My week and a half with the monkeys

12/27/25

Hello, and happy end-of-year! We are in the thick of the holiday season, and about to turn a new year. May it bring healing, transformation, and joy to this world.

I’m a little late in making this follow-up post about my time at the monkey sanctuary, Jungle Friends. It was a unique and powerful experience for me, and I have been nervous that my writing wouldn’t be able to encapsulate it well enough. Perhaps that is true, but I definitely want to share some of my experiences, so here goes:

When we left off, I had spent a couple of days caring for the “munchkins”—the smallest monkeys at the sanctuary, marmosets and tamarins.

The munchkins are susceptible to “cross-contamination” by contact with the other monkeys (and also by any clothing contact with cats, so I had to do a load of laundry before I could work with them.) So, as a volunteer, you always get started with the munchkins, and then you move on to the larger monkeys: squirrel, spider, and capuchin.

After my three days with the munchkins, I began working with the squirrel monkeys. I requested to work with them first, because the cuteness of the shape and size of their heads and faces and bodies was almost too much for me to bear! In my life, whenever I have ever thought of the word “monkey,” it has been the image of a squirrel monkey that has come to mind.

There are 33 of them at Jungle Friends, housed in two buildings. All monkeys at the sanctuary have an indoor cage (usually shared with one other monkey) as well as an attached/enclosed outdoor habitat. I loved simply walking around the squirrel monkey houses and overhead walkways, marveling at their cuteness.

Daily work during my four-hour morning shift (7-11 am, eek!) usually consisted of first helping to prepare the “diets” (food bowls), then distributing them, and then cleaning the indoor areas. For the smaller monkeys—munchkins and squirrels—we could clean the indoor areas with the monkeys present in their cages. This is often necessary, in fact, because those smaller monkeys must be kept inside their heated habitats when the outdoor temperature dips below 50F/10C (for the squirrels) or 60F/15C (for the munchkins.) Most of these small monkeys are pretty chill, and except for one notorious character—a marmoset named Jolene—they do not attempt to pull your hair or harm you in any way. (When cleaning around Jolene’s cage, though, you’d better keep your distance, ducking if necessary!)

For the larger monkeys—the capuchins and spider monkeys—they must be locked out of their indoor areas before we can clean those. Otherwise, we would definitely risk having chunks of our hair pulled out, scratches on our hands, etc. (There are still exceptions if the outside temperature gets extra low, near freezing—I assume that in these cases, the seasoned pros do their best to clean while remaining intact.)

The daily cleaning involves making sure water bottles are clean and refilled; changing the newspaper from beneath each cage (surprisingly, the small squirrel monkeys are by far the messiest in this regard); and sweeping, then mopping, the floors.

I did most of this work while accompanied by staff members. I got to work with a number of different staff during my stay, which was cool. I have the utmost respect for these folks! They work from 7 am to 4 pm, five days a week. (And some of them commute from as much as an hour away!) Since the sanctuary is a nonprofit, pay is unfortunately not high, and the work can be messy and tiring… and a bit dangerous at times, if some of the monkeys are feeling feisty. (You always have to maintain a 3-foot buffer zone, but this can be tricky when distributing or retrieving food bowls, especially when some cages and overhead runways are close to each other.)

All the staff I met were extremely dedicated and hardworking, and you could tell how much they cared about the monkeys.

The food prep was really interesting to me. I was shocked by how healthy and varied the monkeys’ diets are! They each (177 monkeys) receive a bowl with eight to ten different items, once or twice a day, as well as a “biscuit bowl” with fun snacks like popcorn and monkey biscuits. The fresh foods rotate, so they don’t get the same things every day. (They do always get grapes, though! I was surprised to observe that grapes seem to be the favorite food of almost all the monkeys. Most times when I provided a bowl and watched a monkey start to eat, the first thing they would do is dig around in the bowl and find the grape—or in the munchkins’ case, the ¼ of a grape that staff had cut up for them!—and eat it first.) They get fruit salad, raw vegetable salad, cooked sweet potatoes, canned “monkey chow,” oatmeal, mandarin orange segments, corn, squash… lots of variety!

I was also impressed by how much time and effort goes into taking care of the monkeys’ various health and dietary issues. As rescued animals, many of them do have health issues. For example, I would estimate that about 10-15% of them are diabetic. For those monkeys, the fruit in their color-coded bowls is limited, and some also take insulin. This often has happened because the people who kept them as pets fed them lots of marshmallows or gummy bears. Many other monkeys have few or no teeth—again, often because they had bitten their previous captors, who then had had at least their canine teeth extracted, and sometimes all of their teeth. Their foods are softer. Other monkeys are allergic to citrus, so their color-coded bowls don’t contain oranges or limes.

First thing in the morning, staff work together to make all the food bowls, and then they split up into different golf carts to go to different parts of the compound to feed the different kinds of monkeys. Before the food bowls are distributed, the staff administer medication to the monkeys who need it. They usually put the meds on various kinds of treats, such as a banana slice or a piece of cereal such as Chex. They have to watch and make sure each monkey finishes the medicated treat before feeding begins.

For most of my time there, my interactions with the monkeys were brief, as I fed them or cleaned near them. But there were a few with whom I got to interact a bit more, and three capuchins in particular captured my heart.

One was Skotty, one of three capuchins who shared the large habitat right outside the Healing Center—the guest house where I was staying.

I would walk out in the morning and say hello to Skotty, and sometimes his habitat-mate Harriet.

(Kooda was more reclusive, less often seen.) Skotty’s history was a painful one. He is two years old now, and arrived at Jungle Friends at only six months. Tragically, his system was full of methamphetamine and caffeine when he arrived. Staff were unable to even hand him to the “foster mom” capuchins—Monkers and Zumie—because although they would have been willing to help raise him as their own, he was physically unable to cling to their backs because of the drugs in his system.

As a result, human staff members took 8-hour shifts with him to provide round-the-clock care, bottle-feeding him and caring for him as needed.

He is now thriving. He allowed me to hold his hand several times. I loved saying hello to him each time I left or returned to the house.

The other two monkeys I felt a bond with were those “foster mom” capuchins, Monkers and Zumie. They are sisters, but one had served as a foster mother to the other during their early years. Now they are habitat-mates, and when new baby monkeys arrive at the sanctuary, they help to raise them.

I didn’t see any babies (nor any other new monkeys) arrive during my time there, but Monkers and Zumie love humans, too. I had been told that when a monkey feels close or warm toward you, they might show it via two forms of body language: moving their lips in a sort of kiss-like motion, and/or putting a hand over their heart. I was also told that I could do one or both of these things back, or even to try to initiate a connection. (This reminded me of the “slow-blink” interaction one can have with a cat.)  

Sure enough, both Monkers and Zumie were happy to engage with me in these ways, virtually every time I passed their habitat. I remember one time when one of them was doing the “kissing,” and the other placed her hand over her heart while tilting her head left and then right to maintain eye contact with me. I was so touched, and placed my hand over my heart too. At that point, she placed her other hand over her heart as well! My own heart nearly burst at this.

Another thing those two would do—as would some of the much larger spider monkeys—was offer their prehensile tail outside the fencing. You could place your finger near the tip of their tail, and they would hold onto it.

This could be simply a sweet sign of affection, but sometimes it could also be a trap: the spider monkeys, in particular, could use their very strong tail to pull you in, and then reach out a hand and grab your glasses, jewelry, phone, or anything else they could reach. Monkeys love to take things! Fortunately, my experiences with their tails seemed to be only friendly. Here is Gizmo, a spider monkey:

I need to mention one more monkey by name, because he is a legend! Nearly every person I talked to who was aware of Jungle Friends, upon hearing that I was working there, said, “Have you met Udi yet??” Udi is a spider monkey with an outsized personality. One staffer, Julia, described his schtick to me as “hazing”—he would always haze new people he met by grabbing or scratching them in some way. This might happen a few times, or maybe for a week or so… and then he would decide they were friends, and he wouldn’t do it anymore.

Sure enough, the first (and only!) time I was instructed to give Udi (and his two “girlfriends,” Goldie and Lizzy, who share his habitat) his food bowl, he reached out and scratched my hand. It was a relatively superficial scratch, but about two weeks later now, the scab is still healing. I kept my distance from Udi after that, but he has a strange charm: despite these behaviors, he seemed to be the favorite monkey of nearly anyone who had met him.

And here is Goldie! She first walked out towards me with the blanket on her back, then tucked it under herself to cushion the cage bars:

I met some wonderful, magical people during my time at Jungle Friends, too, including staff, volunteers, and also some local Gainesville folks I met through the Gainesville Vegans Facebook group. I met up with four locals—two of whom, a couple, had worked and/or volunteered at Jungle Friends before, and asked after Udi. These various folks took me to a number of beautiful nature parks nearby. I don’t want to overwhelm this post with pictures; maybe I can post some of the nature ones later. But the Gainesville area is home to nature parks too numerous for me to visit all of them. I really hope I can return and see more of them!

Kari, the founder of the sanctuary, was wonderfully warm and welcoming to me, and we shared several meals together. Sara, a longtime staffer who has been involved almost since the beginning, gave me a tour when I arrived, and helped me out several times during my stay, loaning me a pair of work boots when the grounds got muddy from rain and helping to get the heat repaired in the house when it went out.

I met some amazing fellow traveling volunteers—Colleen, Jim, and Drea. They were all snowbirds, and had volunteered at the sanctuary before. Unlike me, they did specialized work, including reiki and socialization work with the monkeys. Drea and I had some “magical meeting” talks when we shared the house, and I’m looking forward to more! I also had some “magical meeting” talks with a friend of a friend named Tia, who had actually been visiting Oregon when I first arrived in Gainesville! Tia took me out to the Sweetwater Preserve one evening, where we saw many birds, an alligator, some turtles, and even an armadillo! She then very graciously gave me a ride to the bus stop in town on my last day, saving me a long and not entirely safe bike ride. (In fact, I arrived at the sanctuary my first day in Jim’s truck! After I had biked about eight of the ten miles out there, he spotted me on the side of the road with my rig, and surmised that I must be the volunteer who was due to arrive that day!)

All in all, it was an amazing time at the sanctuary, and I’m so grateful to all the humans and monkeys who made it so.

If you know of anyone looking for a wonderful volunteer vacation, please keep Jungle Friends in mind. They are always welcoming volunteers, for any duration of stay. All vegan food and housing is provided, in exchange for 20 hours per week of work. They even have RV parking available; some people, like Colleen and Jim, park their RVs on site and live there while volunteering.

You can also follow Jungle Friends on various social media sites; they post frequent updates and cute videos.

Now I’m in Sarasota, absolutely loving the perfect weather here! My cat sit here is for three and a half weeks, and then I’ll head to Orlando. I’ll write a post soon about my time here.

Happy new year! I wish the best for all of you in the coming year.

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