basement, where he expected it to join his menagerie of rabbits and gerbils. Rather than settle in, the monkey began using the plumbing pipes as a jungle gym. When Tuthill grabbed it, the monkey began gnawing on his arm “like a drill press.”
A trip to the emergency room resulted in Tuthill receiving 28 stitches. Surprisingly, his parents allowed him to keep the monkey, which he named Chipper. Books and trial and error gave him some rudimentary knowledge of how to care for it. (Peanuts and seedless white grapes were appealing; bananas were not.) Chipper also enjoyed riding on the back of the family’s Border collie, cowboy-style.
When Chipper was about 5 years old, he died suddenly. Tuthill suspected a possible wasp sting but could never be sure.
Chipper was a squirrel monkey, a popular species in the exotic pet trade that the National Resources Defense Council describes as needing an “insane” amount of care. Because they’re prone to destructive tendencies, few primatologists would ever advocate for keeping them in residential captivity. But in the 1960s and ’70s, a kind of squirrel monkey fever took hold; more than 173,000 of the animals were imported to the United States from Peru and Colombia, where they would then be sold via private dealers and comic or magazine ads, including the Warren horror publications like Creepy and Eerie. A number of dealers including Animal Farm peddled the primates. It was easy to fall for their tiny bodies and cartoonish, inquisitive expressions. One ad read:
“This Squirrel Monkey makes an adorable pet and companion. Almost human with its warm eyes, your family will love it. These young monkeys grow about 12 inches high. Eats same food as you, even likes lollipops; simple to care for and train. Live delivery guaranteed.”
None of the ads mentioned two common squirrel monkey traits: throwing feces and frequent masturbation.
In 2014, Tim Tate relived a tale about how he and his brother Tom sent away for a comic book monkey in the mid-1960s. The animal arrived just as their mother’s bridge club was getting underway; Tate unboxed the monkey, which had been waiting to defecate while en route to its new home. It proceeded to jump out, poop everywhere, and then leap upon several members of the bridge club.
As the Tates rushed to contain the monkey—which they named Pepe—inside a crib, they were horrified to see their aunt reach her arm in between the bars of the bed, in an attempt to soothe the animal’s nerves.
“But where an arm can go in, a monkey can come out,” Tate said. “And out comes Pepe. And a monkey who believes he’s about to go to the next beyond in panic jumps out—and to escape, bites the first thing in front of his eyes. And what is that? That is my aunt’s pendulous breast.”
Pepe fled the scene, only to be found dead months later in a nearby forest. The Tates gave him a funeral procession in the box he was shipped in. Years later, their mother admitted the monkey had been spotted repeatedly in the neighborhood, but she hid any newspaper reports of the sightings from her sons. She didn’t want the monkey back in the house.
