Dare County – A spike in vehicle breaking and entering crimes has plagued residents of Dare County for over three months now. By last official estimates 45% of vehicles in Dare County have been broken into. The thieves have managed to defeat all forms of security including car alarms, motion sensor lights and door locks. Now some residents are turning to a popular 90’s era anti-theft device that proved to be effective as it was controversial: the Trunk Monkey.
First developed by the Suburban Auto Group in 1999, the Trunk Monkey was offered as a special security feature in certain Ford and Chevrolet models. The monkey, a highly trained mixed martial arts chimpanzee, could be deployed by the driver at the push of a button or set to automatically deploy if the vehicle was broken into. Trunk Monkeys had a 99.7% successful deterrence and apprehension rate, but were discontinued after an accidental deployment resulted in injuries to a Portland City Meter Reader and a multimillion dollar settlement.
Fast forward to early November, 2017. Nags Head resident John Tidwell’s Ford Escape had been broken into three times in as many weeks. Fed up with the missing change and cigarettes, Mr. Tidwell went online to shop for security devices and discovered several Trunk Monkey systems for sale on e-Bay. He took a chance and ordered one. He reports being “very impressed” by the results.
“The first night I found some scraps of clothes and blood by the driver’s door and bloody footprints leading away from my yard,” Mr. Tidwell reported. “A couple nights later there was a finger and part of somebody’s ear. Needless to say, nothing was missing from my car.”
News of Mr. Tidwell’s success spread quickly and soon all of his neighbors had acquired their own Trunk Monkeys. Currently over 61 Trunk Monkey systems are deployed in Dare County and that number continues to rise. Mr. Tidwell’s brother-in-law, Michael Garland, a Kitty Hawk resident said Trunk Monkey use isn’t just limited to vehicle security.
“Oh yeah, they’re pretty clever,” Mr. Garland reported. “I taught mine to kick the shit out of any dog that tries to crap on my lawn.”