Zoos in Pittsburgh and Boston just hashed out a blockbuster one-for-one gorilla trade
Pittsburgh Zoo ships 7-year-old gorilla Frankie to Boston in exchange for veteran silverback Little Joe in a deal shaking up the gorilla market.
Certain trades are so huge that they changed the course of a sport. Babe Ruth to the Yankees, Wayne Gretzky to the Kings and more recently, Luka Doncic to the Lakers.
That's what I think we've got in a blockbuster gorilla trade between the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium and Franklin Zoo in Boston.
We've got a one-for-one deal that is going to shake up the gorilla market going forward, with Pittsburgh shipping a 7-year-old male western lowland gorilla, Frankie, to Beantown in exchange for Little Joe, a 33-year-old silverback.
Pittsburgh is getting a veteran presence in its enclosure, while Boston gets a highly touted prospect who will have some considerable ass-scratching, feces-throwing shoes to fill.
According to The Pittsburgh Tribune, Frankie will become part of a "bachelor group" with two other males, which means Boston is really building toward the future.
As you might expect, the internet was going, well, ape s--t over this.
I knew that this sometimes happened with zoos, swapping animals around. In fact, when I was a kid, I remember it was a big deal that my local zoo made a big free-agent signing and brought in an albino alligator.
He carried the franchise for a few seasons.
But I want more of this. I want to see zoos cutting deals to assemble the best lineups. And I don't mean one-for-one species deals.
ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON'T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!
I'd love to see how many flamingos it's going to take for a rhino. I bet it's a lot. Hell, may have to throw in a first crack at an opportunity to sign a panda on loan from China.
I hope to keep an eye on this to see how it pans out. Little Joe has a bit of a troubled past. In 2003, he escaped his enclosure and injured a kid.
Hey, nobody's perfect.
So, maybe the blue-collar environment in the Steel City will do him some good and help find his game because anyone who knows apes — and I've seen all the Planet of the Apes films, so I think I know what I'm talking about — knows he still has some tread on the tire.
