The soft flicker of jack-o’-lantern lights and the sudden jumps of creepy animatronics in a Spirit Halloween store set the scene. It was just another evening of Halloween shopping on 15th Street in Plano, Texas. Shoppers were browsing costumes and decorations when, suddenly, a little capuchin monkey in a diaper zipped right over their heads. The incident happened on October 28, 2025 just before the big night turning an ordinary trip into one nobody would forget.
Arlene Pinkston was in attendance with her girls, grabbing stuff, when she whipped out her phone and began filming.
“It felt like we were in the middle of some wildlife show,”
She said to news folk, recounting how shocked she was, watching this monkey swinging around while everybody else stared, half in laughter, half wondering what was going on.
A tweet from X.
The monkey belonged to some guy who brought it along-nobody knows his name from the reports. The little guy got freaked out by one of those motion-activated spooky figures, the kind that pop out with weird noises, according to witnesses. The next thing you know, it slipped away and climbed up the shelves, poles, and way up into the ceiling rafters.
It hung out up there for over half an hour, really putting on a show for the people below. Kids cheered it on to come down, and grown-ups were filming away. Jimmy Harris, who works at the store, gave the local press an account of the mess:
“That animatronic scared the pants off the monkey, and it bolted from the owner. It was kind of fun everybody just stopped and watched.”
The video Pinkston shot spread like wildfire, showing this diapered monkey dodging around up high, weaving through all the Halloween junk.
Cops from Plano showed up around 8 p.m. after someone called about a runaway animal. They checked things out and said there wasn’t any real threat. A police rep told Fox 4 News,
“Nobody got hurt not the monkey, not the shoppers, not the staff.”
The owner got it sorted pretty quick, tempting the monkey down with a cookie. Animal control helped make sure it all ended okay, and they didn’t press any charges. Lisa Barr from Spirit Halloween gave props to everyone involved:
“Big thanks to our team and the authorities for handling it so fast and keeping things safe.”
Down in Texas, you can own a capuchin monkey as a pet without much hassle no state license needed most of the time. The rules in Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 822 mostly cover bigger, tougher primates like gorillas or baboons, so smaller ones like this are pretty much okay. In Collin County, where Plano sits, there aren’t extra rules banning them, based on what the city says.
That’s why Texas is one of those places with lots of exotic pets. But it does make you think twice about safety when these animals end up in stores full of people.
That video blew up on social media, especially on X. Handles like @CollinRugg and @Breaking911 shared it, and it got tons of views. One person called it
“a wild Halloween surprise,”
pointing out how funny it was to have a real monkey in a place full of fake monsters.
News channels jumped on it right away. Fox 4 broadcast the clip, NBC DFW gave the play-by-play from the scene, and UPI sent the story out nationwide as one of those weird tales. Online, people were cracking up about the timing but also asking stuff like,
“Why bring a monkey shopping anyway?”
Stories like this shine a light on the whole exotic pet thing. Capuchins are smart and friendly, sure, but they can be tricky in crowds. Experts talk about diseases that jump from animals to people zoonotic stuff. The CDC says that since they first spotted herpes B virus back in 1932, there’s only been about 50 cases in people worldwide, usually from macaque monkeys in labs biting or scratching folks, and 21 of those were deadly. Capuchins aren’t as linked to it, but yeah, bites or scratches in a busy store could be a problem.
Groups like Born Free USA push for tougher laws, saying primates don’t do well as house pets because they need so much.
“They’re not cut out for that kind of life,”
You’d hear from one of their reps, calling for changes.
Texas doesn’t have a ton of rules, which leads to these odd stories popping up. But it shows where things might fall short. A vet mentioned to Fox 4 in a similar story that these run-ins could get local spots thinking about better animal rules for shops.
