Drug addiction can affect everybody, even innocent baby animals, as illustrated by a bizarre case recently reported on by the media in Kuwait.
According to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai, authorities in Kuwait City were investigating a car accident last week and found that the driver of the car had in his company a one-year-old baby orangutan. Both of them were supposedly high at the time of the accident.
“Police questioning the owner after the accident found that he was under the influence of drugs. His monkey was also intoxicated,” Al-Rai wrote, as quoted and translated by Emirates 24/7 News.
When questioned by police, the owner said he had gotten the orangutan hooked on drugs because he wanted to have some company and “fun”.
Apparently deciding that the ape was innocent of any wrongdoing, police handed the primate over to Kuwait’s Interior Ministry, who then forwarded the creature along to the country’s General Commission for Agriculture and Marine Resources, who sheltered the drug-addled orangutan at an animal park.
The commission also got in touch with officials at the country’s Indonesian Embassy to arrange for the baby orangutan to be sent back to his home country. As noted by Al Rai, Kuwait is legally obligated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) to send any endangered animals found within its borders back to their natural habitats.
We do hope that the poor innocent orangutan at the center of this case will receive the treatment and rehabilitation he needs to be able to go back to the jungles of Sumatra, assuming there are still any left by the time he gets there.
