Residents of Mirsarai in Chattogram are fed up with a monkey that left the forest and came into their village. For the past 16 days it has been ruining fruit and vegetables, getting into village shops and damaging goods, and it has also bitten a child. The monkey roams from house to house all day.

The animal, described as a lojjaboti banor (slow loris), has been in Moddhom Wahedpur village of Wahedpur union in the upazila for 16 days. For the first few days, local people fed it, thinking it would leave after a day or two. But it has not gone back to the forest and is still causing harm, leaving residents exasperated.

Local trader Zia Uddin Rasel said they were helpless against one monkey. It is destroying guavas, hog plums, pomelos and other fruit on the trees. A few days ago it jumped from a tree into his shop and damaged goods. When he tried to chase it away, it tried to climb onto him, and he ran out of the shop in fear.

Zahir Uddin said the monkey bit his cousin, who then needed treatment. "If the Forest Department people took the monkey away, we would be spared," he said.

Syed AKM Altaf Hossain, range officer of the Forest Department's Baraiyadhala range, said he had heard about a monkey roaming the Wahedpur area. The Forest Department has a wildlife conservation section, and he will inform it. They will rescue the monkey and either release it deep in the forest or hand it over to a zoo, he said.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.