“Ricky the monkey gave us a lot of adaptation work last year. He had a notorious escape and luckily we were able to bring him from Villa Dolores. He had a hard time adapting to captivity, he was an animal with a lot of ties to humans; It was a lap animal, and it was scared, but it didn’t cause a problem,” he said in an interview with 970 news.
“He is well known in the neighborhood and when he escaped from Villa Dolores he was returning to his habitat.” Ricky had escaped from Villa Dolores in September 2022, and had been seized by the police in a raid in the house of Ricardo Damián Cáceres Correa’s brother, alias el Ricardito, stepbrother of El Betito Suárez. The animal had been brought to Uruguay illegally like other species that are today in the Villa Dolores zoo. Then Cáceres, alias Nonito, was charged with illegal possession of the animal, among other crimes.
“Now it is well adapted, we have caretakers who are affectionate with animals and this monkey was not adapted so it could not adapt quickly. It was a scared animal and it did not cause any problems,” he added.
To flee Villa Dolores, he used a large branch of a palm tree that fell on the electric fence and formed a kind of bridge. She then wandered the roofs and rooftops for two days.
Walk through Pocitos
In the first hours after he left the zoo, he was seen around Villa Dolores. Later, residents of Pocitos saw him in the area of the 10th police section, on Pereyra and Libertad. He had seen him running down Achiras Street.
Officials from Villa Dolores had already warned of Ricky’s escape, in addition to the fact that both the Municipality of Montevideo and the Police received dozens of calls that realized that there was “a monkey on the loose” in Pocitos.
Some neighbors offered him bananas and the monkey -which is harmless- gladly accepted. As explained by the municipal officials who participated in the operation, the capuchin monkeys They eat a variety, but above all they love fruit.
Balcedo’s Macaws
“The little animals are impeccable, they are in a Victorian habitat. They all talk, the macaws talk, people approach them; they scream and talk,” said Brum, who reported that the macaws confiscated from Balcedo in 2018 are in Villa Dolores and that are part of the recycling of the ex-zoo.
