But Moe, she says, "changed my wants and feelings." Cancer had left her infertile at a young age, and they had once considered adopting children. He made their lives complete, Davis says. Moe, he proclaimed, "is somewhat better behaved than some people." City officials tried to evict Moe a few years after his arrival, but the judge ruled for the Davises. Some people in West Covina looked askance at this unconventional domestic situation, but their objections seemed to exist only for the dramatic tension that would lead to a heartwarming finale. Officers headed that way just as the suspect appeared in the yard. He had vanished by the time police arrived, but Moe pointed to next door. The friend went to check and saw a man in a black ski mask emerge from a car. He was in his outdoor cage when Davis and a friend heard him rattling the bars and clapping his hands. In 1998, Moe helped apprehend a car thief. 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!" He held court in a kissing booth - 50 cents for a handshake, a dollar for a smooch. There was the time Moe, an occasional performer in sitcoms and commercials, was enlisted to participate in a fundraiser for Actors and Others for Animals. Moe was in the kitchen, surrounded by new friends, happily snacking on french fries and milk. They returned to an empty car and panicked until someone from a nearby restaurant called to them. On a day trip to Morro Bay, they briefly left him in the car, the door tied shut. Her later studies would chart more brutal behavior - such as the chimps' capacity to engage in systematic warfare - yet the images that stuck were those of soulful, sociable creatures.ĭavis recounts life with Moe in sunny anecdotes that sound like scenes from the goofball comedies of the era. Jane Goodall's research revealed the intelligence and sensitivity of chimpanzees, and their uncanny similarities to humans - how they use tools, how they live in families. One of the most subversively brilliant TV shows was the children's program "Lancelot Link/Secret Chimp," in which costumed chimps were put through their paces in skits whose plot lines they would hijack to hilarious effect, forcing the voice-over actors to improvise dialogue. In tune with everything else going on - the flourishing of alternative lifestyles, the return to nature, the quest for authenticity - popular culture was filled with lovable primates, from Ronald Reagan's Bonzo to Clint Eastwood's "Every Which Way but Loose" orangutan and countless sitcom monkeys in between - adorable comic relievers who mocked the absurdity of the human condition. 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. Maybe I was one of the select blessed few." She adds: "I don't know if you could do this today. As news of the incident rocketed around the world, Davis fears some people may have come to assume that the chimp who mauled her hand and attacked her husband with such a frenzy that he remains in critical condition two months later, struggling for his life, his face forever disfigured - was Moe. "You couldn't turn it off," all that charm, all that love.Īs Davis tells her story in the sleek conference room of a Los Angeles attorney's office, she gingerly moves her left hand, swaddled in the cotton 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.įor Davis is here to talk about a terrible thing that happened to her, an event so traumatic, so bitterly ironic, she would be forgiven for not wishing to talk about it at all. "He would reach his hands out and put them around your neck," says Davis, a sun-creased blonde of 64. This wasn't just any chimp, they explain patiently.
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