A monkey was loose outside a Toronto Ikea store on Sunday. (Courtesy of Bronwyn Page) A monkey wearing a stylish shearling coat ran across the parking lot of a Toronto Ikea store on Sunday, and continues to run amok on social media and in international news coverage today.
The monkey, which has become a social media sensation, was first spotted by shoppers at 2 p.m. ET as they headed into an Ikea store near Leslie Street and Highway 401.
One of the first on the scene was Bronwyn Page, an associate producer for CBC. She was heading into the furniture retailer to do some holiday shopping with her sister when she noticed a crowd gathered around what she at first thought was some kind of child's toy.
When she got close, Page saw that it was a tiny monkey wearing a shearling coat and a diaper.
Sights of monkey 'pretty bizarre'
Page told the story on CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Monday.
"We saw a crowd of people surrounding a small animal, and we quickly realized it was a monkey wearing a coat and a diaper. That was pretty bizarre," she told host Matt Galloway.
"It was running between people. They were trying to call it towards them. It was really scared. They were trying to get away from cars. We realized it didn't belong to any of those people.
"It was disbelief at first," said Page. "We thought it was a fake toy monkey. It was very unexpected to see it at Ikea. It seemed nervous. It was coming to anyone. It seemed pretty scared. There was a lot of people around. It was doing some monkey screaming, like jungle noises."
Page took a few pictures of the monkey, and was among the first to send those images out via Twitter about an hour after first spotting the monkey in the parking lot.
"I thought maybe this is newsworthy, but I didn't think it was gonna be such a big deal," she said.
Staff at the store quickly contacted animal control, and the monkey was kept confined until animal services arrived at around 3 p.m.
Monkey escaped from crate
The monkey's owners, who were shopping in the store at the time, eventually came out to claim their pet. Police said the monkey escaped from its crate, which was inside a parked car in the Ikea lot.
"It's a smart monkey," a police spokesperson told CBC News on Sunday.
Monkeys are prohibited as pets in Toronto, according to the city's Municipal Code, and there were reports that the Ikea monkey's owner will face charges. However, Wendy Drummond, a spokeswoman for the Toronto Police Service, issued a Twitter message on Sunday denying this.
"Toronto police not laying any charges in #ikeamonkey," she tweeted. "No further investigation/involvement by police."
In another tweet, Drummond described the incident this way: "One of the stranger situations we have every dealt with! Lol."
Reports described the monkey as a rhesus macaque, a species native to central and southeast Asia.
The incident prompted the creation of at least two parody accounts on Twitter. One posting from one of those accounts asked if anyone "had an extra allen key?"
Another Twitter post made fun of a popular Ikea ad, with an altered picture of the monkey at the Ikea exit shouting "start the car!"
Sites such as Reddit, Gawker and others also picked up on the story.
The U.K.-based Guardian ran the story under the headline "Hey Tiny spender." The BBC also ran a story about a monkey loose in a Toronto "car park."
[View the story "Ikea monkey runs amok on Twitter " on Storify]
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