Cigarette Smoking Orangutan Puts Zoo Under Fire

                 People around the planet are indignant that zookeepers at the Bandung Zoo outside of Jakarta didn’t do more to prevent an orangutan from smoking a cigarette. A recent video captured by a visitor to the zoo has gone viral. The video shows a man tossing his lit cigarette into the 22-year-old Bornean orangutan’s enclosure. The orangutan, named Odon, then picks it up, sits down and proceeds to puff away like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

                The launching of the “heater,” and the subsequent smoking thereof, are acts considered so heinous by animal rights activists that they themselves “went ape.” The indignant ones condemned zookeepers for their apparent lack of supervision and zoo managers for their “lack of control.” That’s easy for them to say, but I doubt any one of these animal allies would have gone up to the primate and ripped the cigarette from his lips. After all, it’s possible Odon, like Tareyton fans in days of yore, “would rather fight then switch.”

                Seeing an orangutan with a butt in his mouth so frightened throngs of already unstable lefties that a change.org petition to “Shut down the Bandung Zoo now!” currently has almost 1 million signatures. These mooyaks are deeply troubled that some tobacco smoke might find its way into a simian lung, but are all for dismembering literally countless “fetuses” inside of—or partly outside of—women’s wombs. An old Virginia Slims ad states, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” That we have. Unfortunately, in the wrong direction.

                The zoo’s employees will likely be sent off to smoking re-education camp. Odon’s physical and mental health will surely be evaluated.

                Don’t be surprised if he’s given a prescription for medical marijuana.