Overseas Radio Network – Albert the Ape & His Antics Aboard
Topics in Overseas Radio Network Show 13, Segment 1:
- Albert the Ape goes ape wild proving that an ape may not be the best pet to have aboard a catamaran
- Albert does not like cats
- Saving Albert by letting him go to a new family
GARY FRETZ: Welcome back to our show I a Gary Fretz. And we’ve been talking about having pets on your yacht. Specifically we are talking about an African vervet monkey that Stephen bought in a bar to free him from his cage, And tell us more about Albert.
For a transcript of this podcast, click “read more” below.
Albert the Ape Goes Ape Wild!
STEPHEN COCKCROFT: Well, on the last segment we were talking about monkeys’ instincts and their behaviour. And we have yachts have a huge amount of lines and rope and strings and stuff on them and when Albert joined out crew he kind of accepted the fact this boat had all these ropes and lights. We then sailed across to Greece to (inaudible ???????) and our mooring warp which are also ropes and they are called warps (????WHOLE SENTENCE IS UNINTELLIGIBLE). Mooring warps are getting pretty worn so I down to the local ships chandler and I bought some new rope. And Estelle was in town with Albert the ape from Africa. She was busy shopping I don’t know shopping or…Archimedes was born in this town so she was looking at where he was born. And I was busy fixing up the mooring warps, etc. And when Estelle came back, she called him and nicely put him on the boat and when Estelle came back Albert had an absolute conniption.
Because he figured we had 2 huge snakes on the boat and he started making noises warning us. I mean he was doing everything to get us away from these damn snakes and it was unbelievable and it took him like 3 weeks to figure out that these were also ropes.
GARY: So now wait a second you all I am just going to side track a little bit. You went to a lot of really historic places and you really don’t like these rock piles, you don’t appreciate them. Is that true? What’s the deal here?
STEPHEN: You know Estelle has dragged me through every ruin from Egypt to Gibraltar. We stopped in Egypt she to me took us to the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of Nobles and the Valley of the “whatever”… to Carnac. We looked at pyramids. We have looked at Roman theatres. We have looked at ever piece of stone that you can imagine and I got to the stage you know I would try to get Estelle to go and look at these piles of rubbles by herself because once you have seen one you see them all.
ESTELLE: Stephen, behave! That is exactly how it went you know Stephen, “oh, I have to go look at another piece of rubble.” No, so one day we were in Turkey we went to go and look at Ephesus beautiful I mean it’s just incredible stuff and he has Albert with him and Stephen and Albert. And it was really quite hot. And then Stephen and Albert decided after about an hour or so both of them have had enough and Albert as soon as he saw a little bit of shade he would dash for that piece of shade.
STEPHEN: Well the problem with Albert is that he is happy walking, but when he gets tired then he climbs on me. And it got really hot and I decided I was not his horse and I made him walk as well and he was not the most impressed ape you have ever seen.
ESTELLE: He would dive into every piece of shade he could find. And so it really made my day a little bit difficult than it should have been.
GARY: Estelle, let me ask you something, how did you walk Albert?
ESTELLE: I didn’t really walk him. He would walk us, more to the point. But, of course, we had to discipline him more often than not. Because he is an ape naturally and they are used to living in troops. And so the daddy ape would mete out the discipline and that would be, of course, Stephen and our little troop. And so Albert when he came to us he use to bite fiercely he was really, really aggressive so whenever he didn’t like something he would start biting.
So Stephen decided that the only way to figure this out was to bite him back. So one day when he bit me Stephen grab his little arm and bit as hard as he could Albert screamed on top of his voice you would have taught that this monkey was being murdered. And he ran away from Stephen and came and sat on my lap and grabbed me around my neck and pointing at Stephen telling me what a horrible that one is.
STEPHEN: Well I kind of don’t like the connotation that I am the big ape. But quite honestly the only way to discipline him is the way he understood. And I bit him I probably him 3 times really hard, maybe little bit of blood. But I tell you something, that cured his biting he knew who the biter was and the bitee was.
GARY: Wow very good, right now you were telling me about some cats or something on another boat.
Albert Was Not Fond of Cats
STEPHEN: Well I have a cat story actually but before we got to cats, cats appears to be a better animal as a pet on a boat, but we were in a place in Turkey…I can’t even remember where it was. I saw Albert as he fluffed up and became twice the size that he was and he was way behind me on the dock and I saw him creeping along and I looked and he stopped and he would sit there and star scratching himself and I saw this huge red tabby cat stalking him. This tabby cat probably thought he found a huge fat mouse he was going to pounce on. And Albert had obviously seen him a long time ago and he was sitting there acting all dumb. The cat got within about 10 foot of Albert and Albert exploded into action and went for the cat got such a fright. And went straight up in the air and before he hits the ground went straight in the opposite direction and Albert was right behind him Albert was running on his 3 legs and his other hand was grabbing his back legs I mean I don’t think that cat ever stalked anything again after that I think that was a life changing experience for that Turkish cat.
Bon Voyage to Albert
ESTELLE: Yeah that was…we had so many moments with Albert and we were the perfect little family. Loved Albert. But then we left from Turkey went to an English Island which was called Malta and they have laws on these islands that specifically primates that they would kill them if you bring them ashore. And we didn’t want to take that chance of having him killed because of diseases and so forth and so we sold Albert for a carpet a Turkish carpet a very nice carpet that we still own. But we sold him to a farmer in Turkey just a lovely guy loved his animals he had pure bred dogs and lots of animals. We took Albert to the farm to see if he would clematised well he just loved it he jumps on top of the dogs backs and he was running with these dogs all over the place he was fine he loved it.
STEPHEN: Yeah hopefully Albert still there still having fun in the orange groves but it just it was an orange farm. But it was amazing to see him finally in a tree being you know where he was supposed to be in life instead of in a bar in a cage or a boat. He use to get seasick so whenever he you know sort of upset me I use to take him sailing and am I going to stop you know. But he was a great and very interesting pet and if ever end up having the opportunity of having a ape or a monkey as a pet I highly recommend it.
GARY: Okay we are running out of time in this segment and we are going to be right back after this short break, you are listening to yachts the perfect escape vehicle only on the Overseas Radio Network.
