Reports of Cincinnati Monkey Escape Too Good to be True For Content-Hungry Media

There are monkeys on the loose in Cincinnati's Price Hill neighborhood. At least that's what people told police on Wednesday night when when residents started reporting sightings of monkeys swinging in the trees at a cemetery. Police, with help from the Cincinnati Zoo, scoured the area overnight and this morning, but couldn't find any monkeys. The best anyone could do was find this blurry video which was posted to Facebook that shows three shadowy figures in a tree (language NSFW).

Despite the lack of any actual proof of the monkeys even existing, the topic was in Google Trends of a short time. FOX 19 said the call(s) came in around 10pm. The Lexington Herald Leader reported that the five monkeys escaped from a private collection and that some are "taller than a garbage can." USA TODAY spoke to the people who run the cemetery. They checked video and didn't see any, but did confirm that turkeys live in the trees at the cemetery. The Cincinnati Enquirer also came up empty.

The more time that passes, the less likely it looks like there are any loose monkeys anywhere in Cincinnati. The police haven't even spoken to anyone who saw them with their own eyes. No pictures are on Twitter. All we have is that one video that doesn't show anything.

This is a real shame and if you're bummed out, you're not alone. Monkeys on the loose in a major American city is excellent content. Heck, without so much as a picture, this story made it to The Guardian and The New York Post. This could have been 2021's llama escape. Maybe next time.