Mummified Mall Monkey? YES! How'd It Get There?

This week, the Old Minneapolis Facebook page revealed that a mummified monkey was found in the ceiling of the downtown building as it undergoes a $200 million renovation. "Does anyone know how a monkey would have ended up in the rafters of an urban department store and remain there undisturbed for probably decades?" the page asked. Now, the mayor of a Minneapolis suburb thinks he can solve that mystery. "My dad once stole a monkey from a Dayton’s display back in the ’60s," Robbinsdale mayor Regan Murphy wrote Tuesday on Twitter. "He and his buddy Tom...saw the monkey in a cage or some kind of display [and] brought it home to Tom's house." After the monkey trashed parts of Tom's home, "they went back to the store, put him on an escalator and left." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Murphy's story checks out: Dayton’s did host a “Pet-O-Rama” pet shop decades ago that was touted as “a menagerie of delightful pets from all over the world," including “hilarious monkeys." Meanwhile, Murphy told WCCO that his dad and uncle "got in a lot of trouble" back in the day.