The Belarusian shaggy “phenomenon”, which seemed like a joke, has new eyewitnesses
New eyewitnesses and versions have appeared in the mysterious case. Pavel Shipilov, a resident of Minsk, who visited the Lida district last weekend, said that he saw "a strange animal sitting on the side of the road."
“Initially it seemed to me that it was a lynx, but when I remembered information from the Internet, I realized that it was a big monkey. It is up to 1.3 meters high. She has long front legs and short hind legs. It is covered with smooth brownish-red hair, Shipilov told Interfax on Tuesday.
According to an eyewitness, this is a "socialized monkey." “Most likely, before getting to the Lida region, she performed in a circus. In any case, according to her behavior on the road - she did not throw herself under cars, I understood that she was being trained,”the eyewitness explained.
“She is not afraid of people, but it will be very difficult to catch her,” added Shipilov.
According to him, "police officers, rescue services must catch the animal," however, "if it is not caught, it will calmly live in the wild until November, until frosts begin."
Police version: heavily degraded bum
In turn, the district police officer of the Lida district Valentin Novik, on whose site an incomprehensible creature was allegedly seen, told the news agency that “apart from rumors and information in the media, there is no real confirmation that a monkey or some other creature appeared in the Lida district”.
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“As soon as the first information appeared that a shaggy creature had been seen on a tree in one of the villages of the Lida region, they began to check. But no traces of their stay were found,”Novik said.
According to him, "employees of the zoo, as well as the circus, which came to the area, but their animals did not disappear, were interviewed." “I think that neither the zoo nor the circus needs to hide the fact that an animal escaped from them,” added the district inspector.
The interlocutor of the agency also denied information that "in a truck that caught fire in the Lida region, they were transporting contraband animals that fled during the fire." “I personally examined this car, there were no traces of animals in it,” Novik said.
He did not rule out that the creature, which caused a stir among the population, "may be a very degraded bum." “Homeless people are different. There are those that practically cannot be recognized as a person,”he said.
Animal protectors version: an exotic beast abandoned by its owners
In turn, animal welfare experts argue that "the monkey could have escaped from some cottage, or it was specially taken to the forest by its former owners."
“The little funny animal has grown up and turned into a dangerous animal. And those who like to decorate the interior of a rich country house with exotic animals decided to get rid of their headaches in such a cruel way,”the animal rights activists suggest.
This is not the first time that “lovers” of wildlife have brought exotic animals to the country and then released them into the wild, experts say. They recalled the cases when piranhas and pike-alligators were caught in the water bodies of the republic.
Reports of a strange shaggy creature, which was allegedly seen in the corn fields of the Lida district of the Grodno region of Belarus, arrived the day before. However, the police said that this was speculation.
