Chimpanzee Drowns in Zoo Escape Attempt and Other Inane Tragedies

As we just said, it looks like it’s shaping up to be one ugly MoFo of a week in Hungary. And that’s just the weather! Since it’s still Monday we can’t say for sure what other calamities and miseries are coming down the pike, though judging from the other crap we’ve noticed floating by, we can only imagine. Just consider:

• A chimpanzee drowned at the Veszprém Zoo last week after it tried to jump the moat surrounding its enclosure. The 11-year-old female chimp named Ghafula (above) had only arrived at the zoo from the Dutch city of Amersfoort in early April. But she apparently wanted out so bad she decided to risk the eight-meter-wide, water-filled trench. When caretakers saw the Ghafula plunge into the deepest part of the moat they rushed in to rescue her. But they were too late, and she could not be resuscitated. [origo.hu]
• A truck ran over a man sitting on the road between Szentes and Szegvár on May 20. The driver of the truck apparently didn’t notice the man, because of the traffic coming from the opposite direction. The 30-year-old victim died on the spot. [origo.hu]
• That same day a man placed a call to medical emergency personnel in Budapest’s District X and threatened to cut their throats for taking his drunken father to the hospital. During the removal of the blind-drunk man from his home, the younger man’s “fighting dog” attacked a doctor and a nurse who had been trying to assist the father. [nol.hu]
• There are reports of an increasing number of attacks on the “public area supervisors” who patrol the streets of Budapest. On just one day earlier this month, three supervisors were beaten with sticks for warning two men and a girl on Fővám tér that they were peddling without a license, while over on Csepel, a young woman kicked a supervisor in the leg for telling her that she was not allowed to put up posters. [atv.hu]
• The body of a 46-year-old man was recently discovered on a bus on line 30. Preliminary investigation shows no signs of foul play, expect for the fact that he had been dead for at least 90 minutes before he was discovered by the driver at the Baross tér terminus, meaning that his carcass had been transported several times from one end of the line to the other. [bkvfigyelo.hu]