The Animal Within

Raising a Chimp

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.

Animals, like babies, "learn the words no and yes, they learn a caress, and what love means," she says.

And just as there are good people and bad people, she says, there are good animals and bad, those who want to learn and those who do not.

She adds: "I don't know if you could do this today. . . . Maybe I was one of the select blessed few."

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 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. 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.

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. 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.

Davis recounts life with Moe in sunny anecdotes that sound like scenes from the goofball comedies of the era. On a day trip to Morro Bay, they briefly left him in the car, the door tied shut. But rascally Moe rolled the window down. 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 and milk.

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. He held court in a kissing booth -- 50 cents for a handshake, a dollar for a smooch. 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 black 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, but their objections seemed to exist only for the dramatic tension that would lead to a heartwarming finale. 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 at a young age, and they had once considered adopting children. But Moe, she says, "changed my wants and feelings."

The Start of Trouble

Moe had lived peaceably with the Davises for more than 30 years when on Aug. 16, 1998, he escaped from his 10-by-12-foot outdoor enclosure and rampaged through the neighborhood.