Woman Opens Up About Chaotic Viral Videos of Her Monkeys, Defends Ignoring Comments About How to Adopt Them (Exclusive)

• Madeline Bennett is the owner of two 1-year-old squirrel monkeys, Oliver and Oakley

• She posts about life with her two monkeys on her TikTok page, where she has more than 800,000 followers

• Though she loves owning monkeys, Bennett insists that her page is not a place to learn where others can adopt their own, as "people don't realize how much work they are"

One woman’s morning coffee routine is a bit more chaotic than most.

Madeline Bennett takes her morning brew with milk, caramel syrup and cold foam (the kind that comes in a spray can), but it’s not her caffeine concoction that makes her mornings hectic — it’s the monkeys she has to dodge while she preps.

In a video on TikTok, Bennett showed how her two squirrel monkeys regularly interrupt her morning coffee routine, sticking their hands in her cups and biting the bottle of syrup.

“I personally think I'm just used to it by now because I don't think that video was that bad compared to other things that happen around here,” Bennett, 22, tells PEOPLE. “[Every day] I wake up, I wake them up and then pretty much every single thing I do they're involved with, or near, or trying to help.”

Oliver and Oakley, Bennett’s two squirrel monkeys, are both 1 year old, with Oliver turning 2 in March. Bennett and her boyfriend currently live with both monkeys in her parents’ lake home while they look for a house of their own to buy, and the primate companions accompany them in just about everything they do on a daily basis, whether that be going to the grocery store, going out to dinner or vacationing.

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“They’re always in strollers — they're never out in the open when I take them out in public, for their safety and other people's safety. But no one really ever has a problem with it,” Bennett says of taking the monkeys out of the house with her. “Everyone's always more interested in [the monkeys] than what I'm asking to do … It's pretty much if it's pet friendly, usually it's monkey friendly.”

In the United States, 24 different states allow for private ownership of primates as pets, though some states have restrictions on breeds or require a permit before adoption. As Bennett’s family splits their time between Michigan and Florida, she makes sure her two squirrel monkeys abide by both states’ laws.

Bennett says she’s been an animal lover all her life, and not long after graduating high school, she made a PowerPoint presentation to convince her parents to let her adopt a monkey. After “a little bit of convincing,” Bennett adopted a marmoset named Ripley. She previously had an account dedicated to him (where she rarely made an appearance) but he died only a year-and-a-half later from a stomach infection, which she says the vet believed to be a complication from a condition he was born with.

“He was like owning a cat, I'm not even kidding. He was so low maintenance for a monkey,” Bennett says of Ripley.

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After grieving the loss of Ripley, Bennett elected to adopt two squirrel monkeys, acquiring them one at a time. Oliver and Oakley do not have a cage in Bennett’s home; they have free range of the house and usually trail behind her as she moves from room to room. She says she didn’t intend to post about owning monkeys again, like she did with Ripley, but after accidentally posting an unedited and chaotic "get ready with me" video that quickly climbed in views, she decided to create a new account dedicated to her life with Oakley and Oliver.

“I feel that what’s crucial when you own a monkey is to understand them. They just want to be involved and it doesn't bother me,” she shares. “It does get overwhelming at times, but [if] I'm curling my hair or we're cooking on the stove or oven, they have like a catio that they'll go in. But besides that, they're with me 24/7 doing everything I'm doing.”

Having two primates that are constantly clinging to a person can make it difficult to find time for oneself — which is where Bennett finds herself leaning on her family. She says “I wouldn't be able to do it without them.”

Related: Georgie Boy, Beloved Pet Monkey and TikTok Star, Dies After 'Regular Check Up' at the Vet

“[My parents] fell in love with them instantly. Oakley is in love with my dad — if they're there I am nothing,” she jokes. “Oliver's obsessed with my mom and they just get along with them really well. I would say they definitely adapted to my lifestyle pretty fast and they do help so much. They're the reasons I'm able to have a social life once in a while and go out, cause they'll watch [Oliver and Oakley] for me.”

Though Bennett has acquired quite the following for her monkey content, boasting 855,000 followers on TikTok alone, she tries to make it clear to viewers that her platform is not a place to encourage others to adopt monkeys as pets. She’s received numerous comments and DMs from people inquiring about what breeder she adopted her monkeys from, or asking for guidance on adopting their own, but she intentionally leaves those queries unanswered.

“I just don't want to be responsible for someone getting the monkey and rehoming it because that's what does happen a lot of the time, because people don't realize how much work they are,” she says.

Squirrel monkeys have a lifespan of about 20 years in captivity, making Oliver and Oakley a lengthy commitment for Bennett. She plans to raise her future children with her pet monkeys, noting that her research proved “squirrel monkeys [are] awesome with kids." Though she admits some of those finer details will have to be determined as she goes along.

“I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens,” she says. “Rehoming them will never ever be an option, so I'm just gonna have to figure out at the time how it's going to work, but I think it will be okay.”

Read the original article on People