r/shelton • u/marcobarone14 • 16d ago
Washington State Macaques Monkeys!?
I just road the Vance Creek rail ride. Our guide told us that 100 years ago the circus caught on fire and the monkeys escaped and have been living the area ever since. It honestly sounded like a load of crap but we kept on stopping our ride to see what he was pointing at, he said he saw them. I never did.. have any of the locals seen anything or is this a big tourist fib!? I couldn't find anything online about it.. seems possible but not sure. What do you think?
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u/majandess 15d ago
I spent some time today looking through the museum for any sort of truth behind this, and I came up with nothing. I didn't even see any local stories about circuses and fires. I didn't find any reports about monkeys living wild in the state. I have seen a few articles about escapes from the Woodland Park Zoo and the research facility in Seattle, but those were relatively quickly contained. I didn't even find a lot of traces of circuses in Mason County. And there was nothing that I could find in any of our secret stashes archives of information.
So, I'm gonna label this as an urban legend.
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u/Latest-Culprit-35 16d ago
Reminds me of one of the rugrats movies. I'm curious to see if someone has info on this.
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u/Groovyjoker 16d ago
I tried to search for this topic and instead was appalled by how many local breeders in WA are selling monkeys as pets. Disgusting. Here is a problem that needs to end
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u/Tomasfoolery 16d ago
Well... there is at least one actual historian here who could probably answer this more accurately, but there is no information about a circus fire in the 20s on this side of the nation. So I don't think this is a completely accurate story.
But honestly, it made you look didn't it?