A Case Of Chimps Gone Mad...

[MouseWife]

I hope this link works. Wow, it is horrific. I was reading it and when I got to the nose part I was shocked...then I read on....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=2&u=/ap/20050304/ap_on_re_us/chimpanzee_attack

[Ghoulish Delight]

Aw, and here I thought this was going to be a transcript of the creation of the LoT.

[mousepod]

I saw this on the news this morning. This part jumped out at me:
St. James and LaDonna Davis were at the Animal Haven Ranch in Caliente to celebrate the birthday of Moe, a 39-year-old chimpanzee who was taken from their suburban Los Angeles home in 1999 after biting off part of a woman's finger.

A sad story.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

They don't know how they got out of their cages? WTF??? This is totally "Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH". You just know the chimps had figured out the locks and were waiting for the right moment. Seeing another chimp get all the attention pissed them off enough to attack.

May I be totally un-PC and say that they can be incredibly savage creatures?

[BarTopDancer]

I saw the headline yesterday and thought it had to be some sort of joke.

CP, Yes, you may be un-PC. People forget, these are wild animals and have natural instinct. No amount of love, tenderness and human attention can make them anything but what they are. And as sad as this story is, hopefully it will make people think twice before keeping a monkey, tiger, lion or any other wild animal as a pet.

[MouseWife]

Heck, un-PC for sure.

This is horrible. These are wild savage animals. One was dragging the husband away???? WTF?

Well, ya know BarTopDancer, I would never have an exotic animal as a pet. I have kids. Enough work for me. :D

Hey GD, who YOU calling chimps? :evil:

[Chernabog]

You damn dirty apes!

[Ghoulish Delight]

So, one expert says that this kind of vicious attack is very rare for chimps, that they don't go beyond minor biting unless its over something major, like territory. Now, the background is that one chimp (Moe, who did not attack and remained in his cage) used to be owned by the guy who got attacked, but was confiscated and relocated to this sanctuary. The victim regularly visited Moe and, this time, was giving Moe a birthday cake. My completely amateur, uneducated, uninformed guess is that the other chimps were ticked off at the ammount of attention Moe got from this guy, possibly Moe was low in the social order and the guy was breaking major protocol by giving attention and gifts to Moe.

[Mousey Girl]

We have been hearing a lot about this since it happened here our "backyard." The Sheriff that they keep interviewing is really upset. I have never seen him this upset before and he has been around forever. We are hearing a lot of the more gruesome details that the national news service hasn't been mentioning (at least not much). The article that you linked MW, gives most of the details since it came from the local paper. The guy also lost one of his eyes.

They have also been interviewing neighbors who let their kids go down and visit the sanctuary, so as bad as it was, it could have been a lot worse.

There is now a video that KGET was going to show on the 5 o'clock news, but luckily I was able to change the channel before they showed it. I was watching for the weather (with Nickolas) and this was all they could talk about. I do NOT want Nickolas to know too much about this, especially since it happened in an area that we have been.

[alphabassettgrrl]

Nasty.

[Mousey Girl]

GD, I have a feeling you are right. They didn't respect the social order and that triggered the attack. The thing they are still trying to figure out is how they got out in the first place.