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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has cited Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for violating the Animal Welfare Act after a monkey escaped from a university research laboratory.

Wake Forest Baptist is appealing the findings, the medical center told the Winston-Salem Journal Wednesday.

The citation was for failing to house the monkey safely and securely, but it wasn’t clear what punishment, if any, the medical center faces.

An inspection report noted the latch of the monkey’s cage was “easily manipulated to open.” Staff at the primate center have since installed a chain with a secure latch to the center’s outside corridors to prevent further escapes, the report said.

Under the federal law, failure to correct problems documented by inspectors can result in fines and confiscation of animals.

The 8-pound female macaque — used to breed other monkeys for research purposes — got out of her cage at the Wake Forest Primate Center on June 29. She opened a latch on her cage, then managed to open a chain-link fence and get out of the center, officials said.

She roamed the woods for 11 days before she was captured.

The federal action is the result of a complaint filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“We had hoped that WFU would honor the monkey’s indomitable spirit by sending her to an accredited sanctuary after she was recaptured, but the university has not given any indication that it is pursuing this compassionate option,” said a PETA spokesman.

(Photo by Crystal Hughes, via Fox 8) 

Humans had been searching more than 10 days for the monkey that escaped from Wake Forest University’s Primate Center, but it was a dog who finally spotted her.

Cassidy Garwood, 14, told WGHP/Fox 8 that her dog, Keeley, saw the monkey Tuesday afternoon in some trees outside their house on Frye Bridge Road.

When the family went to see what Keeley was barking at, they saw the 8-pound, one-foot-tall macaque jumping from tree to tree.

The family called authorities and officials from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, Lexington Police and Wake Forest soon arrived on the Garwoods’ property, where the monkey was brought down with three tranquilizing darts and returned to the research facility.

Richard Young, who heads the animal resources program for Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, told the Winston-Salem Journal that the monkey is doing fine and will be quarantined for six weeks.

After that, he added (in a word choice he probably regrets) she’ll be placed “back with her other cage mates, inmates, back in her family.”

The monkey outsmarted two barriers at the center on June 29 and fled into the woods, prompting a search in which law enforcement, university officials and animal control officers set traps with apples and bananas and even used recordings of a baby monkey in their efforts to capture her.

The 16-year-old macaque is a breeder, producing offspring that are used for medical testing. She came to the primate center in 2008 after being captured in Indonesia.

According to the website for Wake Forest’s Primate Center, staff “use nonhuman primates to study six of the 10 major causes of death in the United States.”

The monkey’s escape led to criticism from some animal welfare groups, including PETA, which filed a formal complaint July 4 with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The group urged the agency to investigate Wake Forest for possible violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including failure to ensure that the primate housing is safe and secure.

Young said that Wake Forest has beefed up security at the primate center.

After eluding authorities for 11 days, the laboratory monkey who escaped from a Wake Forest University research facility has been captured and returned to the school’s Primate Center.

The one-foot tall, 8-pound macaque was caught this afternoon near Frye Bridge Road in Davidson County after being shot with three tranquilizer darts. three shots from on Tuesday afternoon.

Forsyth County Animal Control responded to the neighborhood after a teenaged girl spotted the monkey in a tree in her family’s yard, Fox News reported.

The 16-year-old monkey is kept at the center as a breeder, producing more monkeys that are used for medical testing.

(Photo: By Cassidy Garwood, via Fox News)

A truck driver pulled out of a rest area in Hannibal, Missouri, last Friday, unaware that anything was wrong.

He got all the way to Cedar Rapids, Iowa before he realized something was missing — his  9-month-old Yorkshire terrier, named Rambo.

“Didn’t even cross my mind that he might jump out, he never has before,” Michael Siau told the Hannibal Courier-Post. “I jumped back in the truck, put it in gear and drove off. And I just thought he was in the back asleep.”

Fearing missing his deadline could cost him his job, Siau kept driving, stopping only to call the police department he thought was closest to the rest stop, in La Grange, to report his lost dog.

He called them back two days later to check again, at which point they told him Hannibal was the town the rest area was in, and suggested he try the animal control department there.

He did that, and hoped for the best. Three hours later they called back and said they’d found his dog. Rambo had been picked up at the rest area — still waiting for his owner.

He was taken to the Northeast Missouri Humane Society

Siau planned a return trip to Hannibal this week to pick Rambo up.

(Photo: Dominic Genetti / Hannibal Courier-Post)

Somehow, Fritz the German shepherd was able to get out of his cage at the West Toledo Animal Hospital.

Somehow, he was able to get out the front door — even though it had a dead bolt lock.

Somehow he managed to do all this despite having been attacked earlier in the day by four dogs, despite the bleeding wound and a large bandage around his belly, despite being sedated, despite the cone around his head, and despite the intravenous tubes dragging behind him when he was spotted walking down West Sylvania Avenue in Toledo.

Micah Risher stopped his car, and he and his passenger, Cara D’Amato, got out to help him, according to the Toledo Blade.

“Once he calmed down a bit, he stopped panting and lay down on the pavement next to me and started to relax,” D’Amato said, noting that he was bleeding through his bandages. “He really seemed to be more stressed out than anything. He was very sweet.”

Risher walked to the animal hospital, just down the road, and saw the front door unlocked and smeared wih blood. He called police, who arrived not long after a member of the veterinary hospital’s staff did. According to Bob Dunlap, the veterinary hospital’s business manager, Fritz had been sedated and was to undergo surgery Thursday, but escaped before the operation.

“I should have warned them to put extra locks on his cage,” said Fritz’s owner, Jeannie Pilatowski of Toledo.

Fritz has severe separation anxiety and hates being caged, she said. “I was upset when I first heard about [his escape], but I don’t blame them because I have seen what he can do. This dog is a magician.”

Even when they secure Fritz’s crate with clips, or wire it shut, Pilatowski said, he still manages to get out.

Pilatowski said she was walking Fritz and her other dog, Gomer, when they were attacked by a pack of four dogs.

Fritz had his surgery late last week and is now back home.

(Photo: Toledo Blade)

Qondor, a Norwegian Army patrol dog who somehow escaped from his crate before a flight at Dulles International Airport and disappeared,  has been  found and reunited with his owner, the Washington Post reports.

Qondor, a 21-month-old Doberman, is a specialist in the Norwegian Army. He focuses on patrols and is being trained in explosives detection. Qondor and his handler, Captain Gunn Anita Fossli, flew into Dulles last Wednesday for a dog training course in northern Virginia, according to NBC 4.

Their original flight back to Norway was canceled because of the volcano in Iceland. On Wednesday night they were offered a new flight, Qondor was missing in action. He somehow escaped from his crate at about 10 p.m.

Airport officials drove Fossli around the 12,000 acre complex to the places Qondor was spotted Wednesday night, but the search was called off because “it was dark and the fog was coming.”

Early Thursday Qondor was found, briefly escaped again, and was recaptured again before boarding a flight home to Norway.

Luna, a deaf but resourceful bulldog mix who escaped from a veterinary hospital in New York and was missing for more than a week, has been returned to her owners.

A surveillance tape at Shaker Veterinary in Latham showed Luna pushed open her crate door on Jan 2. She went through several more doors and then managed to open the main door of the hospital by pulling down a handicapped handle and pushing it open.

After the dog, who had been at the hospital for a couple of days, was reported missing, her owners, Ralph Rataul and his wife, Shelley, put up an $800 reward, which included their money, a contribution from Shaker Veterinary Hospital and donations from friends.

A story on her escape appeared in the Albany Times Union, and concerned citizens in the area are believed to have left food out for the dog after hearing about her — Dee Dee’s Tavern, for one, which put out some prime rib. Over the weekend, 200 volunteers searched  for Luna, and family members and friends spent hours driving around  on lunch hours and after work looking for her, the newspaper said.

On Monday, a couple found Luna in their backyard in Loudonville — more than a week after her disappearance — a couple of miles from the veterinary hospital.

Recognizing her from a story in Sunday’s Times Union, the couple tried to lure Luna inside, but she resisted. They called the veterinary hospital and the hospital staff called Rataul, who came and picked her up.

“I’m overjoyed,” Rataul said Monday. “This is unreal. She’s home, she’s safe.”

The couple, who adopted the dog three years ago, had feared the worst, due to the dog’s handicap.

“She’s not an outdoors dog, not a hunting dog, but some instinctual stuff must have kicked in”  said Ken Wolfe, assistant director of the hospital. “Whatever she was doing, she was doing it right.” Luna lost 12 pounds but  was in good shape, the vet said.

The couple who found Luna in their backyard, meanwhile, turned down the reward money, asking that it go to charity. Rataul said half of the reward will be donated to the ASPCA and the other half to the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society.

(Photo: Luna and owner Ralph Rataul. By Skip Dickstein/Albany Times Union)

Hoping to avoid a repeat of what happened with a Minnesota police dog named Felony, more police departments in the area are microchipping members of their K-9 units.

Midwest Animal Rescue Services (MARS) placed microchips in all 15 of the St. Paul police department’s dogs Tuesday, and microchipped nine dogs for the Minnesota State Patrol.

“We have departments from all over the state, western Wisconsin, even one from South Dakota has called us to get this done,” Dave Fleischhaker of MARS told TV station KARE in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “And yes, we will chip everyone who gives us a call.”

The rescue organization extended the microchipping offer to every police department in Minnesota after hearing about the plight of Felony, a black lab that worked as a drug sniffing dog for the Howard Lake Police Department.

Felony escaped his kennel and was eventually captured by the local dog catcher. He wasn’t microchipped and after he failed a behavioral examination he was euthanized by the local animal shelter.

Yesterday’s microchipping is being paid for by Midwest Animal Rescue Services, which is raising the money through contributions.

 
Gary Rowley hadn’t seen Brindle since 1999, when his dog nosed open a door and disappeared into the night.

This past Sunday — thanks to a microchip, Facebook and an animal lover who volunteered to drive the dog  1,300 miles back home from Oklahoma – they reunited at Rowley’s home in Fredricksburg, Virginia.

“He needed a way home,” said Laurie Swain, who flew from Virginia to Oklahoma, then drove the dog back. “If the dog can wander 1,300 plus miles in 10 years I can certainly spend a few days driving.”

Rowley had given up on finding the dog in the decade since he went missing, shortly before the Super Bowl in 1999.

Then, last month, he received a message on Facebook: “Did you ever have a dog named Brindle?”

The question came from an Oklahoma military family who had discovered Brindle hiding under a bush, NBC News in Washington reported. After a local veterinarian found a microchip in Brindle’s neck, the family tracked Rowley down.

“I don’t know what to say. I just can’t believe someone would do this,” Rowley said.

Rowley has no idea how Brindle managed to wander so far from home, but he says it won’t happen again.

“For him to get out now, he’s going to have to turn a knob and flip a dead bolt,” Rowley said. “I’m still thinking about some of those child safety locks.”