Terrified locals first feared escaped lab monkeys could carry diseases, but they brought a new plague to town

Residents of this small, unassuming South Carolina town can’t believe it has become one of the most talked about places in America in recent days.

Yemassee attracted national attention last week when 43 rhesus monkeys escaped from a research facility known to locals as the “monkey farm.”

The escape prompted a police warning to the city’s thousand residents to lock their homes and call 911 if they encountered the primates.

When DailyMail.com visited Yemassee on Tuesday, there were still 13 monkeys walking around and although we didn’t encounter any, we could hear them Cooing, growling and rustling in the woods near the Alpha Genesis facility where they escaped.

Residents told us they were initially “nervous” when they heard about the escape, especially given the risk of becoming ill.

But now that the monkeys are considered harmless, many are now embracing the city’s newfound fame.

“Mom, I’m being interviewed by the Daily Mail and I have the New York Times on the phone,” said one local, completely surprised that the news was making national headlines.

“This place is clearly in the middle of nowhere,” another added, “so to have all this press…was…really something.” Our taxi driver was equally astonished: ‘Oh wow! DailyMail – I’ll have to tell my wife you were in town, I read you guys all the time!’

The quiet town has just three stores on Main Street, one of which has started selling $20 T-shirts that say “straight from Yemassee” and depict a monkey.

The store has already received hundreds of orders, some coming from as far away as Florida, California and Tennessee.

Annette Youmans, who runs Carolina Graphics, said she was initially nervous about the monkeys.

‘The first day I was there, I pulled my car up close, ran in and closed the doors because they said they had to close – so I was a little nervous.

“But after that I’m fine, you see the doors are open and everything.”

She added: ‘On Saturday there were so many people just coming to look at the monkeys – and they stopped (at my shop) too!

“It’s great to have something different (to focus on) other than the election.”

The townspeople have become accustomed to escapes – there have been six in 2022 alone – but last week’s was the largest, initially causing some unrest.

Charlotte Murray, who runs a local business, said: ‘Forty-three escapes was a number we hadn’t heard before, that was a lot of monkeys.

Luke hunts the monkeys in the forest near the research lab

The quiet town has just three stores on Main Street, one of which has started selling $20 monkey T-shirts

‘Also unusual was that we were asked to lock our doors and windows.’

But residents could rest assured that the little monkeys – which are about the size of a house cat – were not dangerous and were not used in experiments.

And within days, “cars were stopping and people were trying to take pictures (with the monkeys),” Ms. Murray said.

Yemassee is located about 50 miles west of Charleston and an equal distance north of Savannah.

According to locals, the only people passing through are truck drivers and tourists traveling between those towns.

DailyMail.com was denied entry to the facility (pictured), but we could hear what we believed to be the escaped monkeys calling to others still in their enclosures

The facility, which houses more than 3,000 monkeys, is located on the outskirts of the city

The rhesus monkeys that escaped the facility are all young females, weighing about six to seven pounds, about the size of a house cat. The macaque pictured is an adult specimen from India and is not from the Alpha Genesis facility

But police say they were inundated with visitors over the weekend, with people stopping along the road outside the research facility to take photos.

DailyMail.com was denied access to the facility, but we could hear what we believed to be the escaped monkeys calling to others still in their enclosures.

We were also threatened by the police if we tried to enter the forest.

The pack of fugitive primates has been there since they escaped and officials are using food and traps to recapture them.

Alpha Genesis has about 3,000 primates at its Yemassee facility at any given time, where they are used to test vaccines and brain treatments.

Locals tell of cases of a monkey showing up at the post office, and of another monkey clambering through the trees along a street with a baby on its back after escaping in previous years.

In another case, a local business owner told DailyMail.com how a monkey with a “tumor the size of a soft ball on its neck” climbed onto their store’s air conditioning.