PINKY JANOTA: I would consider myself a mother
to these monkeys - the Alpha monkey mum.
PINKY JANOTA: Good morning. You want a pancake?
COMM: Pinky Janota is mother to two children and six monkeys.
PINKY JANOTA: Some of my day-to-day activities
are wrestling with these guys, feeding them, clothing them, changing their diapers, giving
them baths. Maybelline the primate was sick the other day, so it was like any other child,
at that point, she just wanted to be held.
PINKY JANOTA: No, no.
PINKY JANOTA: I couldn’t picture doing anything
else with my life, but dedicating it to saving animals.
COMM: The 53-year-old runs a shelter for abandoned
and rescued animals with her husband in Beecher, Illinois. Her six monkeys arrived in her care
having been mistreated in the past.
PINKY JANOTA: You’re going to meet today
some of our primates Max, Maybelline, L’oreal and Ava.
COMM: Pinky’s primates have proved the truth
behind the phrase “monkey see, monkey do”, mimicking their owner’s behaviour.
PINKY JANOTA: We teach them sign language,
so that they can communicate with us. They learn “more” and “food”, “love”,
“brush”, “bath”, your basic words. Maybelline has nine words down. The other
three are learning, slowly. Maybelline seems to excel a little bit. They know how to open
their cages. So, we have to put little hasps on the cages. I do communicate with them.
As far as the discipline goes, if they are being little stinkers, with my actions or
showing my teeth or grunting at them and that does show them that I’m the Alpha primate.
COMM: Being a monkey mum is a full time job.
To make sure they don’t go bananas, Pinky needs to be around them for twelve to fourteen
hours a day and she has even prepared to sacrifice her own creature comforts to ensure her brood
don’t go without.
PINKY JANOTA: We do lose a lot of sleep, we
go broke a lot of times. If it comes to an animal needing a surgery, the mortgage payment,
electric bill are put on the back burner and the animal has its surgery and…
PINKY JANOTA: It’s very frustrating. If
you want to go out to dinner or do something, you have to hire a baby sitter and you have
to have somebody who knows the monkeys.
ROSEANNE GRAGES: With the monkeys, it’s
pretty much everything. It’s getting them up, getting them dressed, getting their diapers
changed, their bottles, their breakfast, making them their plates. You know, interacting with
them out there, working on their sign language and it’s just like taking care of a baby.
COMM: The sanctuary takes care of monkeys
that have been rescued or abandoned after becoming unwanted presents or black market purchases.
PINKY JANOTA: One of our latest primates coming
in was purchased on Craigslist and the woman realised it was a lot for her to handle. It’s
like having a two-year-old child on steroids.
PINKY JANOTA: Every one of the primates that
we have at the facility today were a victim of abuse. Some of them have lost half an ear,
partly here. This seems rounded up.
PINKY JANOTA: Some of them have lost parts
of their tales, had them amputated. Max has, his tale was broken in three places and the
last the last two inches were amputated.
COMM: And while exotic animal ownership remains
a controversial topic in the US, and Pinky has faced some criticism in the past about
the way she cares for her animals, she is passionate in her defence of the sanctuary.
PINKY JANOTA: Yeah, we do receive criticism
about taking the animals in and my only thought and opinion on that is, I did not purchase
these animals, I did not bring them into the United States, they are born and bred right
here. People are constantly selling them and yes, we do dress our primates because they
take their diapers off faster than you can put them on.
COMM: The monkeys will live at Settlers Pond
permanently and the sanctuary is looking to add to its monkey family in the future.
PINKY JANOTA: What it’s like being a mum
to these monkeys is, it’s a job that nobody can fathom and nobody can understand the bounds
that you have or what you give up or what you wouldn’t do for them. I would do that
for all of my animals, not just my primates.