You may have seen news reports about the Cricket Hollow roadside zoo in Iowa being shut down after years of lawsuits by the Animal Rescue League (ARL) of Iowa and the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF). Cricket Hollow had a long-standing history of keeping animals in cruel and inhumane conditions, and the investigation into their operation discovered it was even worse than imagined. The animals lived in filthy conditions, kept in cages with rotten food, feces, and dirty, standing water. One baboon died from repeatedly banging his head against his enclosure wall after being separated from his mother. It was also observed that the zoo left live animals trapped in their cages with the decomposing bodies of other animals.
Deplorable conditions for baboons at Cricket Hollow Zoo. Photo: Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Baboons kept in small, dirty cage at Cricket Hollow Zoo. Photo: Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Five New Lives
But, from all of this suffering, now comes salvation. Working with ALDF, Born Free USA has rescued two rhesus macaques and three baboons from Cricket Hollow, and is giving them a home for life at our sanctuary in south Texas. These monkeys are now receiving the comfort and care that they had been denied for so long. Thanks to a generous financial contribution from ALDF, we were able to modify our existing baboon habitat to construct a new, open top, natural enclosure for our three new baboon residents with more than an acre of space and a brand new warm house to give them shelter from the heat or cold.
Ongoing Challenges
We wish that, upon arrival, all of the trauma that these beautiful animals have suffered would be instantly wiped away. We wish we could give them an immediate ‘happily ever after,’ but sadly that is not the case – some scars take years to heal. Our new male baboon resident came to us desperately needing a root canal due to a lifetime of poor medical care. Mrs. Wilkin, the elderly macaque, suffers from arthritis and every long bone in her body is deformed, likely the result of having been taken from her mother at far too young an age and subsequently fed an inadequate diet. She is also unable to close her jaw fully, which we suspect may be due to an old fracture that did not heal properly. The other macaque, Anna, exhibits stereotypies like sticking the thumb of her back foot in her ear and appearing to stare off into space. While this behavior may look cute, or even comical, we know that these types of behaviors are often signals of chronic stress in captive wild animals.
