Bhubaneswar: After a harrowing ordeal lasting nearly eight hours, forest officials from Nandankanan finally managed to bring a monkey, which had settled on the truss of the new terminal at the Biju Patnaik airport here, down.
A team from Nandankanan, which got into the act in the evening, used tranquilisers to tame the monkey.
Nandankanl officials were roped into the "Operation Monkey" that started in the morning after all attempts to capture the simian by authorities of the airport and personnel of Forest department failed.
Airport authorities and forest department personnel tried everything from anesthetic drug to serving bananas laced with sedatives to spreading a special net to bring the simian down, but to no avail. The animal remained ensconced on a grill hanging from the roof- top of the new airport terminal, blissfully oblivious of all the commotion below.
Keeping the safety of air passengers in mind, some personnel were seen chasing the monkey when the animal kept jumping from one beam to another on the roof-top.
Rajat Kumar Mohapatra , Forester, Bhubaneswar Forest area, said, “Now we are making the efforts to catch the animal and I will inform about the next step after speaking to the Range Officer.”
Shubhendu Mallick, Honorary Wild Life Warden, said, “The monkey took the banana injected with the anesthetic drug and kept jumping from one bar to the other without any hassle. The animal is not harming anyone as he might have lived with human being.”