He may wear leather on the road but Saanich biker John De Jong is a big softie.
The motorcyclist is working to return a stuffed monkey he found at a rest stop near Osoyoos to its rightful owner.
“It’s been well-used and it looked really cute,” he said, adding that both his kids and grandchildren are grown up now, but he knows all too well that “when they have something like that it goes with them everywhere.”
De Jong was on a five-day, 2,000-kilometre ride through B.C.’s Interior with nine members of his Harley Owners Group (HOG) chapter when he found the little monkey lying in the parking lot, where a car had been parked only moments before.
“When I picked it up I could picture some little kid … probably pretty young, finding out it wasn’t there and just screaming,” he said. “So I said, ‘well I’ll take it with me and deal with it later.’ ”
He secured his new passenger to his Harley’s luggage rack and took it along for the journey home to Saanich, just in case the owner was on the road and spotted it along the way.
But the monkey made it back with him to the Island, so De Jong posted a picture on Facebook and asked for help spreading the word. The post has since been shared 7,000 times. One person informed him that the monkey was Boots, a character from Dora the Explorer.
He has yet to receive a message from the rightful owner but said if he does, he will send the monkey by mail. Otherwise the smiling stuffed primate will have a permanent home in Saanich.
“He’s not much to look at but he makes me smile whenever I see him,” De Jong said in a Facebook post searching for the owner of the stuffy. “But then I’m just an old softy in leathers on a bike.”
