Timmy and Dylan’s Motherless Day By Helene Goldson, Jungle Friends Volunteer

Animal Rescue Corp., with whom i have done 4 animal rescues within the past year, was called to help a monkey. They took Louie to Jungle Friends where he will live happily with others for the rest of his life. I missed this one but this is what ARC writes about it.

“Several weeks ago ARC assisted with the relocation of a monkey named Louie to Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Florida. While there we met a special monkey named Puchi. Puchii had some very difficult times in his past, but he now lives happily in permanent sanctuary at Jungle Friends. Check out this sweet video of Puchi bedding down for the night.”
Here is a touching story about two other rescued primates. At the end is the video of Puchi bedding for the night. Please support Jungle Friends!

Two tiny capuchin monkeys named Timmy and Dylan began their lives in the usual way of monkeys. Immediately after birth they snuggled into their mothers’ warm furry monkey breasts. Monkey love instantly formed an immediate, unbreakable mother and child bond.
Then their world fell apart. After just a few days, human hands pried tiny monkey fingers from their mothers’ fur and arranged the babies on cold stuffed animals – where they clung because they had no choice.

For some reason, a human family felt entitled to raise these wild animal babies in an unnatural habitat with unnatural habits. Timmy and Dylan’s monkey mothers would have nursed and held them constantly. The humans gave them bottles, cuddling them if they weren’t busy with human things. Their monkey moms would have gradually encouraged them to explore, to leap shrieking through high branches and poop at will. The humans punished them for exploring in the “wrong” places and even more for shrieking and pooping. The humans got all kinds of attention and admiration from other humans for the childlike pets they kept in a cage, and congratulated themselves.

Fortunately, Timmy and Dylan didn’t have to put up with that life for more than a few weeks. The humans were breaking state law and had to give up the monkeys. Going back to the breeder, even though their mothers were there, was absolutely out of the question. The baby monkeys wound up at a zoo, where keepers called Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Gainesville, Florida and found them a forever home.

Now these two young capuchins get to live their lives in a semblance of the usual monkey way. Together in as natural a habitat as possible, with plenty of food and things to climb, Timmy and Dylan live safe from predators and disease. They joyfully ride on other monkeys’ backs, splash in a little pool, poop where they please, shriek and screech and dig little treasures out of the grass. It’s a simple, peaceful monkey life – until you look deeper.

While Timmy and Dylan enjoy all the advantages of well-kept sanctuary monkeys, their early trauma shows. They rock back and forth sucking their thumbs, clinging to stuffed animals as if expecting the polyester fluff to come to life. If they go the way of other monkeys who started life without a monkey mom, they may spend 40 years wanting stuffed animals as surrogate mothers. In the wild, young monkeys stick close to mom for two or three years, but in captivity the yearning stemming from early misery never really goes away.

And what about Timmy and Dylan’s mothers? Still held captive by breeders, these moms are left alone with their monkey thoughts and empty breasts, bearing more baby monkeys to fill humans’ so-called needs, grieving new losses year after year. What kind of life is that for a mother?

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