The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Carrie McLaren <stay.free AT verizon.net>]

Article published May 26, 2005

How a chimp became part of the family; Man remains in coma after brutal  
attack
By AMY ARGETSINGER
The Washington Post

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050526/ 
REPOSITORY/505260328/1013/NEWS03

In 1967, LaDonna Davis's boyfriend went on a trip to Tanzania and came  
back with quite a surprise: a chimpanzee. It was a baby still, an  
orphan her boyfriend said he had rescued from the poachers who killed  
its mother, and it was just adorable -"a large teddy bear," LaDonna's  
mother declared. They named him Moe.

The boyfriend, a stock-car racer named St. James, would carry the  
little fellow in a sling around his chest as he worked at his auto body  
shop in West Covina, Calif. When she married St. James a couple of  
years later, Moe was "a combination of flower-thrower and best man,"  
LaDonna Davis recalls.

"Tell her about . . . " interrupts her mother, Terry DeVere.

"Oh . . . well," says Davis, with well-practiced delicacy: "Moe . . .  
peed on a woman." All the excitement of the reception, maybe too much  
punch. The women glow with the memories.

This wasn't just any chimp, they explain patiently. This was Moe.
        
"He would reach his hands out and put them around your neck," says  
Davis, a sun-creased blonde of 64. "You couldn't turn it off," all that  
charm, all that love.

As Davis tells her story in the sleek conference room of an attorney's  
office, she gingerly moves her left hand, swaddled in the gauze and  
tape that protect what remains of her thumb, a reminder that this train  
of sweet memories and funny stories is not going to end well.

For Davis is here to talk about a terrible thing that happened, an  
event so traumatic she would be forgiven for not talking about it at  
all. But she must.

As news of the incident rocketed around the world, Davis fears some  
people may have come to assume that the chimp that mauled her hand -  
and attacked her husband with such frenzy that he remains in critical  
condition two months later, struggling for his life, his face forever  
disfigured -was Moe.

And she wants them to know this: "I wouldn't change anything about what  
we did."

A California childhood

Moe slept in their bed until he got too big. He learned to use the  
toilet. He loved to watch cowboys and Indians on TV. A pretty normal  
childhood, as Davis describes it.

Southern California in the 1960s and '70s was a place where it was  
perhaps not beyond the pale to welcome a chimpanzee into your family.  
In tune with everything else going on - the alternative lifestyles, the  
return to nature - popular culture was filled with lovable primates  
such as Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way but Looseorangutan, and the  
chimps in the children's show Lancelot Link/Secret Chimp- comic  
relievers who mocked the absurdity of the human condition.

Jane Goodall's research revealed chimps' intelligence, sensitivity and  
uncanny similarities to humans: how they use tools, how they live in  
families. Her later studies would chart more brutal behavior, such as  
their capacity to engage in systematic warfare. Yet the images that  
stuck were those of soulful, sociable creatures.

Davis recounts life with Moe in sunny anecdotes that sound like scenes  
from the goofball comedies of the era. The Davises once briefly left  
him in the car, the door tied shut. But rascally Moe rolled down the  
window. They returned to an empty car and panicked until someone from a  
nearby restaurant called to them. Moe was in the kitchen, surrounded by  
new friends, happily snacking on french fries.

There was the time Moe, an occasional performer in sitcoms and  
commercials, participated in a fundraiser for Actors and Others for  
Animals. Lassie was there, too, and the parrot from Baretta, but "the  
line for Moe was about three times as long as the lines for the  
others!"

In 1998, Moe helped apprehend a car thief. He was in his outdoor cage  
when Davis and a friend heard him rattling the bars and clapping his  
hands. The friend went to check and saw a man in a ski mask emerge from  
a car.

He had vanished by the time police arrived, but Moe pointed to next  
door. Officers headed that way just as the suspect appeared in the  
yard.

Some people in West Covina looked askance at this unconventional  
domestic situation. City officials tried to evict Moe a few years after  
his arrival, but the judge ruled for the Davises. Moe, he proclaimed,  
"is somewhat better-behaved than some people."

He made their lives complete, Davis says. Cancer had left her  
infertile, and they had once considered adopting children. Moe, she  
says, "changed my wants and feelings."

An escape

Moe had lived peaceably with the Davises for more than 30 years when,  
in 1998, he escaped from his 10-by-12-foot outdoor enclosure and  
rampaged through the neighborhood.

The Davises said Moe had been frightened by an electrical shock when a  
worker tried to repair his cage. But it took several police officers  
and animal control workers to restrain him, and an officer's hand was  
mauled, city officials said.

The next year, a visitor put her hand inside Moe's cage, though the  
Davises said they warned her. They say she had long red fingernails  
that looked like Moe's favorite licorice. He bit, and the Davises later  
settled a lawsuit with the woman.

The next day, West Covina officials removed Moe to a wildlife refuge.

The Davises were devastated. They cried. They lost sleep. They became  
ill. And they fought back, in petitions, fundraisers and heart-rending  
media interviews.

Virginia Landau, director of ChimpanZoo, a research program at the Jane  
Goodall Institute in Tucson, Ariz., noted that many chimp owners "don't  
really think of it as a pet - they think of it as a replacement for a  
child."

And Moe was no longer a child. He was in vigorous middle age, a roughly  
four-foot, 130-pounder with the upper-body strength of three  
linebackers. West Covina officials maintained that he could no longer  
live within city limits.

A years-long legal battle ensued. Eventually all criminal charges were  
dropped and the Davises won a $100,000 judgment in their due-process  
suit against the city. But Moe still couldn't come home.

Attack

In 2003, Moe was transferred to Animal Haven. The 22-acre nonprofit  
sanctuary was founded by Virginia and Ralph Brauer for exotic pets that  
had worn out their welcome, castoffs from circuses and zoos. The  
Brauers had six primates plus Moe, who as a newcomer to the animal  
world was kept in his own cage.

In a cage nearby were four other chimps, including males Buddy, 16, and  
Ollie, 13, who had worked for a Hollywood animal trainer until they  
grew too strong and aggressive.

The Davises made the three-hour drive to see Moe every 10 days or so,  
bringing enough food for the entire menagerie. Yet LaDonna Davis says  
she never ventured over to visit the other chimps.

"They were just . . . different animals," she says carefully.

The day of the attack, March 3, started as a happy one - the day they  
celebrated as Moe's 39th birthday. The couple arrived with special  
treats: new toys and a beautiful sheet cake with raspberry filling.

As LaDonna moved to cut the cake, she glimpsed something to her left.  
It was one of the teen-age male chimps. He was out of his cage.

He slammed into her backside, knocking her into St. James. Just like  
that, the chimp "just chomped off my thumb."

Her husband pushed her under the table, and the chimps - because now a  
second had appeared - turned their frenzy on him.

LaDonna watched as one latched onto St. James's head, the other onto  
his foot. And here, she chokes on the words: "They virtually were - I  
don't know how you say it - eating him alive."

Davis says she screamed and the Brauers' son-in-law, Mark Carruthers,  
came running. Carruthers retrieved a handgun, according to Davis and  
police accounts. As Buddy lifted his head, Carruthers came in close and  
fired a single bullet into the animal's brain.

As Buddy fell away, Ollie began dragging St. James's mutilated body  
away. The 62-year-old man was conscious but near death. He had lost his  
nose, an eye, most of his fingers, both testicles and much of the flesh  
from his buttocks and face and left foot.

Carruthers followed, and fired again.

And then it was over.

Fighting for his life

For weeks, Davis went without seeing Moe. Almost every day has been  
spent with her husband, who remains in a medically induced coma,  
fighting for his life.

"I don't think he'll ever be the same,"Davis says.

St. James has had more than a dozen surgeries so far; the Davises, who  
are uninsured, could end up with medical bills totaling more than a  
million dollars, according to their lawyer, Gloria Allred.

The couple has decided against suing Animal Haven, because the ranch  
had no liability insurance. Allred and Davis persuaded a state senator  
to sponsor a bill requiring animal sanctuaries to carry insurance.

On a recent Sunday, Davis went to see Moe. It was May 8. Mother's Day.

"I had some fear" going back to the scene, she says. But there was her  
boy, jumping up and down as she waved to him, and then she did not feel  
so afraid.