A new monkey has joined our rescues. This monkey had been used for begging from tourists at a local night spot for some weeks, it had been reported as a small baby, and frequent call outs from visitors all proved fruitless, as the person with it was obviously aware it is illegal in India to keep wildlife and quickly scarpered. One of our own volunteers then spotted it. Max is a monkey walking volunteer and an Indian national so was able to ascertain from the owner he was confident he wouldn’t get caught and would never hand it over, so he got friendly with him instead and Max, from the scene and John quickly hatched a plot over the phone and to everyone’s surprise, it all worked perfectly!
Basically John on arrival spoke to Max as if he were the owner as he had hold of the monkey at that time, saying he must come with him to the police station, Max told the owner in Hindi that he would just say the monkey was his and go with John but in his own car, and then loose him on the way to the police and bring the monkey back later that evening. So Max and John literally waltzed off with her without any of the problems with Preston’s confiscation. She is now called Matilda and is in fact about 2-3 years old.
She had clearly never seen another monkey although friendly with everyone. After 2 days we got her into Daisy’s pen, Daisy started to groom her, but Matilda was unaware she was supposed to return to compliment and when Daisy duly presented herself for the return favour, she was ignored completely by Matilda, much to Daisy’s astonishment! After a while she clued up on proper monkey behaviour and now interacts much better with Daisy and Sasha and is sharing their pen happily.
She had a large strap and chain around her waist which we removed but it had caused many sores. Hopefully we will soon be able to introduce her to the pleasure of garden walks and a swim in the pool, she already enjoys fresh fruits and vegetables, obviously also a new experience.
Flora has now rejoined her group and whatever the argument was about has been forgotten, she was put back in first with the male group leader, as if he accepted her, the others would follow his lead, and although there was much seemingly innocent inspection of the wounds, that one of them at least had inflicted, there was no renewal of the aggression towards him.
