Gorilla Trapping.

[FAX]

Well, here's the problem as I see it. Bananas might work, but gorillas in the wild aren't used to finding them just laying on the ground. Gorillas are likely genetically inclined to climbing trees for those and distrustful of earth-bound bananas. Alternatively, using a sexually attractive female gorilla for bait is a possibility. Unfortunately, selecting an attractive female gorilla is difficult at best, I mean, how can you tell what a gorilla looks for in a girl? Flat nose? Sloping forehead?

Then, there's the problem of the trapping device itself. Do you use a big net and sling up the gorilla with snare ropes when he comes by? Or, do you use a bamboo box trap hung from the trees and drop it on the bugger? How fast are gorillas anyway? Anybody know? The one thing you don't want is an almost trapped, pissed off gorilla looking for the big joker that tried to catch him in a box.

I know that you, the Planeteers, are men of science and are well versed in the ways of metalurgy, explosives, and sexual tension. So, I figured that, if a guy wants to know how to trap a gorilla, this would be the best place to start. To that end, please advise as to the methods you would employ and thanks.

FAX

Disclaimers: Sorry if repost.

[FAX]

Originally Posted by Halfcan

So YOU are the one that does those hoaxes.

Don't encourage him, Mr. Halfcan. Next thing you know, he'll be posting pictures of his Ducksquatch suit.

FAX

[boogblaster]

Last time I traped a gorilla we used the old small-hole trap...get a large tree..on one of the larger limbs, drill a hole all the way thru just big enough for the ape to get his hand in..place a piece of fruit on the other side, any fruit will work..the gorilla will stick his hand thru the hole grabbing the fruit, thus making a fist, it cannot slide his fist back thru the hole..he is trapped..because he's too greedy to let go of the fruit..dumb-fricking ancestor.....

[Redrum_69]

Theres only one way that works true everytime.


Women...especially blondes.

[Redrum_69]

Originally Posted by Zebedee DuBois

Mr. FAX,

Upon reflection, I would advise you to disregard any and all advise or conjecture I rendered on the subject of gorilla catching. I spent the better part of the 1980s, and a small Brinks truck full of quarters, trying to catch one gorilla. Every time I got close, he climbed up another level and threw more barrels at me.

Regretfully,
Zeb

Damn...thanks...Full Throttle all over my cubicle and all the prairie dogs standing up in their cubicles wondering why the big guy is snorting

[Rain Man]

I'm pondering this question, but I first have to ask: lowland or mountain gorilla?

And for people who know me, you'll know that I'm going to be pretty mad if the answer is lowland.

[Iowanian]

I'm hiring Jane Goodall to make gorilla sounds on the sunny face of a mountain jungle early in the morning. When the group of gorillas come in, I'll snatch their asses with snares, tie to them together and walk them down to camp under threat of a box of sparklers.

I'm not afraid to light one and draw shapes in the air in the twighlight of the morning either!

[Redrum_69]

This is whats bad....

"Man is gorilla's only enemy. Because of the actions of male gorillas protecting their groups with such determination from hunters, humans developed a folklore about the ferocity of gorillas. Gorillas' defense of standing and chest-beating make them a perfect target. Like all tightly knit social groups, gorillas will defend their young. They defend them with their lives."


Also...FYI...the daily routine of gorillas....just for those who attempt to trap it:


6am-8am: Wake-up
8am-10am: Eat
10am-2pm: Eat, play, relax, sleep
2pm-5pm: Travel 300-6,000 feet - foraging on the way
5pm-6pm: Build nest
6pm-6am: Sleep

[Redrum_69]

Its very important to note that you need to learn their behaviors...such as the following:


Gorillas learn from their mothers and other adults what to eat, social and sexual behavior and how to rear young. They care for their babies with great affection, patience and playfulness. Energetic, mischevious youngsters are disciplined with stern vocalizations (pig-like grunts), body posturing and strong looks. Gorillas also chuckle, smile and purr. They are gentle and intelligent. Gorillas feel deeply and remember for years. Groups are not territorial and generally avoid each other, but when they do meet, sometimes threats and fighting occur, with the silverback remaining to challenge the attacker while the rest of the group flees. To intimidate his opponent, the silverback stands upright to appear larger, beats on his chest, roars, waves his arms, tears branches and charges. This is all done to frighten off, not harm, other males. Distress behavior includes diarrhea and strong, pungent body odor.

[FAX]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm pondering this question, but I first have to ask: lowland or mountain gorilla?

And for people who know me, you'll know that I'm going to be pretty mad if the answer is lowland.

What's the difference, Mr. Rain Man? I was thinking the ones that live near trees. Is that mountain? Maybe the lowdown guys are easier to get, though.

FAX

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FAX

What's the difference, Mr. Rain Man? I was thinking the ones that live near trees. Is that mountain? Maybe the lowdown guys are easier to get, though.

FAX

Well, for those of you who don't pay attention, I discovered last year that I was adopted, and that I actually am a lowland mountain gorilla.

[FAX]

Originally Posted by Redrum_69

... Distress behavior includes diarrhea and strong, pungent body odor.

Not particularly good news, here.

FAX

[FAX]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Well, for those of you who don't pay attention, I discovered last year that I was adopted, and that I actually am a lowland mountain gorilla.

I was thinking mountain. Yep. Mountain. Definately.

FAX

[Simplex3]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm pondering this question, but I first have to ask: lowland or mountain gorilla?

And for people who know me, you'll know that I'm going to be pretty mad if the answer is lowland.

Told you guys.

[Rain Man]

Here's my confession, from a long-lost past thread.

Since we're sharing....


Oh, crap. I hope I don't regret this.



(Deep breath.) Okay, this is the great thing about the Internet. You can be who you are, or you can be who you want to be, or you can be what people think you are. I guess you can also be what people think you want to be, too, regardless of whether that's what you are or want to be.

You all probably have your own mental image of me. Some of those images are probably flattering, and some of them are probably not so flattering, and that’s okay. I figure the typical view is probably that I’m extremely handsome, and that I could lift Rich Scanlon over my head until he cries if I wanted to. You probably think I have some sort of super robot brain, and that maybe I was left here as a sentry for some civilization that doesn’t even have the freaking infrastructure to get a guy a new xilanthium beacon when his old one has been broken for over four years now. Four years!

Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s all wrong. And it’s time that I made it right.

Growing up, I always felt like I was different than the other kids. I don’t know if that’s because I was born with a small tail, but nonetheless it seemed to start early. While the other kids were toddling around playing with tea sets and GI Joes, I was out on my hands and knees, looking for bugs and eating them. I’m not saying that was right and I'm not saying that was wrong, but it was what I was interested in. Yet for some reason it was okay to make fun of me just because I was in the woods eating a beetle instead of sitting on the porch and pretending to send GI Joe into the woods to eat a beetle? Whatever. I was living life, and you were playing with a doll. And it doesn’t matter if it’s carrying a helmet and a rifle, it’s still a doll! A white, pasty, hairless human doll.

I could never relate to dolls, even when they were action figures. The little Lego people were very square, and the little Weeble people were very round, and none of them were like me. I could never put my finger on it, but there was something about them that was very foreboding to someone like me.

I stunk at shop in school. I could never figure out which tools were used for what. Everyone else seemed to just know. It was hardwired into them, and for me it was just a total mystery. For me, the only thing that was hardwired was a love of exotic places. I saw an episode of “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” when I was about six, where the grandfather visited and wanted to take Eddie on a trip to the Amazon and the dad, while he didn’t turn into the Hulk, was upset about it and said that Eddie couldn’t go, and I couldn’t understand it. Who wouldn’t want to go to the Amazon, or Africa, or any of a million other exotic places?

I poured myself into geography, and loved looking at maps. I memorized all of the capitals, especially those that were buried in the heart of the jungle in some third-world place that was a hellhole for most people but which was innately irresistible to me. Bangui, Kinshasa, Kampala, Bujumbura. These places rolled off my tongue and I counted the days until I was old enough that I could flee the Ozarks and visit them. No one else knew what I was talking about, or cared. I loved Tarzan movies, and I always saw myself running alongside him or just hanging out in his treehouse.

That reminds me of something else. I was really hairy as a little kid. That didn’t help. We moved a lot, and I'd be trying to fit in in gym class and it’s a new school and I'm the only kid that doesn’t seem to know anybody, and the effeminate kid, Greg, is pointing out that I have more hair than the rest of the class put together. And it’s true. I was a wolf boy, or so I thought at the time.

There was a moment, an exact moment in time, when I realized that I had to know more about who I was. We had two theaters in my town, the Uptown and the Ritz, and they were both those old-time theaters where you had one enormous screen and a balcony and popcorn that they kept in the basement in a big trash can if they didn’t sell it all the night before. It was the late 1970s and someone had made a remake of King Kong, and I think Jessica Lange was in it as Fay Wray, but I could be wrong. So anyway, we’re watching this movie, me and Greg (yeah, that Greg) and Randy and Steve and Duane, and we’re eating our musty popcorn and King Kong is on top of the Empire State Building and he loves Fay Wray, so he’s holding her all carefully and trying to fight off the planes, and then he falls.

One hundred and two floors he falls. He hits the ground and he dies and the people in the audience are either laughing or saying ‘ooh’ or just eating their popcorn, and I start crying. Right there in the theater as a thirteen year-old kid, I start crying. It just wasn’t right what they did to him. He only wanted what we all want, a woman to love him and a job with the circus and a place to relax at night eating shoots and berries. Why could nobody see that? They killed him, and everyone thought it was good thing, just because he was a giant ape.

My friends made fun of me, sitting there crying in the theater, and I ran out, thanking God for the darkness. I got around to an alley and I hated myself, and I remember pounding my body with my fists, pounding, pounding, pounding, and shrieking, and I remember charging at this old homeless man who started to come toward me, and suddenly everything just felt right. I ran home and confronted my mother. I wanted to know who I really was, not some story. She stuck by her tired old claims that my blood is German and English, with a little French, and she covered her ears when I told her that wasn’t right. Things have never been quite the same for us since.

I did a lot of reading and I did a lot of soul-searching. I checked old newspaper records for circus arrivals, and I’ve researched zoo manifests, to no avail. Maybe it’s just a weird twist of the cosmos, a mixing of genes from the primordial soup, back when a little more hair and the ability to eat bamboo shoots with your feet was no different than having red hair or green eyes. Maybe there was a chance encounter that my mother has banished to the dungeons in her mind, an encounter of which I and perhaps a couple of shattered banana daiquiri glasses were the only lasting physical evidence. Who knows? Yet I know what is true.

I don’t know my story, and I don’t know my background, and I probably never will. But after peeling back the layers of society and my identity and this false mannequin that is my self-knowledge, I know now who I am, and after 42 years on this earth I’m going to tell you, and it will be the first time I’ve shared this with anyone.

I am Kevin, a resident of Denver. I am a happily married husband, a diligent homeowner, and a hard-working business owner.

And I am a lowland gorilla.

I’m sharing this because I’m proud of who I am. Will I ever go to the central African jungle and take my ‘rightful place’ with the troop? Probably not, though I can’t say that I haven’t been torn. This place of steel and brick and concrete is my world, even if a part of my heart wants to live among my own. I just hope that, after sharing this, I can continue to be a part of this community and that you won’t hate me and kill me and make an ash tray out of my hand, just because I’m not like you.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FAX

I was thinking mountain. Yep. Mountain. Definately.

FAX

Oh. If it's mountain, that's fine. Those guys are dumbasses. I'll put together a plan.