Mail Order Monkey
- Thread starter krichardson
- Start date
From $18.95 to todays price of 9K. I guess I should have got into the monkey business years ago.
Thanks for the link, Dee. I had no idea that they were being sold out of comic book ads years ago. What a crazy stupid idea that was, not that selling them in Woolco Department stores was any better. I wish I could recall what the price tag was back then.
Thanks for the link, Dee. I had no idea that they were being sold out of comic book ads years ago. What a crazy stupid idea that was, not that selling them in Woolco Department stores was any better. I wish I could recall what the price tag was back then.
I think it's a decade or two more recent than that.
I know that in 1970 our K-Mart...which was the source of all my non-self-caught fish and non-DIY supplies...still sold Squirrel Monkeys, Capuchins, Myna birds, Toucans, monstrous fully-grown Black-and-White Tegus and other exotics. A local pet store also had Lemurs, Ocelots, Margays and even a Gibbon. By the mid-70's, when I was working part-time after school at another pet shop, we still had some weird stuff; I vividly recall when my job included taking a Kinkajou for a walk down the road each day on leash. We weren't the best of buds; he was a nasty little spud who would latch on and bite with almost no provocation. When he was having a bad day, mere eye contact was sufficient to set him off. It's difficult to run away from a critter when you are holding his leash and half-dragging him along behind you.
Monkeys were the worst. I swear that they carefully monitored their own diets in order to produce feces that were of the ideal consistency for forming into deadly little poop-balls that were flung with force and accuracy. Various other bodily secretions were utilized as flung ammunition as well...they definitely enjoyed waiting until they had an audience oohing and aahing at them before they produced and then threw their...concoctions.
That place sure had an awesome selection of exotic animals...all I can recall any Kmart having is guinea pigs,gerbils and parakeets!
I agree - looks to be an ad from the 50's. Also, thank you! I could not remember if it was the Woolco, or Kmart store in Windsor that sold the squirrel monkeys etc. I also remembered the Mynah birds, and especially the Toucans! I was telling a younger co-worker of mine about that pet dept just a couple months back, he looked at me in total disbelief. I don't recall the Capuchin monkeys, or the Black & White Tegus, or probably a lot of other things from back then. At that age I didn't make it outside of Riverside often, and I'm afraid that I never made it to pet store with Ocelots etc. That is insane.
That's right, I'd forgotten you were a local boy from that area as well!
Yes, it was the K-Mart in the far east end of the city (Lauzon/Tecumseh) which had all the cool stuff; Woolco was across the road, but I don't recall if they had a pet department. Oddly enough, I can't recall the name of the smaller store in the west end that sold exotics, or the one in the east end that had the Lemurs, even though I visited them often. The lady in the K-Mart pet department knew me and my family well, but I think she always got a bit nervous when I offered to help out when it came to handling some critter of which she was afraid.That's why I recall the Tegus so vividly; a young lady was buying one for her husband, and the sales clerk was scared green of them, so I offered to grab one and stuff it into the travel box for her. Once I got hold of the thing, which I recall as being the approximate size of an adult Nile Crocodile but was probably a fair bit smaller
, it wrapped its hind feet around my left hand with with a horror-movie grip, while my right hand gripped the thing behing the head. The lizard was open-mouthed, squirming furiously and whipping its tail around like an Indiana-Jones bullwhip, clearing shelves of merchandise and leaving a livid welt across the purchaser's forehead. I have rarely worked so hard at simply trying to set something down in my life!There was a Towers store in south Windsor that had a well-stocked and well-run fish department, sort of a franchise-within-a-franchise, operated by an older German gentleman who sold me many fish as I grew older and always had time to answer questions. He periodically gave me store credit on things I collected and brought in for trade; baby gar, hatchling Snapping Turtles and Painted Turtles, Red-spotted Newts and on one memorable occasion a small Massassauga Rattlesnake that my mother forbade me to keep for some silly reason.
There was also the seductively-named Mermaid Aquarium on Wyandotte, which would from time to time get shipments of newly-hatched sea turtles. I wanted one of those badly, but could never come up with the scratch for one, which was certainly for the best as I recall all of them as being on death's door when they were offered. A visit to Mermaid was a rare treat, as my mother disapproved of both the name and the hand-painted mural of a flamboyantly voluptuous semi-aquatic lady on their front window. The only time I got to go there was when I was out and about with just my dad, who frequented a nearby electronics store and also indulgently encouraged most of my interests and hobbies...and I think he liked that mural...
Insane? Yes...but a different world then...
