Three monkeys and two dogs on a cross-country trip with their owner got stranded in a Taylorsville parking lot over the weekend.

The animals attracted a lot of attention. "It was crazy. It was like the zoo. People were stopping their cars in the Bed, Bath and Beyond parking lot," said Temma Martin, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake County Animal Services.

One monkey was a spider, the other two were macaques. The monkeys were diapered and tethered inside a van. One monkey entertained spectators by climbing out a window and eating ice on the van's exterior.

The animals were traveling with a woman from Washington to Kansas, where she said she was to visit a friend with 28 monkeys, and then to Texas, where the woman said she was going to give the spider monkey to a zoo, Martin said.

Her van ran out of gas Saturday. She had no money and parked the van at Bath, Bed and Beyond, 5670 S. Redwood Road, Martin said.

By Sunday morning, the store contacted Salt Lake County Animal Services because the monkeys were attracting a crowd. The woman had left her pets to get money wired to her, Martin said.

"Monkeys are illegal here as pets. To travel with any animals across state lines, you're supposed to have documentation" such as immunization records and papers to prove they were legally obtained, Martin said. "She had health exam records for one of the monkeys. Nothing on the other two or the dogs."

Officers got the woman's information and passed it on to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will follow up on the case.

"When it comes to exotics like that, we don't really want to have them in the shelter. Once we get them in there, we have to care for them, and then it's going to cost her more money," Martin said.

So officers let the woman go.

"Undoubtedly, there are alligators and monkeys living in homes in our community. And everything's fine until something goes wrong. Then we end up with them," Martin said.

It's difficult to place exotic animals in specialized rescue shelters because many are full. "Sometimes we have no choice than to euthanize those animals," Martin said.

The last monkey to come to Animal Services was in July 2001 after a small earthquake in Magna that frightened a pet monkey. It bit the owner. Officers seized the monkey. Martin remembers the animal at the shelter.

"It was like a little, tiny terrified human."

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com