Monkey Attacks Woman in Florida, Is Now on the Lam

Since not a single day can elapse between weird happenings in Florida, here we go: the “Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay,” previously regarded by area residents as a harmless, colorful accent in their otherwise dull daily lives, attacked a woman and is now being hunted by Florida wildlife officials.

The woman, who is currently recovering from injuries she sustained during the attack and didn’t want to be named, told the Tampa Bay Times that she was just sitting on her porch Monday, minding her own business, when the monkey, a 40-pound wild rhesus macaque, jumped on her back in a very literal way and proceeded to gnaw and bite her skin, that being sort of a shtick in the simian world. The woman managed to reach back, grab the monkey’s leg, and fling him into the bushes (which would have probably been a hilariouscary thing to witness) before he ran away/swung/scampered away.

The woman, according to her daughter, “could hear the clicking of teeth” (monkeys are scary, you guys, for real), and suffered several puncture wounds, for which she was given a round of shots because monkeys carry lots of wonderful diseases. The monkey, meanwhile, remains at large. According to Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the monkey may have been cast out of a colony in Silver Springs, Fla. If trappers fail to capture the creature alive, Morse has said that they’ll be forced, in light of the recent attack, to shoot it because monkeys really can’t exist in suburbia.

Wildlife officials believe that residents had been feeding the monkey (a huge no-no), and that, thanks to this steady food supply, the monkey was able to settle comfortably into the area over the past year, achieving roughly the celebrity status of a local weather meteorologist.