AH ESCAPED BABOON

Evening Star, Issue 19409, 18 November 1926, Page 12

AH ESCAPED BABOON

ANTICS AT A CRYSTAL PALACE STATION An' escaped baboon in the booking office of the Crystal Palace high-level (Southern Railway) station for a time considerably enlivened the proceedings iu a recent morning “ rush ” period. After ihe discreet withdrawal of the booking clerk, the monkey, a female, was for several minutes in complete possession of the office, and employed the time first in ransacking it, and then at the window attending to the wants of passengers in her own way. Before shg was recaptured many passengers had missed their usual trains and many others had travelled without tickets, intending to pay at their destinations. The animal had been consigned in a wooden cage by a firm of naturalists to a private menagerie at the Crystal Palace. It was described as a dog-faced baboon about two years old, from Africa. The cage and monkey travelled by train from St. Paul’s station early in the moraine. an! at the high-level station the cage’ was put in the combined cloak room and hno.aug office, “(o bo called for.” Soon afterwards, according to the booking clerk, the baboon shook the bare of the cage so violently that it fell over on its sHe. T) ie monkey then kicked the bottom out of it and sprang up on to the gas bracket, showing her fangs to the clerk,, who went away to find help. Watched by a. porter through the ticket window, the baboon was seen -to swing off the gas bracket and make a tour of inspection of the office. She, turned out the ticket pigeonholes - and threw the tickets about the floor, opened bags full of copper change money, biting some ot the coins to find out if they were good to eat, and finally stationed herself at the window ant’ busied herself with the ticket-punching mn chine. The numerous faces now clustered on the safe side of the . window perhapt annoyed her, for soon she began to gather tickets and money in handfuls ■nd hurl them out. The -station master appeared' and announced that all who washed could travel without tickets and pay at Ihe other" end. Then he and a porter boarded up the office window, and a little later menagerie-keepers came across from the Crystal Palace, put a sack over the monkey, and took her awav.