Rare monkey found living with dogs in Ft. Bend Co.

Rare monkey found living with dogs

from the Houston Chronicle

A malnourished monkey didn't seem to be anything special when he was found living with a
dog and its four pups in an abandoned Fort Bend County home.

But Houston Zoo veterinarians who examined the monkey said animal shelter investigators had
indeed found something out of the ordinary: an endangered white-crowned mangabey monkey
native to Africa's Ivory Coast.

Investigators for the Houston Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals are arranging to send Walter, as he has been dubbed by
the SPCA, to a European zoo that's trying to breed white crowns.

They also have invested a good deal of time in piecing together
parts of the story of how Walter came to live in an abandoned home
and his unusual pedigree -- his relatives were the center of a U.S.
Justice Department probe.

Walter almost definitely was a descendant of a group of white
crowns imported for a leprosy project at Tulane University and
ultimately dispersed after the project fell through, the SPCA says.

Some of these monkeys and their offspring, even though they are
endangered animals, have been auctioned off as pets, and Walter
was one who is believed to have been a pet.

Walter was living in an abandoned home on Precinct Road for about a month before a Fort
Bend County public works crew called the SPCA on Christmas Eve, said the agency's chief
investigator Jim Boller.

The young monkey, he said, probably foraged on his own, but he enjoyed playing with the four
puppies and being around them and their mom.

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