Russia's Smoking And Drinking Chimp

"I said Lucky Strikes, you ass!!"

Reuters picks up a "Komsomolskaya pravda" report on a chimpanzee whose smoking and boozing have landed him in hot water with his Moscow zookeepers. And zoogoers are tired of the shakedowns, too.

They're sending Zhora the former circus chimp to rehab in Tatarstan's capital, Kazan, to kick the habits:

"'The beer and cigarettes were ruining him. He would pester passersby for booze,' the 'Komsomolskaya pravda' paper said."

And in case anyone's tempted to blame Zhora's unhappy addictions on circus drifters:

An ex-performer, Zhora became aggressive at his circus and was transferred to a zoo in the southern Russian city of Rostov, where he fathered several baby chimps, learned to draw with markers and picked up his two vices.

-- Central Newsroom