Everybody’s Going Bananas for the Hot Springs

Would it be a Winter Olympics without exotic wildlife? No, not the athletes at the Olympic village disco, real wildlife.

In Albertville, France, wild boars startled many a sleepy driver late at night on the dark and snowy mountain roads. In Lillehammer, Norway,

moose--the Norwegians called them elk but they really were moose--were numerous enough to pose a threat to rail traffic, and highways were posted with moose-crossing signs.

Here? Hey, hey, they’re the monkeys, and they love to monkey around.

Yamanouchi Town, northeast of Nagano, is the site of the Kanbayashi Snowboard Park, where the men’s and women’s halfpipe events will be held Thursday. It’s also the site of the Yudanaka and Shibu spas, fed by natural hot springs, and the Jigokudani Wild Monkey Park.

There the snow monkeys--they’re in the macaque family--also enjoy the hot spring waters in their own pools. The monkey park pools were built about 30 years ago as an alternative for the rambunctious critters, who had taken to joining people in the open-air spas and backyard hot tubs.

Apparently, it worked, although some monkeys still prefer people spas. Three monkey troops--more than 300 of the red-faced simians wearing shaggy beige coats--call the park home, bathing in public and generally carrying on, as monkeys tend to do. The park has no fences and visitors are free to wander around, watching the snow monkeys in the water, at play in the trees, being fed by the rangers.

Naturally, the park has become the place to go for reporters looking for the really off-beat Olympic feature. “Have you done the monkeys yet?” is a common question here in the main press center.

There even is a bit of controversy. According to two environmental organizations, one Japanese and the other British, there is a plan afoot to kill some of the monkeys to keep the population manageable. Also, according to the groups, 80 Jigokudani monkeys were captured last year and sent to zoos in China.

In any event, the hot “true story” making the rounds concerns a photographer dispatched to the monkey park by his paper. The unsuspecting fellow had some snack foods in his van, to which he gave no thought.

And as he went about his business, the monkeys went about theirs. Smelling the snacks, and long since accustomed to humans, they attacked the van, making short work of the available food, then trashing the vehicle.

Can’t swear to that but, heck, sure sounds like something monkeys would do.