It turned into a wild scene Monday night at a Spirit Halloween store in Plano when a pet monkey escaped its owner's control and began swinging from the rafters.
What's usually a store filled with fake scares turned into a real-life spectacle, with shoppers watching for more than 30 minutes as the animals climbed poles, swung from wires and crawled across ceilings.
“This is literally the animal kingdom,” said Arlene Pinkston, who was shopping with her daughters at the Spirit Halloween event off Route 75.
“My daughter looked up and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ She said, ‘Is that a real monkey? “I looked up and said, 'Well, he's in diapers, so I guess it's real,'” Pinkston said with a laugh.
Pinkston said she took out her phone and recorded the moment, otherwise no one would have believed her.
“It’s definitely something I won’t soon forget,” she said.
Store employee Jimmy Harris said the pet monkey appeared to be frightened by the store's animatronic decorations and then ran away from its owner.
“It's fun,” Harris said. “A lot of people just stood and looked at it for about 30 minutes and the whole time they were saying 'monkey' while our kids were trying to catch it.”
Plano police were called to the store. “He observed the monkey swinging from the rafters wearing a diaper. Eventually, the owner gave the monkey a cookie and the monkey successfully controlled it,” police said in a statement.
Pinkston said she didn't wait out the chaos.
“It jumped on the floor and ran across my legs, and that's when I was like, OK, I've had enough,” she said.
Police said the monkey was not injured and did not pose a threat to anyone.
“Our team responded quickly and contacted local authorities, who responded quickly to the scene. Surprisingly, the monkey was safely coaxed with a cookie. The monkey was tagged with an identification tag and returned to its owner safe and sound,” Lisa Barr, vice president of marketing for Spirit Halloween, wrote in a statement.
“We are grateful to our staff and local responders for handling this situation quickly and safely. While this was certainly not a typical day for Spiritual Halloween, we are glad it ended on a positive note,” Barr wrote.