Carli the capuchin home after three-day jaunt

Carli, the capuchin monkey who escaped from Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary Sunday, was spotted Wednesday morning munching on corn by a hunter checking his deer stand, darted by a state wildlife officer and returned to the sanctuary.

Jungle Friends founder Kari Bagnall said Carli was in great condition and appeared to have found food and water while she was AWOL.

“She was in a new deer stand with better corn, we noticed,” Bagnall said. “She was in a hunt club and someone who was in a deer stand saw a monkey in a tree. He called a buddy of his and said ‘I have a monkey across from me.’ The partner said that had to be the monkey that was in the paper.”

Eventually the man got Bagnall on the phone. She asked him to put it on speaker mode.

“I called, ‘Carli, Carli, where's that pretty girl Carli?' He said, ‘Whoa, she spun around.’ That calmed her down,” Bagnall said.

Bagnall mustered a group of people to go to the spot. Among them was Ken Holmes with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who knows Carli and has been searching for her with the Jungle Friends crew.

They tried to lure Carli close enough to get hold of her, but she was having none of that.

Eventually the 15-year-old monkey climbed back up a tree and the decision was made to dart her. So a group stood below the tree with a blanket while Holmes took aim.

“He darted her the first time - got her in the thigh,” Bagnall said. “She was real loopy but was hanging on. Then her hands fell, then her legs fell, but she was still hanging on by her tail. Then she came to a nice soft landing.”

Carli's ordeal started when a breach was found in a runway between living areas. She was lured with a Fig Newton into Bagnall's trailer around 10 a.m. Sunday but when she saw a worker holding a net, she got spooked, opened a door and let herself out, Bagnall said.

Crews spent Tuesday in a different wooded area from where a hunter's motion detector camera had photographed Carli. They set out food and brought Andy to the spot to try to entice Carli.

Bagnall said she was overjoyed that Carli was eventually found the hunt club off State Road 121, fairly close to the sanctuary.

“She's happy and healthy and enjoying a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Bagnall said. “Andy was so happy to see her. They are grooming each other.”