Monkey Island (In Transition)

Homosassa, Florida

A family of spider monkeys are the only inhabitants of Monkey Island, a tiny chunk of land sitting in the Homosassa River. Customers dining at the Florida Cracker Riverside Resort, or hanging out at the Monkey Bar, enjoy ringside seats to sometimes wild offshore antics. Monkeys climb on platforms, swing from ropes, and clamber around the base of a small lighthouse.

The surrounding water discourages the monkeys from leaving, and a ring of floats and barriers discourages boaters and kayakers from landing on the island or approaching the animals. Numerous signs warn that trespassing or feeding the monkeys is illegal, and that the island is under 24 hour video surveillance.

In the 1960s Monkey Island was just a jumble of rocks in the river that submerged during high tide, a hazard to small boats. G.A. "Furgy" Furgason had sludge dredged onto the rocks -- so much sludge that it created an island, which eventually grew plant life. Furgy then had the lighthouse built for boater safety.

The monkeys were an afterthought -- primates with a history of escaping their cages -- rounded up by Furgy from a nearby wildlife attraction and banished to the Island as a kind of Alcatraz. They were popular then, and their descendants have remained a popular draw to the Resort, which is otherwise focused on manatee tours. The monkeys are fed twice daily, and have free run of their tiny monkey-only utopia.

Visitors, in addition to the restaurant vantage point, can walk down to a short adjacent dock to observe the residents of Monkey Island.

A nonprofit group plans to spend around $150,000 on Monkey Island to bring it up to current USDA standards. More wild monkeys may be added; there are apparently a lot of them scampering around in Florida.