Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Brad O’Donnell said he was skeptical when he heard the call about a spider monkey spotted in a grassy area near highways 21 and M in the Otto area.
“I’m like, ‘No, way,’ but, sure as heck, when we get there, (the monkey) is sitting on the grass between (Deputy Zachary Reed’s) patrol car and him,” O’Donnell said.
Cindy Follett of Barnhart said she called the Sheriff’s Office at about 3:45 p.m. Jan. 3 after she and her husband, Dave, were driving in the area and saw the monkey.
Meia, who escaped from an Otto area home, was safely returned to her caretaker.
“We looked at each other like, ‘Is that a monkey?’” she said.
Follett said they didn’t stop or try to approach the monkey because they were afraid it would run deeper into the wooded area.
“We were so worried about it,” she said.
O’Donnell said when he arrived, he parked his patrol car on the other side of the highways’ exit ramp and walked to where the monkey was sitting because he didn’t want to approach it while still in his vehicle because his K-9 partner, a Belgian Malinois named Murphy, was inside.
“If (Murphy) saw the monkey, he was going to lose his mind,” O’Donnell said.
He said he was excited to respond to the call because he previously had dealt with chimpanzees that had escaped from a home south of Festus.
Until July 2021, chimps were housed at the now defunct Missouri Primate Foundation in the Festus area, but the chimps were removed on the orders of a U.S. District Court judge following a lawsuit filed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals against the animals’ original owner, Connie Casey, and then Tonia Haddix, who took over ownership of the chimps during the suit.
The saga of Haddix’s battle with PETA and her attempt to hide a chimp named Tonka by falsely claiming he had died is the subject of the HBO docuseries “Chimp Crazy.”
“When we used to get calls about the chimps, we were like those things will rip you from limb to limb,” O’Donnell said. “This one, I was like, ‘We can handle this one.’ It may bite me, but I don’t think we will have an issue of this one seriously hurting me. The chimps we used to deal with in Festus, those were scary guys. You don’t realize how muscular a chimp is. They will hurt you.”
O’Donnell said when he arrived, Reed and other deputies were keeping their distance from the monkey.
“I was like, ‘It is most likely domesticated. It is wearing a tutu,’” he said. “This is not a wild monkey in Jefferson County. I was more curious about it, more than anything else.”
O’Donnell said the other deputies jokingly said they should put the monkey in his car along with Murphy.
“I was like, ‘No way, my dog will have a fit,’” he said.
O’Donnell said he did open the door to Reed’s patrol car, but he quickly shut the door when the monkey started to approach the car.
“I was like, ‘Oh, no, we are not going to do that,’” he said. “He may have gotten in there and torn stuff up. When I closed the door, (the monkey) stopped right about at my feet. That is when it started pulling at my pants legs. Out of habit – I have three kids – I reached down. As I reached down, I was like, ‘Oh, it is going to bite me.’”
The monkey did not bite O’Donnell, though. Instead, it held the deputy’s hands.
O’Donnell said the monkey would hold his hands for a little bit and then return to the grassy area and come back and hold his hands. While the monkey was going back and forth between him and the grassy area, a woman drove up and said the monkey belonged to her.
“We were like, ‘How do we know this is her monkey?’” O’Donnell said. “She turned around and the back of her jacket says ‘Monkey Mom’ on it. I’m not a detective, but that was a clue.”
O’Donnell said the woman had contacted the Sheriff’s Office about the monkey escaping from her house after figuring out how to open a door.
“(Dispatch) told her we have a couple of deputies out with a monkey in your area. She came to us,” O’Donnell said.
He said the woman told them the monkey’s name is Meia.
O’Donnell said he called out the monkey’s name, and the monkey looked at him. Then the woman called the monkey by name, and it let go of his hands and went to her.
“(The monkey) jumped up into her arms,” he said.
O’Donnell said it is legal to own spider monkeys, which are endangered, in Missouri, so there was no legal action taken against the woman.
He also said the woman, who owns monkeys of her own, was watching Meia for a friend who was out of town.
O’Donnell said the Sheriff’s Office documented the incident in case there are more monkeys seen in the area and to inform Animal Control of the monkeys that do live in that area.
He said the call was a memorable one for him.
“I never expected to see an 8-pound monkey sitting in the grass on the side of highways 21 and M,” he said. “It was a bizarre case. I am glad we were able to get the monkey back to the woman who was looking after it. It was definitely a wild and different one that I wasn’t expecting.”
Follett said she was happy when she found out the monkey was safe.
“We both feel very blessed that we saw the monkey and were able to report it,” she said. “It looked so scared. We were relieved when we found out it was rescued.”
O’Donnell said he received some international fame after his encounter with the monkey.
“I got a Facebook message from a friend of mine who lives in Belgium, and he said, ‘You made it all the way to Belgium.’ There was a picture in the paper,” O’Donnell said.
“I never thought I would be a deputy in Jefferson County and be in a Belgian newspaper holding hands with a monkey. That was wild.”