Workers discover mummified monkey in old department store

Workers renovating the old Dayton’s department store in downtown Minneapolis have discovered a mystery: the mummified remains of a monkey.

A spokeswoman for The Dayton’s Project, an office, retail and restaurant complex going into the century-old building, says workers found the carcass in an air duct on the seventh floor last week.

Cailin Rogers says developers don’t know where the monkey came from or how it ended up in the air duct.

Old Minneapolis, a historic site, posted a photo of the monkey on its Facebook page and solicited answers.

Alan Freed, one of the site’s co-administrators, says the likely solution came from a poster who said a longtime Dayton’s employee told him a monkey had escaped from an eighth-floor pet store into the air conditioning ductwork in the 1960s.