The Animal Within

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, city officials said, and they claimed Moe dented police cars and mauled an officer's hand.

A little more than a year later, on Sept. 2, 1999, a visitor came to the Davis home to see Moe. The Davises said they warned her not to go near his cage, but she put her hand inside. 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 descended on the Davis home and 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.

"The honesty I see in Moe's eyes is beyond anything I can compare to it," St. James Davis told the Los Angeles Times after Moe was taken away. Reporters found him weeping outside a court hearing: "I want our family back together!"

Chimpanzees -- our closest animal relatives -- have always inspired reactions more complex than that of other exotic animals, primatologists say.

"They look so much like humans," says Virginia I. Landau, director of ChimpanZoo, a research program at the Jane Goodall Institute in Tucson. "When you look in their eyes, it's not like the eyes that look back at you from a mountain lion. It's the eyes of an intelligent creature."

That ineffable feeling of interspecies connection may be what inspired many animal lovers to try to bring chimpanzees into their homes -- a practice now prohibited or tightly regulated in about 22 states and banned in the District. The Humane Society of the United States, which strongly opposes keeping wild animals in private homes, estimates that as many as 15,000 chimps across the country may be living as pets.

Except, Landau noted, 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 they could no longer allow him to live within city limits.

A years-long legal battle ensued. In the end, all criminal charges were dropped and the Davises won a $100,000 judgment in their due-process suit against the city, but Moe was still not permitted to come home.

The Davises visited Moe regularly until 2003, when the sanctuary had licensing problems. Months of negotiation followed, and finally they got Moe transferred to Animal Haven Ranch, near Bakersfield. Last October they went to see him -- the first time in five years they had spent substantial time with him.