An Arguably Bad Idea: Monkey Ownership

The surprisingly not awful but still kind of awful tale of people who ordered squirrel monkeys from comic book ads in the 60s and 70s:

It was also capable of riding on the back of the family’s Sheltie collie like a horse. Although the dog didn’t enjoy it, he learned to deal with Chipper. 

I am troubled there is no mention of the late 70s scheme wherein a company would begin sending you small dangerous animals every month until you paid them to stop sending you small dangerous animals. A particularly inspired wrinkle of the scheme was that if you gave the company the names and addresses of three of your friends, you could get them to stop sending the small dangerous animals for an unknowable amount of time. Of course, the scheme was doomed from the outset because once the recipient was killed by the small dangerous animals (and they inevitably were, if not killed, really badly damaged both physically and emotionally) the small dangerous animals tended to pile up at the recipient's address, and you wound up with flocks of small dangerous animals roaming the streets, brandishing their flick-knives at old ladies and generally threatening a god-fearing populace.

Note that this story is like eight years old. I know that. Don't get all huffy with me, sir.

via metafilter