The Animal Within

Her husband pushed her under the table, and the chimps -- because now a second had appeared -- turned their frenzy on him.

LaDonna watched as one latched onto St. James's head, the other onto his foot. And here, she chokes on the words: "They virtually were -- I don't know how you say it -- eating him alive."

Davis says she screamed and the Brauers' son-in-law, Mark Carruthers, came running. She cried to him, "He's killing James!"

Carruthers retrieved a handgun, according to Davis and police accounts. He had to struggle to find a clear shot. As Buddy, the larger male, lifted his head, Carruthers came in close and fired a single bullet into the animal's brain.

As Buddy fell away, Ollie began dragging St. James's mutilated body down a walkway. The 62-year-old man was conscious but near death. He had lost his nose, an eye, most of his fingers, both testicles and much of the flesh from his buttocks and face and left foot, but the chimp was not done with him yet.

Carruthers followed, took aim again and fired.

And then it was over.

Territorial Behavior?

Why did they do it?

It's the question that hangs over almost every conversation about the case. Chimp attacks on humans are highly unusual. How could this have happened to people who knew and loved these creatures so well? Why did it get so ugly?

USC's Stanford gets frustrated with this kind of talk. "If a tiger attacked these people, you wouldn't say, 'Why was this tiger angry?' " he says.

Stanford's point is: They were wild animals. Intelligent enough to learn how to jimmy the lock on their cage and push through two other doors Virginia Brauer accidentally left unsecured, according to an investigation by the Kern County sheriff. But immune to our attempts to psychoanalyze or blame.

Were they jealous? Resentful of the chimp getting all the cake? That was the theory some experts offered Kern County prosecutors, who recently decided not to file charges against the Brauers. Stanford argues it was probably much simpler than that: The chimps were out of their cage, and out of their comfort zone. Moe was the new, threatening male on the scene who needed to be taken down a peg, but they couldn't get at him. So "they attacked the first individuals they came across who were in their immediate territory."

For the ugly truth is that these kinds of attacks are quite common -- in the wild, against other chimpanzees. The males are highly territorial; if threatened, they will shred a rival's genitals, rip out his windpipe.

"They just have the same tendencies as all of us," says Stanford. "Some individuals can be violent and nasty, others not."

Back to the Ranch

Which brings up the question: What might another chimp -- one who had been raised differently -- make of all of this?

"Moe hasn't ever been around violence," Davis is saying. During the terrible minutes of the attack she remembers catching sight of Moe. He was frozen, she says, unable to scream.

For weeks, she went without seeing Moe. Almost every day has been spent at the hospital bedside of her husband, who remains in a medically induced coma, still fighting for his life.

"I don't think he'll ever be the same," Davis says. "It's one day at a time."

St. James has had more than a dozen surgeries so far; the Davises, who are uninsured, could end up with medical bills totaling more than a million dollars, according to their lawyer, Gloria Allred. The couple has decided against suing Animal Haven because it turns out the ranch had no liability insurance. Outraged by this revelation, Allred and Davis persuaded a state senator to sponsor a bill requiring animal sanctuaries to carry insurance; a new campaign now lies ahead for them.

But on a recent May Sunday, Davis got friends to drive her the three hours to see Moe. It was May 8. Mother's Day.

"I had some fear" going back to the scene, she says. But there was her boy, jumping up and down as she waved to him, and then she did not feel so afraid.