Capturing an escaped monkey inside the monkey house

Capturing an escaped monkey inside the monkey house was a dangerous interruption in the Army’s Reston operation: a single loose animal disrupted work in a room holding about a hundred monkeys and exposed the limits of control inside a crowded, contaminated facility. The team first tried to locate and catch it with a net, but the monkey repeatedly evaded them. The effort was postponed overnight and resumed on December 7, when Jerry Jaax and Sergeant Amen finally immobilized the animal with anesthetic.

Setting and Stakes

The escape occurred during the Army’s operation in the monkey house, after the facility had been turned over to USAMRIID. The operation involved teams in protective suits entering areas where infected monkeys were being handled. Gene Johnson had helped plan the building’s layout for entry: an empty storeroom was to serve as a staging area, and a closed corridor as an air lock. The arrangement made it possible to put on suits inside the building, away from television cameras, while limiting movement between the monkey rooms and other areas.

Room C presented a different problem from the building’s corridors. Jaax had been working there and left Sergeants Amen and Klages in charge while he stepped out to check on the team. When commotion broke out, the monkeys began calling loudly. Amen reported that one had escaped as he opened a cage. He and Klages immediately left the room and shut the door behind them. That response kept the loose animal inside Room C, but did not resolve the danger: a frightened monkey could move quickly among the cages, while the people sent in to catch it were wearing suits that constrained their vision and movement.

The Search and Conflicting Memories

The team looked into the room through its window. The monkeys inside were highly agitated, but the escaped animal was difficult to distinguish among them. The searchers brought a catching net and entered. Rhonda Williams later remembered the monkey running out of the room and under her feet while she was seated in the hallway. Jaax’s recollection differed: he maintained that it never left Room C. The accounts leave open the possibility that it ran beneath Williams and was driven back inside. What they agree on is the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the animal’s movements during the attempted capture.

The monkey was small, frightened, and difficult to approach. The other animals reacted to the disturbance, making the room still harder to manage. The loose monkey moved between the cages, and its feet became bloodied. Jaax reported the situation over the radio. Johnson told him to do what was necessary, including considering whether to shoot it. Jaax rejected that option: with cages and walls close by, a shot might strike one of them or ricochet. In the tightly packed room, a gunshot injury to a team member could become fatal. He chose the net instead, accepting a slower pursuit in preference to introducing another hazard.

A Constrained Capture Attempt

Jaax entered with Amen, who carried a pole-mounted syringe of drugs. Jaax held the net and moved slowly down the middle of the room, keeping away from the cages and their agitated occupants. His faceplate was clouded with sweat, and the light was dim, making it difficult to see. Amen followed with the syringe, while Jaax warned him to keep his distance from the cages and avoid being bitten.

The animal’s movement repeatedly defeated their attempts. Jaax saw it leap across the room, swung the net, and missed. When the monkey changed direction, the team had to search again through the cages. Jaax recognized that the room’s arrangement favored the animal: it could make rapid leaps among obstacles, while the suited men had limited visibility and had to move carefully. The episode showed that protective equipment, trained personnel, and a planned entry did not guarantee command of every encounter inside the facility.

Delay and Resolution

The attempt continued long enough for the team to decide against forcing an immediate capture. Jaax and the others left the monkey in Room C overnight. Meanwhile, the broader work continued: the teams killed most of the monkeys that day, and Jaax assigned Williams to increasingly hazardous duties, including work at the euthanasia and blood-drawing tables. The escaped animal was therefore not an isolated incident outside the operation; it remained an unresolved danger within a facility where other tasks proceeded under pressure.

At four in the afternoon on Thursday, December 7, the last monkey was killed and bagged, but the escaped animal still had to be caught. Jaax entered the room and spent two or three hours pursuing it in circles with the net. It eventually became trapped in a narrow crack behind a cage, with its tail protruding. Sergeant Amen administered a large dose of anesthetic there. About fifteen minutes later, the monkey was still, and the team pulled it out for removal with the other animals.

Significance within the Operation

The capture depended not on a clean, swift maneuver but on patience, restraint, and a change in circumstances: the net could not keep pace with the monkey, and shooting was judged too dangerous, so the team continued until the animal was confined in a position where anesthetic could be used. Its escape exposed a practical weakness in the operation’s control of the animal rooms, even as the team maintained the surrounding containment procedures.

The event also gives the operation a smaller, immediate scale. Decisions about military authority, facility responsibility, and public risk shaped the response to the outbreak, but in Room C the problem narrowed to a net, a pole-mounted syringe, limited visibility, and an animal no one could reliably track. The eventual capture cleared this particular obstacle; it did not make the work safe or simple. The team still had to complete the removal of the monkeys and continue handling the building as a biohazard site.