{"id":829876,"date":"2026-05-29T10:47:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/829876\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T10:47:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:47:41","slug":"watch-florida-woman-spots-loose-monkey-in-her-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/829876\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch: Florida woman spots loose monkey in her backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 28 (UPI) — A Florida woman spotted what she thought might be a large cat in the backyard of her home, but soon realized it was something even more unusual: a monkey.<\/p>\n

Catherine Castillo said she spotted the animal behind her Longwood home, near Wekiva Springs State Park, and started recording video with her phone.<\/p>\n

“At first I thought it was like a large cat,” Castillo told WKMG-TV<\/a>. “And then it processed and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s a monkey.'”<\/p>\n

She said wildlife is common in the area, but this incident was different.<\/p>\n

“We see all kinds of things. There’s deer, bobcat, coyotes. This was the first monkey,” she told WESH-TV.<\/a><\/p>\n

Another neighborhood resident also captured video of the monkey, a rhesus macaque, moving through the area.<\/p>\n

Castillo reported the encounter to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.<\/p>\n

“They said, ‘No, it’s OK, just don’t approach it, don’t feed it,'” Castillo said. “They said they would do unofficial documentation of the sighting.”<\/p>\n

Longwood is located about 70 miles from Silver Springs, where a wild population of monkeys has lived ever since being brought to an island that is now part of Silver Springs State Park by a tour boat operator<\/a> in 1938. The operator was unaware that the rhesus macaques were strong swimmers, and they quickly escaped the island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 28 (UPI) — A Florida woman spotted what she thought might be a large cat in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":829877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[53888,340617,159,162773,67,132,68,340618,837],"class_list":["post-829876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-castillo","tag-catherine-castillo","tag-science","tag-silver-springs","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wekiva-springs-state-park","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116657471220652147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}