Drug addicted monkey on the loose in Florida
Photo by RENEE BLOCK
Wildlife officials have been searching for an elusive monkey that’s been in the Tampa Bay area for more than a year.
Yesterday, Renèe Barth spotted what she thought was a large dog walk by the sliding glass doors in her St. Petersburg backyard, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
But it wasn’t a dog — it was a monkey.
It then sidled through an open screen door and swung onto a tree in the pool enclosure.
Barth said the monkey “freaked out” a bit before he found his way out of the enclosure, banging the screen and even falling into the pool
When Barth checked her property, she noticed that some of her grapefruits were missing.
The rhesus macaque that has been on the loose for months in the Tampa Bay area is one very clever monkey.
Even after being hit twice with tranquilizer darts earlier this month, the monkey managed to escape again in St. Petersburg.
“The drugs just don’t seem to affect him for whatever reason,” wildlife rehabilitator Vernon Yates said at the time. “We’ve increased the dosage every time that we’ve shot him. What we’re really doing is turning him into a drug addict,” reports Tampa Bay Online.