Affe #222

About Affe mit Waffe Deprecated

Walter Rothchimp, 2nd Baron Rothchimp, had many unusual things to attend to. His life itself was quite unusual. At the age of seven, he declared that he would run a zoological museum and, as even as an apeling, he collected insects, butterflies, and other animals. Luckily, his parents were very open-minded primates and allowed their little monkey his peculiarities. What further benefitted Walter were the many relatives or friends of the family who had traveled widely around the world, giving him the opportunity to even keep kangaroos and exotic birds as pets. Initially there was some difficulty getting the kangaroo into the tree habitat, but once in the treetops it settled in quickly.

When growing up, Walter had a delicate health and was educated at home – which was convenient for him, because he could stay with his kangaroo. However, this did not prevent him from traveling throughout Europe, first attending the University of Babonn in Germany for a year before entering the University of Chimpbridge to study zoology. Unfortunately, after just two years he had to study finance in order to join the family business, because he came from a dynasty of banking monkeys. He evidently lacked any interest in financial profession and after graduation was reluctant to join the family bank.

Having understanding parents, they made a compromise with him, establishing a zoological museum in return and footing the bill for his expeditions around the world to seek out animals. Walter was naturally very shy, but in the presence of animals his personality changed dramatically and took on unprecedented proportions. He had his picture taken riding a giant tortoise and drove downtown in a carriage drawn by four zebras to prove that zebras could be tamed. His father had to use all his influence to keep Walter from being arrested for causing public disorder with this feat, or from having the Free Monkey Association of Animal Rights activists throw rotten tomatoes at him for weeks.

Such events notwithstanding, he was highly regarded in the Monkeyverse's zoological science community. Over time, his collection included 300,000 stuffed birds and 200,000 bird eggs, 2,250,000 butterflies and 30,000 beetles, and thousands of mammals, reptiles, and fish. It formed the largest zoological collection ever assembled by a single primate. A species of giraffe was even named in his honor – the Giraffa camelopardalis rothchimpii – along with another 153 insects, 58 birds, 17 mammals, three fish, three spiders, two reptiles, a centipede, and a worm that also bore his name. With all the exhibits, Walter eventually set up a natural history museum where he wanted to share his knowledge with the monkey community. He had a special fondness for rare or special animals. His extensive collection, housed in several buildings, included extinct animals and birds such as the quagga, thylacine, great auk and reconstructions of the moa and dodo. When it came to the platypus, the other monkeys Walter didn't want to believe for a long time that such a creature existed – an egg-laying mammal, with venomous ankle spurs and a fur that would fluoresce greenish-blue under ultraviolet light. For a long time, it was widely believed that Walter had simply glued a beak to a stuffed beaver.

However, owning such an extensive collection brought many problems. Once 299 stuffed birds were stolen, but when the thieving monkey finally realized that it was difficult to sell the many brightly colored exhibits inconspicuously, he brought them back safely. The thief was sentenced to 24 months at the museum to dust off the stuffed birds. Since then, the monkey staff at the museum hoped that someone else would try to steal the birds again.

But secretly Walter's biggest concern was a small rodent, or more precisely many of these small rodents. Initially, he had brought back six specimens of the European fat dormouse to keep as pets. Unfortunately, some later escaped and bred successfully in the wild – very successfully. Years later, their population was estimated at around 10,000 individuals within a 250-kilometers radius of Walter's Museum. No zoologist of the Monkeyverse could explain how this invasive species had established itself so far from its origins – and Walter Rothchimp was wise to leave it at that.

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