Tommy the Hartly monkey

I must have missed an article in the paper at some point, or maybe this monkey is like the Jimmy Hoffa of Delaware. I saw in the paper yesterday about a demolition that reveals "Tommy's bones." It sounds interesting enough, so I read the story. Apparently there was some legend about a monkey being buried in a building and they found the monkey bones when they tore it down. What I am missing from this story (and maybe this was part 2 of an article that I simply overlooked), is who the heck is Tommy the monkey and why are so many people so worked up over this? I'm not one to criticize writing, but most informational news reporting provides at least some background to explain the point. This one did not.

All I get out of this story is that there was some legend of Tommy the monkey in Hartly and that he died of pneumonia in 1941 after the presently demolished building caught fire and the monkey and the firefighter's hose crossed swords. Presumably, the building's owners buried him in the walls of the rebuilt building. And that's all she wrote. Was this a town pet or something? I don't know.

Unsurprisingly, there's nothing on the internet about Tommy the monkey either. So I am left to my own assumptions about why this is such an interesting story, and perhaps some more enlightened reader can point me out to fill in the gaps this article certainly created in its report.

Tags: tommy the monkey, monkey bones found in wall