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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Authorities in Puerto Rico are using cages and mangos to try to trap hundreds of marauding monkeys — descendants of escaped research animals — and hope to send them off to sanctuaries or labs, or to kill them.
Since the first eight traps were set out two weeks ago, the primates have snatched the bait and eluded capture in traps set by Puerto Rico's natural resources agency — drawing ridicule from local farmers who blame the monkeys for devastating melon, pepper and pumpkin crops over the last decade.
But Javier Velez Arocho, secretary of the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, said Wednesday that's part of the plan — that animal control workers have not yet activated the mechanism that will trap the animals.
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