A London bus driver was going about his day when a mom with a stroller got onto the bus. She was trying to navigate her way down the aisle and found she couldn’t get by because of a large laundry bag sticking out from one of the seats. The driver came
back to help her, pushed the bag out of the way — and heard something moving inside.
The driver nervously looked in the bag and found a bird cage with a monkey sitting inside.
“She’d been left with some apple but was, understandably, very stressed and dehydrated,” Clare Dew, chief inspector with the London branch of the RSPCA, said in a press release.
Immediately, the driver knew he needed help. He took his new friend straight to a nearby bus depot and contacted the RSPCA. The monkey, a marmoset, was taken to a specialist exotics vet and given a clean bill of health. Her rescuers named her Oyster after the London travel card.
“We’d like to say a big thank you to the bus driver and the team at Metroline who stayed calm, took the monkey back to their station, put her somewhere dark and cool to keep her calm and contacted us for help,” Dew said. “They’ve been incredibly helpful and are now assisting with our enquiries so we can trace the person responsible for dumping her.”
England recently passed a new law around keeping monkeys as pets. The legislation was much-needed, but the RSPCA also worries that it will lead to a rise in abandonments and are hoping Oyster is not the first of many.
“Primates are highly intelligent and social wild animals who need a lot of space, mental stimulation and appropriate companions — needs that can’t be met by human company alone,” Evie Button, an exotic-animal expert with the RSPCA, said in a press release.
Oyster is now settling into her new life at a sanctuary and will soon meet someone very special who’s been looking for a friend.
“In a twist of fate, a sanctuary had been working with us to find a suitable female marmoset to introduce to a lone male they were caring for,” Dew said. “We were hoping to transfer one from the north of England but, when that fell through just a few hours before Oyster was rescued, it looked like destiny that Oyster was supposed to go there.”
Oyster is so far doing well in her new home, eating well and decompressing after her ordeal. Everyone is excited for her to meet her new companion and has a feeling the pair will be a perfect match.
