By Mary Lynn Campbell

fire safety plan with monkeys
Silly Willy, one of the special loves in my life.

How to prepare for a possible fire in our home when we have monkeys?  On Monday, before Thanksgiving of 2014, I had some friends that awakened to this happening to them. When I spoke to my friends the next evening after the fire, one of the first things that the man of the house said to me was, “I have always been afraid of a fire breaking out and how in the world would we be able to get all of our animals out.” This statement was what made me know that I had to write a blog post about this subject.   Please take a moment to send this family of four some much needed prayers. Even though their were no humans that lost their lives in this fire (which is certainly a miracle), they did lose 2 monkeys from their troupe. We know that it will take a very long time for them to recover from this trauma filled experience.  Many of the animals who were lost in the fire had been with them for years and years. Thank you everyone.

So, let’s talk about things that we can do to be more mindful of what we could do in case this type of thing happens to you or me. Let’s go to the famous “Safety First” lists.

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how to diaper a monkey

Amongst primate owners, the most commonly known method of diapering is the tail hole method but more and more primate owners are switching over to the tail wrap method. Since I’ve used both methods myself and don’t really have a particular preference, I reached out to other primate owners to find out why they prefer one method over the other. Before we go into more details, I’ve recorded a short video to demonstrate the difference between both methods. After that we’ll talk about diaper covers, different diaper brands, and what monkey parents are doing to prevent diaper rash.

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