A man went to pick up his car from the airport and found an unexpected visitor—a monkey perched on top of his vehicle.
Reddit user u/disgruntledmarmoset, who goes by the pseudonym Geoffrey, 26, shared his surprise encounter in a post on the subreddit “animalid”, racking up 5,800 upvotes.
On October 14, Geoffrey had just arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) on a Spirit Airlines flight out of LaGuardia Airport, New York, and made his way to the car park, expecting nothing more than a routine trip home. Instead, he found himself face-to-face with a primate.
“My car is kinda high and I wasn’t expecting any surprises, so I didn’t see him at first. I heard like a scratching sound and looked up and saw him. I was like W**!” Geoffrey told Newsweek.
In his Reddit post, he detailed his attempt to handle the situation, sharing, “That’s when I took the picture. I hit the lock button to see if the sound would make him run, but it didn’t.”
The monkey, standing over the driver’s side passenger door, seemed unfazed. But Geoffrey wasn’t about to let his new friend hang out for long. “I opened and slammed [the door] to see if he’d run, and it worked. He scurried down over my windshield and hood and ran away, and that was it,” he said.
Monkeys in FloridaGeoffrey’s experience, though surprising to many, sheds light on a little-known fact: Florida is home to various colonies of non-native monkeys and the primate population has exploded in recent years.
Some, like the Green Vervet monkey, which Redditors have identified as the mystery monkey, have been thriving in certain areas for decades.
One colony of Vervet monkeys has been living near Fort Lauderdale for over 80 years.
The mystery monkey. The 26-year-old was surprised when he returned to his vehicle to see an uninvited guest on top of it.
u/disgruntledmarmoset/u/disgruntledmarmoset
These monkeys escaped from the Dania Chimp Farm in the 1940s, the farm previously known as the Anthropoid Ape Research Foundation (ARFF). The monkeys were used for both entertainment and research.
Now, the project serves as a sanctuary for the free-ranging apes of the area.
Reddit Reacts: ‘Only in Florida’Unsurprisingly, Geoffrey’s post sparked a lively conversation on Reddit, with many users chiming in about their unexpected run-ins with wild animals.
“I thought seeing a coyote once in a while was scary,” wrote one user, marveling at Geoffrey’s experience.
Another user, pbounds2, identified the animal, commenting, “Green Vervet monkey, invasive. Found this— they’ve been there for ~80 years.”
This revelation surprised more than a few people, including one commenter who quipped, “What the hell, Florida. Every week I learn about a new invasive species you have that’s been there for decades.”
One Floridian even offered a fun fact: “There’s a large colony of them that hang out at the Fort Lauderdale Airport Park N Fly. They’re fun to go look at. Not sure on type though.”
One user summed it up perfectly: “That’s amazing!! I love that they have people working to protect them. I had no idea there were monkeys in Florida. I’m shocked!”
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Source : Newsweek