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Yes, you read that right. A fugitive rhesus macaque monkey has been leading professional wildlife tracker Vernon Yates on a wild chase across three Florida counties, including urban Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, for nearly a year now. Yates has had his fury foe in his sights at least twice, and even landed a tranquilizer dart in the clever little primate, but each time the rhesus has escaped. Once the fugitive demonstrated his disapproval of Yates’ attempt to tranquilize him by throwing his feces at the trapper and then escaping to an unreachable tree branch to sleep off the drugs.
“He’s kind of made a monkey out of everybody’s tried to catch him,” Yates told NBC’s Kerry Sanders. ”Now he’s traveled three counties, almost four counties that I know of.”
“He is an extremely intelligent monkey,” Yates told The Associated Press. ”He is very, very streetwise. He knows to check traffic. He knows to look both ways so he doesn’t get hit by cars. He knows to stay out of power lines.”
Like all popular folk heroes these days, this streetwise monkey has a Facebook page. Known as the Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay, he’s got something close to 16,000 Facebook fans and his page is regularly updated. Wednesday morning he commented on the Today Show’s segment about his escapades: “Sitting in a tree, peering through a window watching the Today Show, Hi Meredith, Matt, Ann and of course Al… Nothing could be better than freedom and the Today show.”
Mystery Monkey’s origins are also, well, a mystery. Some believe that he escaped from a preserve in Ocala, about 120 miles north of the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. Others think he may have escaped from an unlicensed pet owner who didn’t know how to properly care for him. Rhesus macaque monkeys are natives of southern Asia, they average 18 to 25 inches in height and 25 pounds in weight and will eat just about anything from fruits and vegetables to bugs to small animals to garbage.
Mystery Monkey may be adorable, but wildlife officials warn against residents approaching him or trying to catch him themselves: “That animal is so much quicker and more powerful than people perceive,” says Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. ”That monkey would absolutely tear an adult male up. People have no idea how fierce their bites would be.”
For that reason, and for the safety of Mystery Monkey, Yates wants to catch MM and find him a safe home. He’s afraid someone might shoot the monkey if he remains on the loose. MM’s fans, however, hope that MM will continue to evade capture. As a Facebook fan, Jack, put it: “Go little monkey, go! No cages for you.”
