Sentence Handed Down in Vicious Meerkat Keeper-on-Monkey Handler Assault
Here comes a crazy-ass paragraph, via the Guardian. Strap in!
A meerkat-keeper has been ordered to pay £800 in compensation after glassing a love-rival monkey handler in a row over a llama-keeper at a Christmas party.
Sentencing was handed down in the greatest tale of zookeeper-on-zookeeper-over-zookeeper violence of any of our lifetimes: £1,000 worth of fines and a 12-month “community order.” Let’s deconstruct this thing, for old times’ sake.
Caroline Westlake worked in the meerkat area of the London Zoo. Meerkats, I understand, are small carnivores in the mongoose family. Mongooses, I am surprised to learn, are not like the other gooses at all. They are, in fact, furry carnivorous mammals.
Westlake started up a romance with Adam Davies, who worked in the llama area of the London Zoo. This did not fly with Kate Sanders, who worked in the monkey area of the London Zoo. Sanders the monkey-keeper had previously dated Davies the llama guy for five years, you see.
Sanders the monkey lady saw Westlake of the meerkats and llama-boy Davies together at the Christmas party and couldn’t resist popping off about Westlake’s appearance. The two argued, as meerkat types and monkey types are known to do after one insults the other’s appearance. One thing led to another, things got violent, and then ol’ meerkat Westlake smashed a wine glass into the side of Sanders’s face, causing a slash requiring five stitches.
A judge ordered Westlake to pay £800 in compensation to Sanders and £200 in prosecution costs, and sentenced the not-to-be-fucked-with meerkat boss to a 12-month “community order.” Westlake was also fired from her job at the zoo. Sanders, for her part, was given a final warning by her bosses (monkeys, presumably) and banned from Zoological Society of London events for two years.
