“Simone” the Squirrel Monkey (Palm Beach Zoo)
Three squirrel monkeys, an endangered Goeldi monkey and a parrot with a bum leg.
All five were saved in the nick of time.
"If they were kept in the conditions we found them in, at least the three squirrel monkeys, would have died sooner than later," says Keith Lovett with the Palm Beach Zoo.
Police believe several people using bolt cutters broke into the zoo sometime Wednesday night.
Simone, Sallie and Dougie the squirrel monkeys were taken. So was Chalupa the parrot. The biggest score though was Elsie, a rare Goeldi monkey who could have sold for $15-thousand dollars on the black market.
A tipster called the zoo Thursday afternoon telling them all five animals had been taken to an abandoned house on Palmarita Road in West Palm Beach.
The animals were found in a shed behind the house.
The captors were kind enough to feed the animals fruit, but in the Florida heat, the covered plastic containers they were kept in was just cruel.
"The squirrel monkeys were in a less than breathable container with an inch of water in it," says Lovett. "The containers were all steamed up and all we could barely see their faces."
Now the animals are on the mend.
They're all fine, except for Dougie the squirrel monkey.
"He's in an oxygen chamber right now, just because he was over-heated. We're just trying to keep him nice and cool and quiet," says Lovett.
Zoo officials will now have to re-assess their security to see where it failed. There are no cameras that caught anyone on the property.
Police are now searching for several suspects, believed to be teenagers. Although selling the animals on the black market was an option, no one believes this was really that complicated of an operation.
"I don't know what the motive was, whether they wanted their own menagerie, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to it," says Lovett.
Source and News Video
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