Dancing Snake and Musical Monkey

Here’s an eye-catching headline from the Pittsburgh Press 19 Feb 1917 —

New York, Feb 19. This is the story of a dancing bullsnake and a ukulele-playing monkey. The facts were gathered by teetotalers and written by a man from a prohibition state.

Fannie, a turbulent tailed chimpanzee [sic!] at the Bronx Zoo, fell heir to a demoralized ukulele gotten from somewhere by Keeper Bill Synder. Bill says Fannie has learned to play two bars of ‘Home Sweet Home’ keeping time by swinging herself, pendulum-wise, from her tail rack.

George McCoy spread consternation and the bullsnake all over the Fifty-first st. police station when he left it there because somebody left it with him and he didn’t want it. He told the panic–striken police to whistle and the snake would dance instead of following them. They did.

Now the plan is to present the dancing snake to the ukulele-playing monkey and let them stage a perpetual concert and ball among themselves.

I’d like to know what was in the tea-cup, and where the writer lives now.