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Monday, February 16, 2009

News Monkey Do

Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 8:12 PM

Pit bulls, birds, and soldiers stationed at Fort Lewis aren't the only animals we have to worry about.

A 200-pound chimpanzee kept as a pet attacked and seriously injured a woman visiting a Stamford, Conn., home Monday, the police said.

The chimpanzee, named Travis, who had appeared in television commercials, was shot and killed by an officer when he charged the police and cornered that officer in his cruiser, the police said. The injured woman was hospitalized late Monday in very serious condition at Stamford Hospital. Her identity was not released.

Sandra Herold, the owner of the 15-year-old chimpanzee, wrestled with the animal as it mauled her friend, then ran inside to call 911.

“She retrieved a large butcher knife and stabbed her longtime pet numerous times in an effort to save her friend, who was really being brutally attacked,” Captain Conklin said. The woman suffered “a tremendous loss of blood” from serious facial injuries, he said.

Thanks to Slog tipper Al.

Comments (25) RSS

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I really hate people sometimes. Grow a brain - it's a 200 pound chimpanzee. They are territorial, they are extremely intelligent, and they use tools - they are bloody dangerous. They're not PETS.

I mean, come on - this is way beyond pit bull level. This is like keeping a tiger in the house. They're perfectly fine, right up until they aren't. And then someone's dead.

Posted by wench on February 16, 2009 at 8:36 PM

"A 200-pound chimpanzee kept as a PET ..."

oh that is so wrong. bet the poor thing was insane. anyways, chimpanzees are quite vicious in the wild. they do all the nasty things humans do - murder, war, cannibalism.

200 lbs plus HUGE teeth plus way stronger than most humans. no surprise --> vicious nature + captivity + insanity = mauled woman.

Posted by onion on February 16, 2009 at 8:38 PM

Jesus Christ! I saw this story earlier and had similar thoughts to #1 here. Who the hell keeps a chimpanzee as a pet? Especially one that's 200 pounds! That's 60 pounds heavier than I am!

And they're smart, too. So the owner had to stab her beloved intelligent (wild animal!!!) pet with a large knife in order to save her good friend. Nightmare.

Posted by Balt-O-Matt on February 16, 2009 at 8:39 PM

All the chimps you see in movies and commercials are babies, usually taken from the wild. As soon as they become mature, around seven years old, they become unmanageable and they are "retired" to zoos or special primate centers or whatever. Idiots think they'll make good pets cause they've only seen the babies. Idiots.

Posted by St. Beretta on February 16, 2009 at 8:46 PM

After the Neverland post, this really makes me worry for whatever the eventual fate of Bubbles was.

Of course, the animal kingdom's real villain is the badger.

Posted by Liz on February 16, 2009 at 9:03 PM

Chimps can be incredibly dangerous, and should be totally banned as pets; people who keep them are morons.

Posted by MarkyMark on February 16, 2009 at 9:13 PM

While it was not clear what prompted the assault, Ms. Nash had markedly changed her hairstyle since the last time Travis had seen her, possibly leading him to mistake her for an intruder.

Stupid bitch provoked him.

Posted by Go away! 'Batin'! on February 16, 2009 at 9:17 PM

A 200-pound pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., Monday viciously mauled a woman he had known for years, leaving her critically injured with much of her face torn away, the authorities said. The animal was shot dead by the police after he assaulted an officer in his car.

Murder, maulings and blackmail for sex - leave it to Slog to find the humor and write something snarky to make stupid hipsters snort PBR out their noses while they laugh and laugh and laugh.

Posted by So much for no dick day on February 16, 2009 at 9:54 PM

You left out the part where a different chimp from the same shelter escaped and bit off a dude's NOSE and FUCKIN' TWIG AND BERRIES.

Posted by The CHZA on February 16, 2009 at 10:15 PM

Is no-dick day over yet? I need some decent material to rationalize putting off homework. for the love of apes, please?

Posted by i_need_a_name on February 16, 2009 at 10:44 PM

Dangerous? You betcha!

I guess that I get to be the first to point this out:

http://www.bushorchimp.com/

Posted by saxfanatic on February 16, 2009 at 11:51 PM

A chimpanzee doesn't need to be insane to kill you. They kill other primates and eat them in nature.

Posted by Sirkowski on February 17, 2009 at 12:02 AM

I feel terrible for the woman. It's a very sad story. But when are people going to get it: You can't put a diaper on a wild animal and call it your pet. You are going up against millions of years of evolution. And it's entirely unfair to the animal. They deserve better.

Posted by mia on February 17, 2009 at 12:35 AM

I think you guy are burying the lead here:

This chimp was dosed with Xanax, stabbed repeatedly, SHOT repeatedly, then RAN OFF. They finally tracked him down - dead in his own bed.

Let's hear it for the arboreal Rasputin!

Posted by John Galt on February 17, 2009 at 1:11 AM

Today they're saying that the chimp was also suffering from Lyme disease, which in humans can cause personality changes.

When I saw this on the news last night what caught my attention was a sound bite from some neighbor driving in her car who said that the cops told her that the chimp had "eaten the woman's hands off". I do so love how TV news can throw up some completely unsubstantiated crap by interviewing people telling third-hand tales.

PS -- my first Slog Tip! W00t!!!

Posted by Al on February 17, 2009 at 6:18 AM

you can say "pet" chimp as much as you want, but that ain't gonna domesticate shit.

Posted by olive on February 17, 2009 at 6:42 AM

I'm not gonna say that people who keep chimpanzees as pets deserve to have their faces eaten off, but they gotta understand that there is a strong possibility that it will happen.

Posted by Greg on February 17, 2009 at 8:11 AM

Chimps are apes, not monkeys. Monkeys have tails.

Posted by facet on February 17, 2009 at 9:10 AM

I was just saying to a friend of mine the other day "your chimp is looking a little homocidal today" and she just laughed it off and went about applying her lipstick.

Posted by Vince on February 17, 2009 at 10:07 AM

sad

the owner is not expected to live

Posted by Nephi on February 17, 2009 at 11:05 AM

This is why I fucking hate primates--mostly chimps. I saw some special about how chimps are the most dangerous wild animal based on the number and intensity of their attacks, and it scared the shit out of me. Keep them in their natural habitats, far away from me.

Posted by EmilyP on February 17, 2009 at 11:37 AM

All of you are missing the point. Every time we see one of these stories smearing the co-habitation of man and monkey the further we get from the noble and natural practice of keeping monkey butlers as our own personal servants. I don't want to live in a world where we are limited to stupid boring robots. Rosie was boring as shit.

Posted by mc on February 17, 2009 at 1:16 PM

I bet the chimp was sexually frustrated

Posted by Chimp Liberation Front on February 19, 2009 at 1:51 PM

@18 OMG Thank You! My biggest pet peeve is people constantly, constantly, calling apes "monkeys" As a frustrated Anthropologist (took most of the classes, but got hung up on statistics and more boring elemnts of research so decided it wasn't a career for me) it drives me crazy when people lump them all together. It might seem like a small thing to some, but if you were to call a lion a tiger or vice versa, people would correct you in a heartbeat. It is ironic that we understand less about our closest genetic relative, the chimp, than animals we have much less in common with. And that we underestimate them as well. It is wrong to keep any wild animal as a pet but a chimp is by FAR more dangerous in the long run than a tiger. Even the smallest grown male chimp is five times stronger than the strongest man, he has enormous canines, opposable thumbs, and the intelligence and cunning of dare I say many people. That is NOT a pet. While I'm on my soap box, I hope anyone who still thinks it would be neat to have a pet chimp realizes that in order for that baby chimp to end up on the illegal wildlife trade market, several mother and chimp babies die in failed attempts of capture. They fight back against human kidnappers hard. So every time you see a chimp in captivity who wasn't born in captivity, figure it took probably 10 dead chimps at the hands of humans to get that one who survives the ordeal of capture. And we consider tigers, chimps, and pit bulls to be the vicious dangerous animals....

Posted by Jennifer on February 22, 2009 at 6:59 PM

In this case, a couple of photos gave me a load of visceral information. First, there's the creepy, smug-faced, man-boob-having, obese "Travis." Yes, OBESE. A quick glance through sources on the Web informs me that the average male chimp weighs 90-115 lbs, and a famous ALPHA chimp's weight was 120. 115, 120... 200. Now consider that the male chimp's top height of FOUR FEET makes 115 "stocky," Travis' extra weight was even more grotesque, and I speculate that his unnatural obesity MADE HIM UNCOMFORTABLE. Extra fat does that, by dumping excess hormones and metabolic junk into the system, and by getting in the way of easy movement. It's part of why fat people are so often crabby (go on, blow up, prove my point) and angry: excess hormone production, cellular toxic waste, arm flaps and chafed thighs would make ANYONE irritable. I bet this was part of Travis' nasty little behavior problem.

And then there was the wine. I've "spoiled" pets in my life, and I have nothing against a little human maternal (and paternal!) love showered on animals. Even when it's weird, it's usually harmless. BUT, in the case of bully-faced fattie Travis, he was NOT just being treated as Mommy's Little Boy. Little boys get toys and ice cream, picnics and bedtime stories. But Mommy's little 200-lb, hormone-soaked, mate-seeking REPLACEMENT for DADDY apparently gets ROMANTIC DINNERS FOR TWO, featuring lobster, fine wine in stemmed glasses, candlelight and Mommy and Daddy's fancy linen. I can almost hear Frank Sinatra and Englebert Humperdinck on the hi-fi, and it ain't pretty.

Did you know chimpanzees prefer OLDER females? OK, seriously, aside from silly sick jokes, here's my speculation. Travis spent his whole life from day one with Mommy. Chimps have NO INCEST TABOO, by the way. As long as Daddy was around, there was an unspoken primate-to-primate understanding that DADDY was the Alpha Male, and Mommy's mate. Then, just as Travis grew from hormone-fueled youth to full chimpanzee adulthood, when he might be in the running for Alpha Male... Daddy passed away. Boo hoo. WOO HOO!!! Mommy, SINGLE, was Travis' dream come true.

At the same time, a grieving, lonely, aging woman -- with long, dyed hair and passing 60 in formfitting, tacky-slutty "strategically bleached" jeans even 20-25 year-old lower-working-class women can't REALLY get away with -- had a super-smart, huggy, lovey, cuddly pet. Kinda like a BIG DOG, except this almost-human beast could wrap his arms around her and kiss her when she wanted more than a big warm pet at the foot of the bed.

Foot of the bed? Who's kidding whom? I don't believe they necessarily had sex, but I do believe the relationship was inappropriately mate-like, rather than just maternal. The wine and lobster did it.

And while Lyme Disease DOES EXIST, I have a hunch that Travis' "Lyme Disease" may have been diagnosed by reading The Enquirer and White Trash Weekly. My money is on NO VET, NO REAL-LIFE DIAGNOSIS of goddamned LYME DISEASE. The Xanax was Mommy's, and Travis' reaction was why I refuse to take Xanax: in excitable types, LIKE CHIMPAN-FUCKING-ZEES, it can have the opposite effect immediately. Even more commonly, there's a "bounce back" anxiety effect, plunging the pilltaker into unpredictable depression.

So this ignorant woman, without consulting primate vets, ignored the nature of sexually mature chimps, ignored the dynamic of being a FREE FEMALE after the alpha, I mean, her husband, died, in light of Travis' complete devotion to her PLUS hormones PLUS alcohol PLUS Mommy's psych meds.

Another conjecture: morals are taught. No, apes don't think "morally," as we understand the concept. But I wonder if Travis wasn't TRAINED to be grossly self-centered, an exaggeration of his selfish chimp nature... when Sandra Herold might have used routine, practice, and her own approval to teach him a rudimentary set of values. Did he REALLY have to freak out when Charla Nash had different hair? Or did his frustrating, chemical-dumping obesity, use of alcohol, and TOTAL INDULGENCE IN ALL THINGS TRAVIS contribute to his meltdown?

And now her friend is barely alive, having had her FACE CHEWED OFF and her EYES EATEN by this fat, decadent fuck of a "pet," Travis... and all she can do is whine about losing poor, misunderstood Travis? And state that she'd do it over the same way? Does anyone have a tranquilizer dart left?

If she's not legally insane, charge her with something. Willful stupidity, failure to have a clue, aggravated by those nasty bleached jeans. Ugh.

More...

Posted by Mona Lisa on February 23, 2009 at 3:06 PM