Big Monkey's big adventure at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary

Yesterday Laura and I visited the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary, which is just a few miles from our home. We had a fantastic time! The sanctuary, which was previously known as the Chimp Farm, is run entirely by volunteers. They care for chimpanzees, orangutans, monkeys, baboons, etc., that were abandoned as pets, former research animals and television stars! In fact, Cheetah the chimpanzee from the Tarzan movies has called the sanctuary his home for the past 50 years. He is now in his 70's. The sanctuary has been closed to the public for at least 8 years for a rebuilding project. Mark and Laura used to be frequent visitors prior to that. The long anticipated grand re-opening happened earlier this year.

I am preparing a slideshow which will include all of my photos from our visit, but I was anxious to make a blog post. Here is a preview, and my slideshow will be featured in future post.

When Project Rebuild was in full force, the sanctuary utilized various fundraisers to make up for the lost income of daily visitors. Laura purchased a brick as a donation to the animals. We think the brick is at least 6 or 7 years old now. It is still in great shape. She had our cats, Megan and Karl, listed on the brick. It should have been my name, but that's OK.

This is one of the spider monkeys. His name is Blue because he has such brilliant blue eyes! He looks really cute, but spider monkeys can be quite ornery. He stuck his tongue out at me when I took this picture.

This is Baby Bob. He was born at the sanctuary about 4 years ago. He is such a cute little guy and is quite a ham! Most of the time that Laura and I observed him he was hiding under a giant bucket. He would stand on all fours and walk around with the bucket covering everything but his legs. It was difficult to get a good picture of him because he is such an active little chimp.

One of the sanctuary volunteers took us into her office to see this picture of Bob when he was a baby boy. You can barely see it, but he is wearing little monkey diapers! Ha ha! Isn't he adorable?