LOS ANGELES – Moe, a 42-year-old chimpanzee who grew up in suburbia until being forced to live in an animal sanctuary, was believed to be at large in a Southern California forest yesterday after escaping his cage.
Animal handlers were combing the San Bernardino National Forest about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
“We think he may be hunkered down near a water source,” said Mike McCasland, a friend of Moe's owners, LaDonna and St. James Davis. “We think he's in a contained area a quarter-mile away but he's probably disoriented and the brush is extremely heavy.”
The Davises said at a news conference they were devastated, and appealed to the public for dogs that could track Moe from his scent left on his blankets. The couple urged the public to not approach Moe because he might become fearful and aggressive.
The hunt started late Friday after Moe somehow let himself out of his cage at Jungle Exotics, a facility that trains animals for the entertainment industry. The chimp wandered into a house next door, surprising construction workers who then saw him head for a nearby mountain.
The distraught Davises, who kept Moe in their suburban West Covina home for more than three decades, contracted a helicopter to fly over the forest Saturday and Sunday, hoping the noise would flush Moe out of hiding, said McCasland, who is serving as their spokesman. “That's the one thing that does spook him,” he said.
Searchers were also making noise and calling Moe's name as they scoured the forest. “His survival instincts would probably kick in, even though he's been in captivity for a long time,” McCasland said. “He could literally survive up there for a long time.”
The biggest danger to the chimp would be rattlesnakes, he said.
St. James Davis, a merchant mariner, brought Moe home from Tanzania in 1967 after the baby primate lost his mother to poachers.
He and his wife were unable to have children and treated Moe as their surrogate son, toilet-training him, teaching him to eat with a knife and fork, and letting him sleep in their bed and watch cowboys and Indians on TV.
But local authorities didn't view Moe in the same light. For years, the Davises waged a legal battle to keep Moe in their home.
They finally lost in 1999 when Moe bit part of a woman's finger off when she inserted her hand in his cage. The Davises said he mistook her red-painted fingernail for his favorite licorice.
