Many years ago, a permanently installed speed camera in Mainz was lovingly redesigned. The drivers who probably laughed loudest were those who were driving at too high a speed and would actually have been caught. Maybe no one would have been caught at all because they all slowed down and stared. Anyway, someone had the idea of sticking a picture of a monkey on the speed camera and a furry hand giving a flower. It looked like an orangutan was crouching in the camera, but not for long. The speed camera was no longer functional, so the authorities don’t take a joke.
A monkey in a speed camera is strange, but a monkey being caught behind the wheel of a car isn’t bad either. In the Allgäu, Andreas Lang had to laugh out loud when he received actually unpleasant mail: a 30 euro fine for driving too fast in the city center. However, in the speed camera photo it looked as if his monkey was behind the wheel. Lang himself looks a little puzzled from behind the animal.
Lang is a part-time magician and entertainer, and as “Magic Dresi” he also appears with a ventriloquist’s dummy, the monkey Charlie, who has a traditional place in his car as a lucky charm – in the middle of the dashboard. The picture is not staged, says Lang, but he doesn’t want to overreach it either. He will not object to the 30 euros, and it should be relatively easy to prove to him that it was not Charlie the monkey, but Lang the entertainer.
So the monkey was just a doll, although real animals have also been photographed several times, whether in the Allgäu or elsewhere. Horses tend to gallop too fast, and in urban areas birds are also susceptible to a warning: parrots, for example, but especially city pigeons. One of them once became a short-lived Internet celebrity when she rushed through at 45 km/h instead of the permitted 30 km/h.
Of course that would have resulted in a hefty fine, and the bird was clearly visible in the speed camera photo. However, in these cases there has been a lack of identification due to a lack of license plates. The pigeon remained unmolested – but it had better not get caught again.