Who’s That Monkey Behind The Bar? UK Pub Becomes A Zoo

You think getting a liquor license is difficult? Try getting a zoo license where you also run a pub.

Bars and pubs can be a lot of things to the people who frequent them. They’re first and foremost places to drink, relax and have a good time.

For many the neighborhood pub is a home away from home, a place to catch up with friends and enjoy a collective buzz…

But what pubs and bars are not (at least until now) are zoos.

Kelly and Andy Cowell run the Fenn Bell Inn in Kent, England. They’re also exotic animal lovers, which would explain the multitude of rare animals that share their pub’s back garden.

This is a serious collection with which according to the Drinks Business that includes “four different breeds of monkeys, genets (an African wild cat), meerkats, lemurs, birds of prey, raccoons and South American coatis.”

And obviously the menagerie of wild animals that share the Fenn Bell Inn’s estate has come up in many a beer-fueled conversation at their pub but they soon learned that in order to legally show their wild cohabitants to pub patrons they needed A FULL ZOO LICENSE.

Thus began a more than two-year journey according to the Mirror, which led to this pub-owner also becoming a zookeeper.

So the next time you find yourself thinking, that the bar you were drinking at last night “was a zoo,” think again