monkey business – medieval style

"You talkin' to me?"

STAMFORD, Connecticut – In another case of the jungle usurping humankind’s role as king of the animals, a chimpanzee has accosted a woman, putting her in the hospital with injuries to her face, neck and hands.  Tarzan, no doubt, is shaking his unkempt head in disgust.

The woman, Charla Nash, was only trying to help out a friend when Travis, the most unfriendly chimp in the world, attacked her.

Authorities contend that the attack was unprovoked and that Nash was only present to put the primate back in his cage.  It seems that the crafty monkey had somehow found a key and released himself from not only his cage, but from the house entirely.  Travis’ owner, Sandra Herold, enlisted her friend to wrangle the animal back into confinement.

Sounds innocent enough, right?

Wrong.

Before the night was over, a woman was in the hospital and a chimpanzee had been stabbed with a butcher knife.

That’s right.  A butcher knife.

After Herold managed to pull the maniacal pet from her guest, she stabbed him with the closest thing handy – a kitchen knife.  The monkey, undeterred by things like mortality and reason, then escaped and attempted to rip the mirror off of a police squad car which had the unfortunate luck of responding to this call.  The monkey then tried to enter the vehicle.

I’ve seen a lot of messed-up things in my life, but a maniacal chimpanzee with a butcher-knife wound and a lack of boundaries would surely take the cake.

The responding police did what anyone would do in a similar situation:  they shot the animal multiple times until it was dead.

"Go ahead. Make my day."

It seems that this was not the first run-in with the law that Travis was involved with.  According to the Police Captain, the cheeky monkey escaped first in 2003 and “wreaked havok” on the streets of Stamford for several hours.

And this is why I always say, “keep your monkey friends close and your monkey enemies closer.”

Just ask Gary Hart.