TORONTO — For eight years, Nicole Robert’s daughter Elisabeth and her stuffed toy monkey George have been inseparable — until one frantic day of Christmas shopping resulted in “poor George” being left behind in a bathroom stall at a Burlington, Ont. mall.
Now, Robert is taking to social media in hopes of finding her daughter’s “most trusted companion” just days before Christmas.
“Elisabeth is nine years old and received George as a gift from her uncle Bryan Rowsell when she was about one. She took to him immediately and proceeded to bring him everywhere she went,” she said, adding that Elisabeth even has outfits for George and has always been careful to keep a close eye on the mischievous monkey.
“Yesterday, we went to the Burlington Mall in Burlington, Ontario to finish up some Christmas shopping. We had bought a few items on the second level of the Bay, came down the escalator, where Elisabeth was making George slide down the banister (while holding him tightly), and then we went to use the washroom on the first level.”
That’s when the unthinkable happened.
“She set him on the toilet paper dispenser in her stall. In the bustle of gathering up her purse and bag to then wash her hands, she forgot about poor George,” Robert said, adding the family left the mall monkey-less at about 4:30 p.m. ET Monday.
“About an hour and a half later, Elisabeth started panicking that she couldn’t find George and had left him at the mall. We recounted where each of us had seen him last (my 11-year-old daughter Justine was with us shopping) and determined it to be in the washroom at The Bay.”
Robert’s husband Steve Rowsell then scooped up Justine and raced off to the mall before her piano lesson and spoke to a staff member at 6:15 p.m. who said she had seen the monkey on the bathroom counter about 20 minutes before they had arrived.
“Over the course of 30 minutes, they searched the bathroom, including the stalls and the garbage, spoke with the employees of the nearby service counters, checked at the store’s lost and found a couple of times, and searched at the mall’s lost and found. No luck,” she said.
“Steve left his contact info with the mall and The Bay. They also returned after the piano lesson, just in case someone had turned him in.”
An employee at the store mentioned to Robert that a cleaner must have come through after she had seen George in the bathroom, because it was noticeably cleaner than it was prior to when the monkey allegedly went missing.
But the cleaner had already left for the day by the time Steve had arrived and the distraught father was told to call back after 3 p.m. Tuesday when the cleaner was expected to be at work.
“Elisabeth had a rough time last evening, worrying about George. It was difficult for her to fall asleep,” Robert said.
“As a substitute, she hugged George’s dad tight. He is the same kind of plush monkey but much less raggedy. George’s stuffing is almost nonexistent in his torso from years of hugging.”
Robert took to Facebook on Monday in hopes of someone finding George, and posted photos of the monkey travelling across the country with Elisabeth, who she said was “experiencing much grief over his loss.”
“His owner can only imagine that he is pretty lonely right about now and is anxious for him to come home,” she wrote. “A warm hug awaits him.”
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