A monkey breeder reminisces
By Christine J. Camp

The Story of Frankie

I forget the year Frankie was born. But I remember what it took to get him from his mother's arms. I can see SuzieQ's face as I pried his tiny fingers from her chest hair. He was one of the first, but one of many, who I stole from a family. I had him sold for $3000.00 dollars. I knew he was going to a home that would make him a pet: a 'family member' -- but somehow I could understand it all back then. I understood the buyer's feelings, the need to have a baby in her arms. After all, that is how I started with primates. I hated to take a baby, and could see the pain it caused the whole troop, but I always justified it. The monies collected would go to good use. Bigger and better cages, more fresh fruits and vegetables. Frankie was tiny and so cute in his little Pampers. I had picked the perfect home for him.

A year later, I got a call about Frankie. His name was the same but he wasn't as little. He was in a new home now. His second one. Sold because the "perfect home" I had found decided they could not deal with monkey feces on the furniture and Frankie was getting quite independent, taking his diapers off and running through the home. He was a Java Macaque and the couple had decided a capuchin would probably fit their needs better. The new home had big ideas about how to train Frankie. They had heard when he was acting up if they put him in a dark closet for several hours so he would learn to calm down. The new "mommy" also told me how she loved him as if he were her child, and how she was determined to teach him not to bite. A monkey expert who has organ grinders had told her to just stick her finger down his throat when he bit and gag him. She was doing just that.

I started worrying about Frankie, and how it must have felt for him to be with a family for a year, then shipped off because he hated diapers. Learning all new rules in a new household. Trying to figure out where his place in the new human troop was. He never did. He became "out of control" by the age of two. He was sold again and again. Always into a home that wanted a monkey as a family member. A 'forever home', with promises of a wonderful life. He had been in many homes, in five states.

I was called by a woman in a panic: Janet had a Java Macaque loose in her home and she was terrified. She was told he came from me. Her house was a mess and she was locked in a bathroom with a male macaque named "Frankie" on top of her refrigerator. Her young children would be home from grade school soon. She had given a woman $1500.00 for this monkey and paid shipping. She was told he would be a loving monkey and she could dress him up and take him out. His name was Frankie". She couldn't even catch him.

My heart ached for Frankie. I knew I had to get him out of Janet's kitchen and out of the pet trade. It took a few hours to locate someone close enough to help. He went over to her house and caught the monkey and put him in a crate. Janet changed her mind about me taking Frankie back then. She would try to make him become her buddy. After all she had close to $2000.00 invested. Frankie lived in a shipping crate for weeks.

At the age of five he had never known any real freedom, never had a troop of his own, or joy in life. I found a road-side zoo that needed a male java for a lone female and talked Janet into taking him there. I called to check on him every once in a while. Frankie was a perfect monkey. He cowered in the corner of the cage as people stared at him. He never liked the female monkey. The owners called him a loner. I tried not to imagine him just sitting in the corner on the ground. But I felt he was safe now - better than the pet cycle. Two years later, when Frankie was seven, the road-side attraction closed. Frankie was shipped to Arizona to live with a woman who boasted of macaque experience. She had three already living in crates in her kitchen. Her husband was a truck driver and when they went on the road they just loaded the crates in the back of the truck and took everyone with them.

She contacted me to lament that Frankie was not impregnating her females. She would tranquilize him and place him in a crate with a female for days at a time. Her complaint: He just sat there, facing the plastic crate wall, sometimes grooming himself until he bled. A few times he would fight with a female, and a vet would be called to stitch them up. Listening on the phone to the way Frankie's life was drifting away, made me remember the day I took this baby from his mother. For $3000.00 I had given Frankie seven years of hell.

I lost track of the woman and all her kitchen macaques.

Two and a half years later, I was not selling very many monkeys; the phone calls were tiring me. Frankie was just one of many. A broker from Miami called me and asked me to buy three adult macaques that were coming in the next day from Hawai'i. They were perfect breeders, donated to a monkey retirement sanctuary in Hawai'i with a baby; but the receiver only wanted the baby. For the others, it would be a turn around flight back to the mainland. They were actually sold to the broker in Miami before they arrived in Hawai'i. I didn't buy them, but agreed to pick them up at the airport and house them till he sold them.

At the airport, I paid little attention to the crated macaques. Trying to avoid the stench, I rolled the windows down. I did notice that one looked very old. Arthritis, maybe.

Back at my facility, I started going through the paperwork. I came to the male's crate and started reading. Written by hand it started out: "My name is Frankie. I am 9 years old. I was born at Exotic Cargo in Fla." I fell to my knees and looked in the crate through the wire, at this shell of a monkey, his hollow eyes, his head hanging down showing his submission, his crooked bones protruding. His stubbed teeth, dark and decayed. I sobbed, I cried so loud and so long, I screamed at God, asking how He could let this happen. I hated everyone who had touched this primate's life for the injustice each had wreaked. The world was my enemy. I was filled with a hate and rage beyond description. And then it dawned on me.

That cliché "The buck stops here" echoed in my mind. I am the one who started this cycle of abuse, and I would have to face it. Frankie would stay.

It took two years to get Frankie to climb or take interest in the fresh air. To keep him from self-mutilating, I distracted him with a TV, on all day and all night, and covered in plastic when it rained. A few times, I slept outside at his cage, making promises I knew I would have to keep.

Frankie has stopped grooming to the point he bleeds. He will never be a normal monkey, but he is safe. He is my teacher, my guilt, my sorrow, and my salvation. He saved the lives of many primates born here.