Old Saybrook man discovers rare, illegal monkey hiding in shed

“It was one of those things, like I said, I was cleaning the gutters out,” said Old Saybrook’s Dan O’Connell.

It was one of those things that O’Connell never expected to see as he was putting his tools away on Monday night.

“I’m walking out and this thing is looking at me like, ‘what are you doing here?’ you know, and I said, ‘well, what are you doing here?’ and I said, ‘well, I’m getting out of here,’” O’Connell said.

O’Connell was describing a face-to-face encounter with a marmoset that was making itself at home in O’Connell’s backyard shed.

“I was like get out of here, what else are you going to tell me. I said... does it have a little hat on? It’s going to fly away like the Wizard of Oz,” said Dan’s partner Barbara Parkinson.

The monkey grinned ear-to-ear as Dan and Barbara, along with the help from a neighbor across the street, contacted Old Saybrook Police and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

“After a while they all went in and had quite the time chasing it all around,” Parkinson said.

Steve Crandall

O’Connell said that it took DEEP and Environmental Conservation Officials roughly 45 minutes to ultimately find the monkey, which was sitting on the second floor of the shed.

“Apparently they were busy, the owners were busy and somehow or other the poor monkey got outside,” Parkinson said.

Once found, DEEP says the owner of the monkey helped ENCON Police take it away in a cage. Because owning this particular animal is illegal in Connecticut, officials relocated the monkey to a new home.

“You know what, if anything ever happened, somebody got bit or whatever…no no no, you can’t do that,” O’Connell said.

DEEP said no one was injured and that they are continuing to investigate.