A wild monkey scourge is swinging its way across Central Florida. The adorable rhesus macaque was thought to have been introduced by the crew filming the movie Tarzan Finds a Son. The way the legend goes, three rhesus monkey couples were placed on Monkey Island in Silver Springs. Other legends say the monkeys were released as a way to promote the local filming and had nothing to do with the movie at all. Legends aside, the little primates can swim and soon made short order of the Silver River. For a while, they simply entertained visitors to the Silver River State Park and the Silver Springs Tourist Trap/Park. Eighty years later, however, theyve been spotted as far north as Jacksonville and as far south as Sarasota. In a state plagued by non-native species like gargantuan pythons, biting iguanas and Gambian pouched rats, the monkeys dont seem that bad. They dont seem to have much impact on the environment and have become prey for alligators, foxes, owls and bobcats, native species in dire need of food. In many ways, theyre like the mute swans of New York, beautiful, inspiring and just plain awesome to see. Of course, in Florida, that would only come from a macaque. The odd qualities of Florida could fill so many pages they would rival the annals of Herodotus, but those are for another day.
