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Monkey's death casts pall on ranch

Residents outraged by shooting of primate family's patriarch

Monday, November 15, 2004

By DIANE JENNINGS / The Dallas Morning News

WILLS POINT JOURNALWILLS POINT – As a lifelong resident of Van Zandt County, 
Kathy Davis
has always enjoyed taking children by Cash Wiley's exotic animal ranch every 
now and then
to watch a family of Barbary apes cavort on a small island just off a back 
road. 

She won't be able to do that much longer, however. 

Someone shot the patriarch of the small monkey troupe a few weeks ago. Now, 
Mr. Wiley
plans to add netting to the fence to keep his remaining animals out of the 
public eye –
and safe. 

Ms. Davis said the killing outrages her and others in this small East Texas 
town. "It's
pretty sorry that somebody would do that to a little monkey," she said. 

Hunting is a popular activity around Wills Point. The Wileys operate a gun 
store adjacent
to the property. 

Wiley and Sons Gun Store and Exotic Animal Ranch is emblazoned with reminders 
of the
Second Amendment right to bear arms. Mr. Wiley, in fact, is an exotic animal 
dealer,
which means some of his animals could end up as hunting prey. But he does not 
allow
hunting on the 600 acres where he raises everything from exotic deer to 
camels. 

People are angry because the monkey, which weighed around 30 pounds, was not 
shot for
defense, food or sport. "It's not like the thing was attacking anybody," said 
Ms. Davis,
who heard about the incident from her son, a Wiley employee. 

"It's not very sportsmanlike. ... They just shot him and left him." 

Mr. Wiley found the monkey, named Rascal, floating in a pond the day after 
Halloween. He
said he began providing a home for Rascal and two other monkeys about 15 
years ago, after
they had been raised by someone else as pets – and sometimes mistreated. The 
group had
grown to seven. 

"We don't raise a lot of primates, by any means," he said. "This is just kind 
of a freak
deal." 

The monkeys are confined to two small islands in the middle of the pond. 
There they
receive regular monkey chow. They have a tire swing and a stand of live oaks 
to climb. 

The East Texas haven, which is punctuated with the blast of gunfire from the 
store's
nearby shooting range, might not be their native Gibraltar, or northern 
Africa, but Mr.
Wiley said it's better than most places they could have ended up. 

Though several animals were shot on his land a few years ago, "we've never 
had any
trouble with the Barbary apes," he said. "People enjoy looking at them from 
the road." On
Sunday afternoons, the road is sometimes lined with people watching the 
animals. 

The monkey island is about 80 yards from the road, where Mr. Wiley believe 
the shooter
sat or stood. 

"Could be a teenager out at night trying to play a prank on Halloween," he 
said. "It
could be someone who didn't know any better." 

The loss of the animal was "extremely hurtful," he said. And Rascal's primate 
family is
struggling to regroup. "He was the monarch of the whole group," he said. "He 
was the one
who held everything together." 

Lee Theisen-Watt, founder of a new nonprofit group called Advanced Primate 
Ethical
Studies, said she noticed the change when she brought fresh vegetables to the 
monkeys
recently. Instead of calling out excitedly upon her arrival, as they usually 
do, the
remaining six primates, including a youngster born last spring, watched 
warily. 

Ms. Theisen-Watt raised a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest 
of the
shooter. Raising the money wasn't hard, she said. "Every person I told was 
shocked at the
senselessness. Their question was why. Again and again, nobody could 
understand why." 

The Van Zandt County Sheriff's Department is investigating the incident, with 
help from
the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. 

E-mail djennings AT dallasnews.com