Monkey is long way from home

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Andrew Padilla first saw the monkey in the backyard of his Palo Alto home, hanging out by a fence. He thought it must be a squirrel.

It turned out to be a marmoset -- and one that was a long, long way from its native home in the rain forests of South and Central America.

"I wanted to adopt him," Padilla said. "He was so cute and friendly."

Padilla said he fed the stray monkey bananas and crackers before calling the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA to report him.

"We thought, 'Sure. What have you been drinking?' But when our officer arrived, there he was," said Scott Delucchi, spokesman for the animal care agency.

An officer coaxed the marmoset into custody with a banana. The agency has kept the animal in a small cage at its shelter in San Mateo.

They plan to send it to Primarily Primates, a 75-acre animal sanctuary just north of San Antonio.