We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are proud be the first to describe a new psychological condition. You've probably heard of “Stockholm Syndrome” where hostages begin to sympathize with their kidnappers after a period of time. Well, the woman who got to play the part of Fay Wray in a real-life reenactment of King Kong has a slightly different manifestation. After being savaged by a gorilla who escaped in the Rotterdam Zoo, dragged around the place and severely bitten, she identifies with her assailant. We're calling it Rotterdam Syndrome.
"I go to the zoo almost every day with my husband, and we're always going to see Bokito. I even have pictures and videos from Berlin when he was only four months old," the woman told Dutch mass-circulation daily Telegraaf.
"He is and remains my darling," the paper quoted the woman as saying from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for bite wounds and a broken arm and wrist. The 11-year old male gorilla burst out of its enclosure on Friday and went on a rampage in the zoo's cafeteria before being recaptured.
We're very happy for you, ma'am. We guess if Bokito had succeeded in pulling the arm off entirely, there'd be a wedding in the offing.
It reminds me of an old joke: a gorilla escapes from its cage. It grabs a woman and takes her to the top of a tree, where it spends the next hour assaulting her with great vigor. Then it tosses her aside. She is sent to a hospital. Two months later, a friend runs into her. She is looking a bit peaked and distracted. The friend asks, “Are you still feeling bad?”
She answers, “Yes. He doesn’t call, he doesn’t write.”