From the zoo that brought you Kevin the sulking teenage colobus monkey came another tale of animals apeing all the worst in human behaviour. And this being Belfast, it ended in a shoot-out. Police have already had their hands full with pre-teen desperadoes this week, having caught a five-year old rioter in north Belfast. But yesterday officers had to go one further and open fire when a nine-year-old went nuts. But this time the little monkey was actually a chimpanzee.
The simian hooligan, called Phoebe, followed in the disreputable path taken by Kevin the colobus, who made headlines earlier in the summer when he fell out with his dad and went on the run in Belfast.
In true north Belfast fashion, he was exiled after being caught - just as errant teenagers are by paramilitaries - and was shipped off to Spain.
But when Phoebe managed to climb out of her compound yesterday using a log, and two other chimps followed her daring jail-break, police were called in to round them up. Within minutes, shots rang out and rumours swept Belfast that security forces had reverted to their bad old shoot-to-kill ways.
But officers denied firing at the chimps, which are regarded as dangerous when on the loose, and said they had fired warning shots into the air.
In another anthropomorphic twist, the chimps put their hands up and sheepishly returned to their enclosure.
The shooting incident was formally reported to the Police Ombudsman, as is required every time an officer opens fire with live ammunition.
But Nuala O'Loan's spokesman said: "At this stage we see no reason to investigate."
North Belfast has been the scene of widespread street violence in recent days and one off-duty police officer who saw what had happened said, tongue in cheek: "Chimps are clearly smarter than humans - you fire a couple of shots in the air and they surrender.
"You can fire plastic bullets and water cannon at rioters and they still throw petrol bombs at you."
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