Woman Who Fed Cheetos to Monkeys At Zoo Says She Did Nothing Wrong
The woman who was seen in a viral video climbing into a monkey enclosure to feed the monkeys Cheetos is still fighting criminal charges and harassment from the internet.
May of 2021 was when Luz “Lucy” Rae said she lost her job at an El Paso, Texas law firm, and is still waiting for trial, all because of a bad decision.
The viral clip showed Rae on May 22, 2021, when she and a friend visited the El Paso zoo. She's seen climbing over the fence of the enclosure, crossing a moat, and feeding two of the monkeys by hand before climbing back out of the enclosure.
It was a 37-second video, but it has long-lasting consequences.
“I was shocked that someone had recorded it and shocked that it went viral,” Rae told KVIA.
She won't speak on what made her decide to climb into the enclosure. Her new boss, attorney Mark T. Davis, said there's still a pending criminal lawsuit, but Rae stands by that she did nothing wrong.
The El Paso Zoo Director, Joe Montisano, was quoted when the video first went viral, saying the unnamed woman is "Stupid and lucky."
Neither the woman or the monkeys were harmed in the incident.
"These are primates we're talking about. They could do some substantial damage to you," zookeeper Mason Kleist told ABC7. "They may be small monkeys, but they can take you to the ground if they wanted to."
The zoo said Libby and Sunday are on a specialized diet, so being fed human food could cause stomach problems and bowel disruptions for the two spider monkeys.
Rae says that there's no signage saying not to climb into the enclosure.
“In the society we live in, in general, a fence without a gate is a barrier that means you’re not supposed to go in there,” Dr. Victoria Milne, the chief veterinarian at the zoo told KVIA.
Rae is banned from the zoo, but she says she's never going to apologize. When KVIA asked if there's any lesson to come out of this for her, she said “I learned just keep the Cheetos to myself. I can’t share.”
Read more at KVIA
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