The Devil Monkey of Danville, New Hampshire

The other day I was poking around the Web and found references to something called the Danville Devil Monkey. I love that name, don't you? Devil Monkey. Devil Monkey. It makes me want to scream: DEVIL MONKEY!!!

Almost as good as its name is the fact that the Devil Monkey appeared in Danville, New Hampshire. Danville is a classic small New England town. There are some old farmhouses, a couple of churches, and it runs by town meeting. The town's website is promoting a fund-raising spaghetti dinner for the local Boy Scouts. Danville is like someplace from a Thornton Wilder play. So obviously it's where the Devil Monkey would appear.

DEVIL MONKEY!!

The Danville monkey was first seen on August 21 by fire chief David Kimball when the creature leapt into the road in front of his truck. It jumped back into the woods, but Kimball was stunned by what he saw. What was a large monkey doing in southern New Hampshire?

“It jumped out of the trees,” Kimball said. “As soon as he hit the ground, he took a giant leap and went back where he came from. The first thought I had was: That’s nothing that’s native to here.” (Seacoast Online, September 14, 2001, "Residents Can't Stop Monkeying Around") 

Kimball consulted with the town librarian to determine what type of simian he saw. Kimball's best guess was that he saw a Humboldt's wooly monkey. Wooly monkeys are indigenous to the Amazon, not New England, so he was naturally puzzled by what he saw.

Several other Danville residents saw the animal in August and September that year. Scott Velleca saw the animal briefly in his backyard, while his wife Jen heard strange screeching noises coming from the woods. "It was a noise that didn't belong in my woods," she said. (Seacoast Online, September 14, 2001, "Residents Can't Stop Monkeying Around").

A local boy told his mother that peanut butter cookies he left in his treehouse disappeared. She at first thought her son was talking about an imaginary playmate, but after she learned about the monkey sightings she realized his story was probably true. Had the monkey taken the cookies?

A wooly monkey

Locals assumed the monkey was an escaped pet. It is illegal to own a Humboldt's wooly monkey as a pet and the owners (if they existed) never stepped forward. The town mobilized to capture the animal before the weather turned monkey-killingly cold. Denise Laratonda, Danville's animal control officer, partnered with the Humane Society to lure the monkey with female monkey urine. It did not work. Other Danville residents strung up bananas and oranges to lure the monkey into the open. Hunters with tranquilizer darts stood by the ready. A local DJ even dressed up a like a gorilla to entice the monkey.

Nothing worked. The Danville monkey remained elusive, something that was briefly seen, frequently heard, and impossible to catch. The story gained national media attention and Laratonda was scheduled to appear on NBC's Today Show to discuss the renegade simian. The September 11 terrorist attacks occurred before her appearance and the media turned its attention to more pressing matters.

The monkey continued to haunt Danville through September but then disappeared. Did it die? Was it recaptured by its mysterious owners? No one knew.

The creature reappeared eleven years later, when Haverhill, Massachusetts resident Michelle Andino saw a strange animal in her parents' Danville backyard. Andino was out cooking steaks on the grill when she heard the family's dogs barking. She assumed they had seen a deer, and was shocked instead when see saw something climbing a tree:

But what caught her eye was an animal at least two feet long with a 'white bottom' and dark brown over the rest of its body. She doesn't think it had a tail.

'It was really hugging the tree. It was climbing up like a human being,' she said. (Union Leader, September 26, 2012, "In Danville: Hey Hey It's A Monkey?") 

Andino's family had not lived in Danville in 2001, and she was surprised to learn that another monkey had been seen several years earlier. An animal control officer didn't find any signs of the creature.

As far as I know that was the last sighting of Danville's Devil Monkey. Maybe it will show up again in another few years to bewilder the town's citizens.

Did you notice there really isn't anything devilish about the Danville monkey? Maybe it was a little impish to steal a small boy's cookies but that certainly wasn't Satanic. The people who saw it didn't seem particularly frightened. Puzzled, amused, and intrigued but not necessarily scared. No one called it the Devil Monkey at the time, but it seems to have gained that nickname on the Internet in recent years.

There is a cryptid called the Devil Monkey that has been seen in other parts of the country. Devil Monkeys are reputed to be vicious and attack livestock, much like a chupacabra might. This video from Animal Planet gives a spooky overview of the Devil Monkey:


Personally, I don't think the Danville monkey was one of these terrifying monsters, but I could be wrong. Still, there is a tendency in American culture for anomalous things to get classified as scary and evil but sometimes strange things are just strange. Not every unusual animal is a deadly monster.

I also think it's interesting that so many people assumed in 2001 that the monkey had escaped from unknown owners. This is a common trope in stories about cryptids. Giant cats, apelike wild men, and other creatures are explained away as escaped circus animals or exotic pets. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, but the animals' owners almost never show up. If you ran a zoo or circus wouldn't you want to recapture one of your valuable missing animals?

What was the Danville monkey if it wasn't a ravenous Devil Monkey or an escaped pet? Sadly I don't have a better explanation. But I do know that if you're missing some peanut butter cookies you might want to look high up in the trees for an elusive simian with a sweet tooth.

Joe Froggers: A Cookie Fit for Pirates

Who made the first pumpkin pie?

Who made the first baked beans?

These are profound and unanswerable questions. The origins of many regional dishes are lost in the murky mists of the past. Even if I had a time machine I probably wouldn't find clear answers - most dishes have just evolved into their present form.

However, there are some recipes that do a have a clear point of origin like Tollhouse Cookies, Boston cream pie, and Joe Froggers.

Most people know the first two desserts but I don't think many people have eaten Joe Froggers, a molasses style cookie that originated in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

The origin story goes something like this. Joe Brown was an African-American resident of Marblehead in the 1700s. With his wife Lucretia (who was 22 years his junior), Joe ran a tavern on Gingerbread Hill. Gingerbread Hill sounds cozy and charming but like most taverns of the era, particularly in seaports, things were a little seedy at Joe's establishment. Gambling and heavy drinking were the norm, and as Marblehead historian Joseph Robinson wrote, "a more uncouth assemblage of ruffians could not be found anywhere." Locals with nicknames like Eagle Beak, Pie Mouth, and Cork Leg were among the regulars. Joe's tavern still stands in Marblehead.

However, Joe is famous not just for running a tavern that attracted the riffraff, but because of the cookie that bears his name: Joe Froggers. Joe's last name was not Frogger, but his tavern was located next to a frog pond. Another story says that the cookies got their name because when Lucretia poured the batter in her frying pan they formed a vaguely froglike shape. Perhaps the cookies should really be called Lucretia Froggers?

The Joe Froggers people make now are probably a little different than the original recipe. For one thing, in the 1700s they were the size of salad plates. That's a big cookie! Sailors and fishermen would buy them by the barrel for long sea voyages because they kept well. I like the idea of sailing around with a barrel full of cookies. Like Gingerbread Hill, it sounds charming but I'm sure the reality was something else entirely.

Besides their size and strange name, Joe Froggers are distinguished from other molasses cookies and gingersnaps by one key ingredient: rum. It's mixed right into the batter with the butter and sugar, and adds a nice bite to the cookie. It's only fitting for a cookie developed in a raucous seaside tavern. Dark rum is best. Luckily some our family gave us a bottle of Cruzan black strap rum at Christmas. It's probably the darkest rum out there. I felt like a pirate making these cookies!

I got the information about Joe Brown from this article in Marblehead Magazine. The actual cookies I made from a recipe in Yankee Magazine's Lost and Vintage Recipes, which is actually on sale at news stands right now. It has some interesting recipes beyond the Joe Froggers and is worth picking up.

The Nation's First Christmas Cookie Recipe?

Photo from Flickr.

At this time of year I can't stop eating baked goods. I seem to have an endless capacity for sugar and fat in December. Once January arrives I finally say "Enough!" and get back to a normal eating pattern.

Christmas has traditionally been associated with gluttony and baked goods. Here, for example, is a very old Christmas cookie recipe from Amelia Simmons's 1798 book American Cookery (published in Hartford). Since Simmons wrote the first American cookbook, I suppose this is the country's first Christmas cookie recipe.

Another Christmas Cookey.

To three pound flour, sprinkle a tea cup of fine powdered coriander seed, rub in one pound butter, and one and half pound sugar, dissolve three tea spoonfuls of pearl ash in a tea cup of milk, kneed all together well, roll three quarters of an inch thick, and cut or stamp into shape and size you please, bake slowly fifteen or twenty minutes; tho' hard and dry at first, if put into an earthen pot, and dry cellar, or damp room, they will be finer, softer and better when six months old.

A few thoughts here:

1. The recipe is called "Another Christmas Cookey", but there is no other Christmas cookey recipe in the book. The recipe preceding this one is for sugar cookies, and I guess her readers would understand they were for Christmas.

2. Coriander seed has fallen out of fashion as a cookie flavor! Is it time for a revival? This recipe uses a lot of coriander, assuming a tea cup is as big as a modern measuring cup.

3. The recipe calls for pearl ash. Also known as potash or potassium bicarbonate, this was an early chemical leavener similar to baking powder. Apparently, it can still be found at beer-making supply stores. This site compares different leaveners, which I found interesting.

4. If you want these cookies for Christmas, you better start in June since it takes six months for them to soften up! Increasing the amount of butter would probably make these softer right out of the oven, and would also decrease the risk of them getting moldy down in your cellar.