: I bought the original art to the cover of JONAH HEX # 1 from an art dealer handling the beautiful piece drawn in ink and watercolors by superstar frank quietly. It cost me quite a small fortune…but I got to say, I love it. So what if I miss a mortgage payment or three… when you got to have something, you just got to have it. All the art collectors out there understand that. To help with expenses I also put some art on eBay… so we shall see how that goes. Next time I just call Frank himself and try to trade some art. Lol… what good is being in this business if I can’t do that?

See you next week, till then please post… I will come back each day and answer or comment. Thanks.

Jimmy Palmiotti

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Listen to Jimmy Palmiotti, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.