After years on the run, the celebrity simian dubbed the “Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay” has been captured.

The monkey, which has eluded trappers for several years as it roamed a neighborhood in south St. Petersburg, was caught Wednesday after a veterinarian shot it with a tranquilizer dart, Baryl Martin, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told Tampa Bay Online.

Authorities intensified efforts to capture the monkey after it bit a 60-year-old woman on the back earlier this month. The woman, who did not want to be identified, said she was sitting on her porch when the creature jumped on her and started scratching and gnawing on her skin.

Woman fends off attack from 'Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay'

Weeks before its capture, the monkey had grown more aggressive, thanks to residents who began feeding the monkey and treating it as more of a pet, officials said. The monkey reportedly lunged at residents and showed his teeth, TBO.com said.

Martin said they staked out an area where the monkey had been spotted several times, near Country Club Way South and Fairway Avenue South in St. Petersburg's Lakewood Estates, it said.

Trappers spotted the monkey on Wednesday on a low-hanging branch, about 2 to 3 feet off the ground, Martin told reporters.

A veterinarian at the scene shot the monkey with a tranquilizer dart. The monkey ran into the woods at a slow pace, so slow that trappers were able to snatch it by hand, TBO.com reported.

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The monkey was taken to a veterinarian's office, where it will be observed for a short time before it is placed in a permanent facility.

The monkey, which has gained notoriety in recent years after numerous sightings throughout the area, is a 40-pound wild rhesus macaque. Officials believe the monkey may have been cast out of a colony in Silver Springs near Ocala, Fla.

The monkey had become something of a celebrity, according to Tampa media. A Facebook page on behalf of the monkey was featured on Comedy Central’s "Colbert Report" and in a National Geographic special.

NBC News's Sevil Omer contributed to this report.

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For nearly five years, Lillian Cuevas and her mother Margarita Goedeke have been handing out fliers, looking for answers, NBCMiami.com reported. "We're never going to stop until we get justice for him," Lillian Cuevas said.

They keep her brother and Margarita's son Franco Cuevas close to their heart after he was murdered in Florida in November 2007. First, it was a missing persons case. A year later, parts of his body were found in Palm Beach Gardens in a metal box.

"Half of me died with him and it's been like that every single day,” his mother Margarita Goedeke said. “Just awful to think of what happened to him, what they did to him."

Detectives and his family believe Cuevas was killed at a kitchen supply business he owned, Pyro Industries, in Pompano Beach.

"He was a good boss. He was a good man,” Lillian Cuevas said. “He had a lot of workers he went above and beyond for."

'Be brave enough'
Now, that side of the building sits empty and unused.

"For us to know his phone was last pinged here and for us to know the history and the problems he was having … we know that the people who worked here know something, and we want them to be brave enough and kind enough to call in Crime Stoppers," Cuevas said.

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Detectives executed a search warrant at Pyro Industries after his body was identified. A week later, his business partner left and hasn't been heard from since.

The Cuevas family isn't giving up hope. They make the drive often to Broward from Collier County where they live to find justice for their son, brother, and a father of four.

In addition to the $1,000 reward offered by Crime Stoppers, the Cuevas family is offering $19,000 for information that leads to an arrest. If you know anything, call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.

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A strong smell of rotten eggs wafted through far-flung parts of Southern California Monday morning, disturbing children at school in the Moreno Valley and wrinkling noses as far away as the Simi and San Fernando Valleys.

The Air Quality Management District has been investigating the smell, which has prompted many residents to call 911.

There has been considerable speculation that the odor is coming from a fish die-off at the Salton Sea near Indio.

But Andrew Schlange, interim general manager of the Salton Sea Authority, told NBC4 that it is not yet clear whether the inland sea is the culprit.

"We are in the process of trying to track it down," Schlange said. It would be unusual, he said, for a fish die-off to cause odors so far from the Salton Sea.

The smell may not be coming from the Salton Sea at all, he said. Or if it is from the Salton Sea, there could be other reasons for it. For example, Schlange said, high winds that ripped through the area last night might have disturbed still water underneath the surface, bringing up a foul odor.

Emergency personnel at the Los Angeles Fire Department were also trying to track down the smell. But by mid-morning, little information was available, spokesman Brian Humphrey said.

"LAFD is not aware of any specific hazard associated with the odor," Humphrey said in a fire department email alert.

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The odor "has been sense across vast expanses of Southern California since early this morning," he wrote.

At Rainbow Ridge Elementary School in Moreno Valley, the smell was particularly bad at about 7:15 a.m. Monday, Kymberlee Henry-Davis said in an email to NBC4.

"All of the children were holding their noses," Henry-Davis wrote. "I even saw a child vomiting."

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What goes "boom" in the night? The exhausted residents of Clintonville, Wis., wish they knew.

Since Sunday evening, mysterious sounds have been jolting the city awake, and no one can explain where they're coming from.

"People describe them as booming, thunder-like noises -- vibrating, shaking," Lisa Kuss, Clintonville city administrator, told msnbc.com. "The most extreme one I experienced was at 10 p.m. Monday night in our utilities room, and it was a bam."

That night, city officials received nearly 100 calls about the unexplained shaking. Alarmed, city officials tested gas levels, investigated sewer systems and landfills, and checked on city dams. Everything came back normal. 

"People are, number one, somewhat scared," Kuss said. "But as time passes, they're more frustrated than scared; there are a few that have left. They say, 'We need to get some sleep.' They're frustrated it's elevated at night."

On Sunday night, the booms happened at around 8 p.m., 10 p.m., midnight, 1 a.m., and 2 a.m., according to a press release from the city. They came back again Monday night, and after a brief reprieve overnight Tuesday, they returned early Wednesday. 

The city's 4,600 residents have been invited to a meeting Wednesday night at the high school to discuss the situation, even though there isn't much news to tell them.

"The only thing we can really conclude is a lot of things it isn't," Kuss said. "It doesn't seem to be related to our systems. It's not the military. It's not a mining pit that's being blown up. We've never had any earthquakes; we've had a couple of people tell us we're on a fault line, but we have no way to confirm that."

A professor's theory: Groundwater
According to Steve Dutch, a professor of geoscience at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Clintonville doesn't lie on a fault line.

"The USGS is not picking up any earthquakes in Wisconsin. These appear to be purely local events. People 50 feet away don't feel anything," he said.

But he has another idea.

"After thinking about it, I would start looking at the movement of groundwater," Dutch told msnbc.com. "If some of that water is being removed, from pumping, maybe, the rocks are settling a bit, and that's producing some of these sounds."

Groundwater is precipitation that has seeped through soil and is stored in rocks. Dutch theorizes that the city utlity might be pumping water at night, causing shifts and vibrations, and explaining why the booms are more frequent when people are trying to sleep.

"It might have to do with water usage, water flowing back at night, causing the noises. Or maybe pumping rates are cheaper at night," he said.

Further supporting his theory is the type of rock beneath Clintonville: sandstone.

"People have suggested sinkholes [are causing the noises]," Dutch said. "That's pretty unlikely because the rocks under Clintonville are not limestones or soluble rocks that would produce sinkholes."

Dutch, who has a Ph.D. in structural geology, said he's never heard of anything like Clintonville's booms.

"I'll get a call from somebody who heard a boom at their house, and I just have to say, 'I can't really tell ya,' but not on this scale," he said. "Sometimes in science, we don't really know."

On discussion boards and on YouTube, commenters have proposed everything from meth labs to the construction of a complex underground shelter network as the source.

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A Secret Santa has told an Ohio man not to expect any more pecan pies, which arrived mysteriously for 35 years, according to a report.

Willis Welch, 87, told The Columbus Dispatch that the pie that showed up at his Columbus home during the recent holiday season was accompanied by a note that said, "It has been a great ride."

The person who signed it "Pie Fairy" also wrote: "My wings are shorter now and I am a little too fat to fly anymore. But I still love you!!"

The Dispatch reported that Welch still doesn't know who was sending his perennial pastries, though whoever did it knew him well enough to know of his fondness for pecan pies.

Welch, who served with the navy in the South Pacific during World War II, believes the first one came in 1976.

His two daughters have denied any involvement.

"We kept telling him not to eat the pie," daughter Debbie Mathew, 55, of Pickerington, told the Dispatch.

But Welch ignored their advice, telling the paper "I have an insatiable sweet tooth."

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.