Six tiny marmoset monkeys watch a visitor through brown eyes the size of apple seeds, their smooth pink faces solemn as they cling to the bars of cages at the Denver Municipal Animal Shelter.
The monkeys aren’t up for adoption. They are illegal aliens, strangers in a state where residents are barred from keeping them.
Colorado doesn’t allow monkeys as pets, except for Capuchin monkeys trained as service animals.
The marmosets “are probably going to an approved sanctuary in another state,” said Doug Kelley, the shelter’s director.
They came to the shelter after Denver Animal Control got a tip that they were being kept in the basement of a house on Olive Street.
Owner Cassandra Tolmich told officials that she didn’t know they wouldn’t be welcome here when she moved from Florida.
Kelley had hoped to send the marmosets to a sanctuary in Maui, Hawaii, but the cost and difficulty in finding a willing airline scotched that plan. Because this species of marmoset is common, most zoos aren’t interested in taking the South American mammal, Kelley said.
