Travis (chimpanzee)

Travis

Species	Common Chimpanzee
Sex	Male
Notable role	Pet, occasional actor
Known for	Attack on owner's friend
Owner	Jerome Herold (deceased) Sandra Herold (deceased)
Parent(s)	Suzy (mother) (deceased)
Weight	Template:Lb to kg

Travis (1995 – February 16, 2009) was a male chimpanzee who appeared in American television shows and commercials. In February 2009, Travis suddenly and viciously attacked Charla Nash, a friend of his owner. During the attack, Travis grievously mauled Nash, blinding her while severing her nose, ears, both hands and severely lacerating her face. He was subsequently shot on the arrival of the police after trying to attack an officer.

As an animal actor, Travis had appeared in several television commercials, including spots for Coca-Cola and Old Navy. He had also appeared on The Maury Povich Show, The Man Show, and appeared in a television pilot that featured Sheryl Crow and Michael Moore.

Socialization

Travis was born near Festus, Missouri, at Mike and Connie Braun Casey's compound, currently named the Missouri Chimpanzee Sanctuary. In a separate incident, Travis' mother Suzy was shot and killed following an escape in 2001. He was adopted by Sandra and Jerome Herold when he was three days old. They raised Travis at their home at Rock Rimmon Road in the North Stamford section of Stamford, Connecticut. Travis was the Herolds' constant companion, and would often accompany them to work and when they went shopping in town. The Herolds owned a towing company and Travis would pose for photos at the shop and ride with the tow truck, his seatbelt buckled and wearing a baseball shirt. Travis became well known in the town and had been known to like police officers whom they would encounter when towing cars.

Like most wild animals, the chimpanzee could not be domesticated, but he was socialized. Neighbor Tony Marcari said he used to play around with Travis and wrestle with him. He said the animal always knew when to stop and paid close attention to its owner. "He listened better than my nephews", Marcari said. "I just don't know why he would do that." Dr. Charles Ray Jones, a Hartford-based Lyme Disease specialist in New Haven, believes Travis's Lyme disease could easily have been the cause of the attack. Lyme Disease often causes fits of rage and depression in dogs, cats and humans for which psychotropic drugs are prescribed. Toxicology reports confirmed Sandra's statement that she had given Travis Xanax laced tea the day of the attack which could have exacerbated his symptoms. Xanax (Alprazolam) is a short acting potent anti-anxiety drug that can cause disinhibition and disorientation when taken in recreational doses and occasionally paradoxical reactions of hallucination, aggression, rage and mania. But Dr. Colleen McCann, a primatologist with the Wild Life Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo pointed out that even under the best of conditions chimpanzees are prone to unpredictable violent behavior, being much more aggressive than gorillas. Additionally, it is illegal to "own" wild animals as "pets".

Travis was able to open doors using keys, could dress himself, watered plants, was able to feed hay to his owner's horses, ate at a table with the rest of the family, drank wine from a stemmed glass, and loved ice cream even knowing the schedules of the ice cream trucks. He logged onto the computer to look at pictures, watched television using a remote control and brushed his teeth using a Water Pik. On television, he enjoyed watching baseball. Travis had also driven a car on several occasions (which is not difficult for a chimpanzee). Jerome died from cancer in 2004, and their only child died in a car accident; as a result, Sandra Herold considered Travis as a son and pampered him. Sandra slept and bathed with Travis saying, "I'm, like, hollow now. He slept with me every night. Until you've eaten with a chimp and bathed with a chimp, you don't know a chimp."

Incidents

1996 incident

After the 2009 incident became an international news story, a woman who had lived in the same area as Travis claimed that in 1996 the chimpanzee had bitten her hand and tried to pull her into a vehicle as she greeted him. She claimed to have complained to the Herolds and to police.

2003 incident

In October 2003, Travis escaped from the Herolds' car and held up traffic at a busy intersection for several hours. The incident began when a young man threw something at the car that went through a half-open window and struck Travis while they were stopped at a traffic light. Startled, Travis unbuckled his seat belt, opened the car door and went after the man, but did not catch him. When police arrived, they lured the chimpanzee into the car several times only to have Travis let himself out of another door and occasionally chase the officers around the car. The 2003 incident led to the passing of a Connecticut law prohibiting people from keeping primates weighing more than 50 pounds as pets and requiring owners of exotic pets to apply for a permit. The new law took effect in 2004, and as of Travis's death, no one in the state had applied to adopt a chimpanzee. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection did not enforce the law on the Herolds because they had owned the 200-pound Travis for so long and because the DEP did not expect that Travis posed a public safety risk.

2009 attack

On February 16, 2009, Travis attacked Sandra Herold's friend Charla Nash, age 55, inflicting devastating injuries to her face and limbs. Travis had left the house with Herold's car keys, and Nash came to help get the animal back in the house; upon seeing Nash, Travis immediately attacked her. Travis was familiar with Nash, who had also worked at the Herolds' towing company, although Nash had a different hair style at the time of the attack. The ape had been taking medication for Lyme disease. Herold, then 70 years old, attempted to stop Travis by hitting him with a shovel and stabbing him with a butcher knife; however this only made the animal angrier. She then called 9-1-1 and pleaded for help. Travis' screams can be heard in the background of the tape as Sandra pleads for police, who initially believed the call to be a hoax, screaming, "He's eating her!" Emergency medical services waited for police before approaching the house. Travis walked up to the police car when it arrived and tried to open a locked passenger door, instead smashing a side-view mirror. Then he went calmly around to the driver's-side door and opened it, at which point Officer Frank Chiafari shot him several times. Travis retreated to the house, where he was found dead next to his cage.

Injuries to Nash were described as "horrendous" by the emergency crew. Within the following 72 hours, she underwent more than seven hours of surgery on her face and hands by four teams of surgeons. The hospital provided counseling to its staff members who initially treated her because of the extraordinary nature of Nash's injuries. Paramedics noted she lost her hands, nose, eyes, lips, mid-face bone structure, and received significant brain tissue injuries. Doctors were able to successfully reattach her jaw, but announced on April 7, 2009 that Nash would be blind for life. Her injuries made her a possible candidate for an experimental face transplant surgery. After initial treatment at Stamford Hospital, Nash was transferred to the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family started a trust fund to raise money to pay her “unfathomable” medical bills and support her daughter. Nash revealed her damaged face in public for the first time on the Oprah Winfrey Show on November 11, 2009. She was not in physical pain from the attack, and family members said she hoped to leave the Cleveland Clinic soon. Pictures have surfaced on the internet displaying Nash's face before and after the attack.

As per standard procedure, Travis's head was taken to the state laboratory for a rabies test and the body was taken to the University of Connecticut for a necropsy. The body tested negative for rabies, but a Connecticut professor found the presence of alprazolam (Xanax) in its system. Necropsy results in May 2009 confirmed the chimp was overweight and had been stabbed. The remains were cremated at All Pets Crematory in Stamford on February 25, 2009.

Lawsuit

In March 2009, a $50 million lawsuit was filed against Sandra Herold by an attorney for the family of Charla Nash. On May 6, a Stamford judge froze Herold's assets, valued at $10 million. Other potential defendants include the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, the city of Stamford, and the veterinarian who prescribed alprazolam for the chimp. The defense claimed that the chimp had no violent behavior before the attack, and that the two accusations in the 1990s attacks were untrue due to the fact that the chimp had no teeth at the time.

Related controversies

News reports of the incident spread as far as Ireland and China. The attack, similar to another chimpanzee attack four years earlier in California, provoked discussion on the wisdom of keeping such exotic animals as pets by sources such as Time magazine and primatologists Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal. Afterward, Sandra Herold was allegedly harassed by members of PETA, although the organization stated that they did not have any official involvement.

The incident inspired controversy over a political cartoon: On February 18, 2009, the New York Post published a piece by Sean Delonas depicting a police officer with a smoking gun, standing over the corpse of a chimpanzee, and commenting to a fellow officer, "They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." The publication of the comic triggered media and other commentary which purported a link between the cartoon's chimpanzee and the stimulus bill's champion, President Barack Obama, and racial overtones relating to African Americans being portrayed as apes. On February 24, 2009, the owner and Chairman of the Post, Rupert Murdoch, apologized for the cartoon.

Reality television actress Kim Kardashian received criticism for posting photos of her family with a three-year-old chimpanzee on her blog only days after the attack. The chimpanzee had been rented for her television show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Kardashian apologized and noted "I understand my timing was not appropriate, and it was insensitive of me. What happened to the woman that was attacked by the chimpanzee was devastating. In no way did I mean to insult or offend anyone by posting these pictures."

Frank Chiafari, the police officer who fatally shot Travis, was initially unable to get his therapy for depression and anxiety covered after the incident. This led to legislation proposed in 2010 that would cover compensation for mental or emotional impairment after killing an animal when under threat of deadly force.

Influence on legislation

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal noted that a defect in the existing 2004 Connecticut law prohibiting chimpanzees of Travis's size, itself a result of the 2003 incident, allowed the attack to occur. A Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokesman clarified that Travis was exempt because he did not appear to present a public health risk and was owned before the registration requirement began. Blumenthal subsequently sent letters to legislative leaders and the DEP Commissioner, asking them to support a proposed law that would ban all potentially dangerous exotic animals, such as chimpanzees, crocodiles and poisonous snakes, from being kept in a residential setting in Connecticut. The DEP was seeking a similar law banning large primates and, after the incident, announced that it sought the help of the public, police officers and animal control officers to report such pets to the agency. The editorial board of The Advocate newspaper in Stamford also advocated banning the possession of all exotic birds and reptiles.

Coincidentally, the Captive Primate Safety Act was introduced by U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer on January 6, 2009. The Bill would add monkeys, great apes and lemurs to the list of "prohibited wildlife species" that cannot be sold or purchased through interstate and foreign sales. The attack led the Humane Society of the United States to join with the Wildlife Conservation Society in supporting the Act. Travis's attack resulted in the Bill's reintroduction by co-sponsor, Rep. Mark Kirk, on February 23, 2009. Rep. Rob Bishop argued against the Bill during the floor debate, noting it would cost $4 million annually and do nothing directly to prevent chimpanzee attacks on humans. He also noted such attacks are relatively rare. Twenty states and the District of Columbia already have laws banning primates as pets. On February 23, 2009, the House voted 323 to 95 in favor of the Bill. The House version would exempt monkey helpers. The editorial boards of several major newspapers, including The New York Times and Newsday advocated for the passage of the Bill.

Sandra Herold

Sandra Herold, along with her husband Jerome, adopted Travis in 1995 when he was three days old.

At the time of the 2009 attack on Charla Nash, the chimpanzee's rampage forced Sandra Herold to stab her pet with a butcher knife and pound him with a shovel. "For me to do something like that – put a knife in him – was like putting one in myself," Herold said afterward. The chimp turned around, she said, as if to say, "'Mom, what did you do?'"

On May 25, 2010, the Associated Press reported that Sandra Herold had died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm at the age of 72. Her attorney, Robert Golger, released the following statement: "Ms. Herold had suffered a series of heartbreaking losses over the last several years, beginning with the death of her only child, then her husband, then her beloved chimp Travis, as well as the tragic maiming of friend and employee Charla Nash. In the end, her heart, which had been broken so many times before, could take no more."

External links

• Charla Nash Trust, a trust set up for the woman attacked by Travis in 2009
• The Hartford Courant, a small photo gallery in The Hartford Courant's web site, showing Herold, Travis, and Nash