Jealous monkey eases pain with ABC Stout

File this one under “Why is it not surprising that she would only drink the most expensive beer on the menu?”

Kay Kimsong
The Cambodia Daily

Forestry officials will investigate reports that customers at a Battambang province restaurant have been plying a pet monkey with multiple cans of ABC Stout after it developed a taste for the eight-percent alcoholic drink, an official said Wednesday.

Three-year-old Mira recently started drinking at least three cans of stout per day, apparently to cope with jealously caused by waitresses pretending to flirt with male customers, according to Rath Sorphea, owner of Sorphea Restaurant in Battambang district.

Ty Sokhun, director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Forestry Administration, said he would examine the situation, although there is no law to protect the rights of domesticated animals. “A monkey drinking beer is a small problem,” he added.

Since one of Rath Sorphea’s sons brought the female monkey to the restaurant a month ago, customers have regularly treated Mira to multiple cans of ABC — the only beer she would drink, Rath Sorphea said.

“She looked sad when she saw a man joking with the girl … she seemed like a girl who lost her boyfriend,” she said. “Mira only drinks ABC.”

Mira has brought prosperity to the restaurant, she said. But seeing Mira drunk made Rath Sorphea so sad that three days ago, she entrusted the female monkey to one of her regular customers to keep the animal away from alcohol.

Seng Teak, country director for World Wide Fund for Nature, a wildlife protection group, said Mira’s species — which was not clear on Wednesday — would have to be considered endangered for the animal to be protected by law.

But letting a monkey drink is definitely a bad idea, he added.

“You cannot give alcohol to animals [because] the won’t get used to this kind of thing,” he said. “We’ve never studied this kind of thing, but it’s definitely not the way animals eat in nature.”

Seng Teak acknowledged that monkeys in their natural habitat might encounter alcohol in fermented fruit, but “not to the level of ABC Stout.”

(Additional reporting by Jason McBride)

This story, of course, was shamelessly stolen from today’s CaDa, so it seemed only right to include the byline.