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http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=5276256&page=1

(Video)

Call of the Wild: Adopting Monkeys
Families Adopt Monkeys as Surrogate Children
By DAVID MUIR, JIM DUBREUIL and TRACIE HUNTE

July 1, 2008—

Empty nesters looking to relive all the fun of raising children
without reliving the turbulent teens are adopting some of our closest
relatives: monkeys.

Families are dressing up capuchins, feeding them at the family dinner
table and treating them like any other member of the family. They're
called monkids.

Lori Johnson adopted her monkid, Jessy, when Jessy was 7 weeks old.
Lori's children had all moved out and, struggling with an empty house,
Lori fell into a deep depression.

"I thought about babies, but I didn't want to go through the preteens
all again," Lori said.

This led her to another solution, and to Jessy. "She thinks she's a
child. She doesn't like other monkeys at all," Lori said. "She'd
rather play with the kids."

'Couldn't Imagine Not Having Her'

Jessy is with Lori all the time. When she was a baby, she latched onto
Lori's arm 24 hours a day for six months.

"Six months that I showered, went to the stores, cooked, slept,
everything with her on my arm, because she wouldn't get off," Lori
said. "You couldn't get her off."

It was nine months before Lori could leave the room without Jessy
having a panic attack. There were other difficulties, as when Jessy
started to nip at Lori and her husband, Jim. They eventually had her
teeth removed.

Although there have been challenges, Lori said she couldn't imagine
life without Jessy.

"I couldn't imagine not having her," Lori said. "We do something all
the time with her."

Jessy gets dressed up in an assortment of handmade dresses, goes
everywhere with Lori and Jim, sleeps in the same bed as them and loves
fast food. Her favorites are Slim Jims and "monkey" fries.

And what does Lori say when people ask her why she would want a monkey
for a daughter?

"I wanted a monkey because it's not going to grow up," Lori said. "And
I'm not going to grow up." This arrangement isn't unique. There are
hundreds of videos on the Internet of proud parents enjoying their
capuchins. It's estimated there are 15,000 monkeys living with humans
as pets or surrogate children in the United States.

'I Had a Baby'

Unfortunately, not all monkid stories end so happily.

Angelle Sampey has always wanted a monkey since holding her first baby
monkey at a petting zoo as a child. Several years ago, single and with
a career as a motorcycle drag racer taking off, Sampey thought
adopting a monkid could fill the void.

"I can't race and, you know, bear a child. And I thought, you know,
adopting a monkey as a surrogate child would be a good thing to do,"
Sampey said.

Sampey found her capuchin on the Internet and bought him from a
breeder in the Midwest. She picked up her "son," Andy at the airport.

"I was so happy. I had a baby," Sampey said. "I could dress him, put a
diaper on him and he would drink [from] bottles."

Like Jessy, Andy also latched onto his new mother for six months.

"But to me, that was cute. He loves me. I didn't see it as this animal
needs his mother," Sampey said.

Everything seemed right in the beginning, and Sampey spent thousands
of dollars building a special room for Andy in her home. But Sampey's
joy became an emotional nightmare, when she found out about how
monkeys are sometimes taken taken their mothers.

Sampey learned after she bought Andy that mothers are routinely darted
with sedatives so the babies can be removed.

"Can you imagine taking a baby from a mother out of the hospital? And
that's what we did," Sampey said. "He is a wild monkey. He is never
going to be domesticated, and it took me seven years to realize that."

'It's Not If They'll Attack, It's When'

During those seven years, Andy tore down the walls and curtains and
ripped out the wiring in the special room Sampey had built for him.
Sampey knew Andy was lonely and depressed.

When Andy thought Sampey had come to take away the peanuts she'd given
him, Andy attacked her, biting her repeatedly.

"I walked into the room and he just, he bit me everywhere he could
bite me. He ripped my elbow open, right across my wrist, on my hand,
the back of my knee," Sampey said. "And it all happened within, like,
three seconds. I got out of the room as fast as I could. But I got out
of the room bleeding all over the place."

That night, Sampey searched online and found Kari Bagnall who runs the
Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Florida.

Jungle Friends is home to more than 100 monkeys, many of whom were
surrogate children whose "parents" could no longer care for them.
Sampey's story is all too familiar to Bagnall.

"I have monkeys here that the people have had for 20 years. Never had
a problem," Bagnall said. "Twenty years later, the monkey attacks. So
it's just something, it's going to happen. It's not a matter of, you
know, if they're going to attack. It's when."

After arriving at the sanctuary, there are extraordinary challenges
for the monkeys. In many cases, their teeth have been pulled out and
their fingers cut off.

"They have a sedentary lifestyle, they don't do anything and they eat
garbage," said Bagnall.

"The breeders tell you, 'Oh, it's just like having a baby ... you get
to bottle feed them and they can stay on the bottle forever,'" Bagnall
said. "It's just crazy."

There are dozens of other monkeys on the waiting list for Jungle
Friends. Sampey, who once spent thousands on her monkid Andy, is now
contributing thousands to Jungle Friends, the new home of her son.

"He's going to live in our hearts now, not our home," Sampey said.