Tales From the Sea Side
NO.5 Escape From Moonvoy
|
NO.5
|
A consequence of capitalism the world over is its harmful impact on the indiginous flora and fauna of the planet.
However while planners will pay lip service to caring for the environment, development and short-term gain inevitably hold sway over the far less important issues of the air we breathe, the mass extinction of native animals and complete ecological breakdown.
Tramore has certainly not been immune to the consequences of excessive development, as all those who have charted the sad demise of the once prevalent Bare-Backed Gorillas of Moonvoy will readily acknowledge.
Having arrived in Tramore in the late 1890s as part of a travelling Circus act from Faithlegg, a family of the creatures escaped to set up base in the then wide open spaces of Moonvoy.
Despite the obvious climatic differences, the animals quickly settled into their new habitat, and the Moonvoy area became a haven for tourists from all over Europe, anxious for the opportunity to see these shy creatures in their natural habitat.
Initially the animals were feted where ever they went, some even becoming regulars in local pubs, where there inability to speak any decipherable language was more than made up for by their natural charisma.
A number of organisations sprang up around the town to help the Gorillas settle into their new surroundings, offering free bananas and peanuts to the visitors, and offering them free membership of organisations such as the GAA and the Toastmasters.
The GAA in particular made a concerted effort to integrate the apes, then Chairman Fintan 'Shanghai' Whelan making it a priority of his tenor.
"These Gorillas are big, strong and very athletic. I believe that with training they could be the making of the Intermediate Team", maintained Whelan at a GAA rally in 1894.
However Whelan's plans for the Apes were less than successful, they never quite getting to grips with either code. Neither could they be convinced to wear the famed Blue-and-White of Micheal MacCraith, attempts to coerce them into such inevitably ending in angry Apes tearing up the goal posts before launching them at the Club House.
Jason 'ears' Mulligan would never forget the day the apes turned up to be interviewed, although, as he pointed out, 'interview' wouldn't quite be the word.
"I'd just finished interviewing young Flasher O'Toole when I hears this commotion outside the door. Then who bursts in only two dirty great big apes, eating bananas to beat the band.
"Sure I was about to call the police when who came in only Fr Dickie 'oh really !' O'Reilly. 'These lads will make fine scaffolders', says he to me. I wasn't too convinced at first, to be honest, but I gave them a chance and I have to admit he was he wasn't far wrong".
But even this was not to last, the animals natural resentment towards authority and to the human race generally soon driving a wedge between them and the rest of the pre-dominantly human work force, and Mulligan was reluctantly forced to let the primates go.
With the animals one remaining link to human life having been severed, they soon began to drift out of the eye of a public which had once courted them.
However with developers even then moving into Moonvoy, the beasts natural habitat was being destroyed, and a general migration began which took the beats all the way to Gaultier, which has remained the home for all but a handful of these glorious creatures ever since.
With the few remaining Bare-Backed gorillas of Moonvoy now only rarely sighted, a whole generation of Tramorites have grown up not knowing that there was once a time when these animals were as central a tenet of Tramore life as Jew-baiting and torturing animals.