Chimp’s Removal Raises a Cry Worthy of Tarzan

To St. James and LaDonna Davis, Moe has been an only son for 32 years.

“The honesty I see in Moe’s eyes is beyond anything I can compare [it to]. There is beauty there,” says St. James Davis about the chimpanzee he rescued in Tanzania in the late 1960s after poachers massacred a group of the animals, including Moe’s mother.

So it was a blow to Davis and his wife when West Covina officials on Sept. 3 declared Moe, who had appeared in parades and in photo ops with top city officials, a dangerous animal. He was removed from their North Vincent Avenue home after he bit off part of a woman’s finger.

For about a month, Moe has been quarantined at the Wildlife Way-station in the Angeles National Forest. The Davises say they try to visit him every other day.

A year ago, Moe escaped from the Davis home and seriously injured the hand of a policeman trying to capture him. He also dented several police cars.

The city had tried to remove Moe from the Davis home in 1977 after he escaped and bruised a woman when he ran into her, but a judge dismissed the case, police said.

City officials have heard from both those who think Moe should be returned to the Davises and those who don’t.

Some people in West Covina, and as far away as New Zealand and England, have raised concerns about animal cruelty--based primarily on the fact that Moe has such a long history with his human “parents.”

Those passing by the Davis house honk their horns in support of the couple and their animal. Money has been donated, editorials have been written in local papers on Moe’s behalf, and the Davises say they have collected several thousand signatures on a petition seeking Moe’s return. Moe even has his own Web site.

But some neighbors have raised questions about how much noise Moe makes and how dangerous he might be. West Covina Police Chief Frank Wills said he met with a dozen residents Thursday night to hear their concerns.

“Public sentiment is against me, I know,” said Wills, who believes that Moe should be placed in an animal preserve. “Some say the officer should have stayed in his car. Some that the woman who lost her finger should have stayed away from the cage. But what’s going to be the next thing that shouldn’t happen?”

Michele Cosner, who lives behind the Davises, says that as a grandmother of four, she worries that she might have to decide which grandchild to grab from her backyard if Moe should escape and roam the neighborhood again.

“I’m just a grandmother looking to protect my family. I wish Moe and the Davises well, and hope he goes to a place where grass will grow beneath his feet. But I’m sure that some of these people coming to the neighborhood and signing a petition would not want to trade places with me if they could,” said Cosner. “I live right behind the Davises, and for five years I’ve been very unhappy about Moe’s pounding and horrible screaming.”

Moe’s recent problems with the law began last year when he bit the hand of West Covina Police Officer Marcos Plebani after escaping from his roughly 10-by-12-foot enclosure. Plebani’s hand required three surgeries, said Wills, at a cost of $250,000 to the city. And just three weeks ago, Moe bit the finger of a 43-year-old Irwindale woman after she stuck it in his cage during a visit.

The city has since filed criminal charges against the Davises accusing them of harboring a dangerous animal, which could mean up to a year in jail. On Thursday the couple pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, the Century City law firm of Richards and Chemerinski and civil rights attorney Gloria Allred have rallied behind the Davises.

“There was no due process here. The city just took Moe away, using the health department as their lackey, and now they want to scare the Davises with a criminal case so they’ll just go away,” said attorney Ronald Richards, who has taken the case pro bono.

The Davises are due back in court Oct. 14.

Chief Wills, who has borne the brunt of criticism from the pro-Moe forces, says he has learned as a longtime police officer that in a battle between man and animal, never bet against the animal, because the public won’t.

“As a Pasadena police officer, I remember years ago when a ram, ‘Rodney the Ram,’ rammed a poor woman to death,” he said. “We had to shoot the ram, and you wouldn’t believe the uproar. Twenty-five years later, no one remembers the woman, but a lot of people remember Rodney the Ram.”

St. James Davis originally planned to give Moe away--to missionaries or others in Africa--but became attached to the chimp over three months on the continent. Davis eventually returned to the United States on a commercial plane with Moe on his lap.

An expert from the Jane Goodall Institute in Tucson said she feels for the Davises but agrees with West Covina officials that Moe should begin the lengthy task of resocialization with other chimpanzees--while being visited by the couple.

“I’ve never heard of private citizens who have had a chimp this long,” said Virginia Landau, director of the institute’s ChimpanZoo Program. “Nineteen years is the longest I’ve personally heard of. The Davises must have done some good things to raise Moe for 32 years.”

But she adds: “Moe has been deprived of the company of females, of a mate.”

Landau said it would be terrible if Moe escaped again and injured someone else. The tragic thing, she said, is that Moe has developed such an irrevocable bond with humans that he’ll never fully reintegrate into the chimpanzee family structure.

But for the Davises, it’s as simple as wanting their child back.

“Moe has depended on me for so much. I have the perfect son,” said St. James Davis. “Even at age 30, my kid still wants to live at home.”