Monkeys leave Biden alone at India's Gandhi statue

NEW DELHI, July 23 (UPI) -- A pack of wild monkeys raised some security concerns during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to a Gandhi memorial in India, but the primates behaved.

Biden started his four-day India visit with a trip to the Gandhi Smriti, the memorial at the site of the leader's 1948 assassination, and security workers said they were concerned about a group of about a dozen adult monkeys and some babies seen knocking mangos out of a tree above the statue, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

"What I don't want is a mango to drop on the vice president when he comes here," an Indian security official said.

Biden and his wife posed for pictures in front of the statue Monday evening, but the monkeys in the trees declined to rain any mangos on the official. Instead, three of the primates were seen standing on the 10-foot-tall bamboo frame holding up a white cloth used as a backdrop for the statue.