Remember Benjamin, the capuchin monkey who bit a woman staying at the Kaaterskill Bed & Breakfast in Catskill, prompting a lawsuit and the monkey's disappearance? The New York Daily News tracked Benjamin down to a monkey rest home in Florida, where, the newspaper reports, he is living out his "final days:"
Recent tests showed the 17-year-old monkey has cancer and a few months to live, said Jungle Friends owner Kari Bagnall.
As for his owner, portrait artist Allen Hirsch, he is hiding out in South America, apparently leaving his monkey to die alone:
Bagnall says Benjamin's owner, renowned painter Allen Hirsch, stayed with him at the 12-acre sanctuary for several weeks before leaving for Venezuela last month. At the time, Greene County, N.Y., health officials were hunting for Benjamin to check him for rabies - a test that requires the animal be euthanized so the brain can be dissected. Bagnall said this isn't Benjamin's first stay at the habitat: Hirsch brought him there several years ago after he attacked someone else, she said.
Will Greene County extradite the cancer-ridden monkey to upstate New York to test him for rabies? And who is running the Kaaterskill in Hirsch's absence? The Daily News article doesn't say, but it does have lots of cute photos of Benjamin.
