The Worst Story I Ever Heard
By Rich Schapiro
St. James Davis is crying. It's a loud, whooping wail of a cry. He's sitting in the driveway of his childhood home, a sprawling, L-shaped ranch house in West Covina, California, on a sun-drenched day last September. Standing next to him is his wife of nearly forty years, LaDonna. On the brink of tears herself, LaDonna grabs a cloth and gently cradles his cheek with her right hand. With her left, she carefully dabs at his mouth. St. James keeps his head still as she tends to him. He doesn't say a word as he calms down. He doesn't have to — LaDonna knows what he wants now that the sun is beating down on him. She grabs the beige bucket hat hanging around his neck and eases it onto his head.
LaDonna tends to St. James because he can't tend to himself. St. James, sixty-six, a former high school football star and onetime Nascar driver, is severely disabled and disfigured. There's a two-inch hole in the heel of his swollen left foot, and he is confined to a wheelchair. He has no nose, only a red, raw, exposed septum, surrounded by narrow openings. At the top are three tiny magnets designed to hold in place a crude silicone prosthesis, which is constantly falling off. His right eye is gone, replaced with glass. The skin on his face droops like candle wax because so many bones around his cheeks and eyes were broken. His mouth, which has been completely reconstructed, is stuck in a frown. On his left hand, his index, middle, and ring fingers are stumps. His right hand is much worse. He has a misshapen hunk of flesh for a thumb, which appears as if it were lumped onto his wrist with clay. His index and middle fingers are gone; his ring finger and pinkie are immobile.
But St. James's crying has nothing to do with his physical condition. He's crying because of news he and LaDonna recently received about what really can only be called their boy. At first, St. James and LaDonna were reluctant to speak about all that's happened to them. LaDonna prefers not to talk to outsiders about their life because, she says, they are so often misunderstood.
To begin to understand, you have to go back to early 1971, when West Covina's "monkey trial" captivated this small California city about twenty miles east of Los Angeles. St. James and LaDonna Davis were in court, found in violation of a city ordinance against harboring a wild animal — a young chimpanzee they'd kept in their home nearly from birth. The chimp, named Moe, rode to the courthouse shotgun in St. James's jet-black 1932 Ford roadster. Dozens of spectators lined up outside the Citrus municipal courthouse to catch a glimpse of the Davises and their monkey. St. James was a tall, handsome mechanic and race-car driver. His young wife, LaDonna, was a sun-kissed blond with wholesome good looks. Holding St. James's hand, Moe, decked out in a checkered shirt, white trousers, and shoes, entered the courthouse to cheers. Inside, he shook hands and waved to his supporters. He kissed the court reporter and jangled the keys of the bailiff.
St. James and LaDonna both made impassioned pleas to the court. "Moe is like a son to us," LaDonna said. "He wouldn't hurt anyone, and so far as we're concerned, he's a member of the family."
The trial was a sensation. Journalists fawned over Moe in person and in print, and the outcome was never in doubt. Prosecutors dropped the case, and Judge Jack Alex's assessment of the chimp, delivered to a packed courtroom, echoed in newspapers all the way to Texas. "From what I've observed of Moe outside and in the courtroom," the judge said, "he doesn't have the traits of a wild animal and is, in fact, better behaved than some people."
He's a member of the family. That's something plenty of people say about their dog or bird or even a cow in the barn. But with St. James Davis and his wife, LaDonna, that sentiment grew into a singular kind of devotion, into a singular kind of love, into a singular kind of family. And how that came to be, and what that ultimately would mean for them, is a singular kind of story. It's a story at once understandable and incomprehensible, at once comic and tragic, at once familiar and utterly bizarre.
After all, what kind of family takes a wild animal and invests it with humanity?
From the moment St. James returned from a trip to Africa with Moe in 1967, the chimpanzee was the center of the couple's life. Moe was tiny, barely a foot long. His body was covered in brown hair, except for his pink face, ears, hands, and feet. His ears, the size of large clamshells, stuck out a couple of inches from his head. But it was his deep brown eyes and what St. James and LaDonna thought they saw in them — wonderment, innocence, comprehension — that moved them the most.
Scenes from their life together are like scenes from the life of any young family with a small child.
It's a Saturday night in 1970, and St. James is sitting on the couch next to Moe, who is sucking down a vanilla shake. LaDonna is in the kitchen, cleaning up after their dinner of beef stew and vegetables. Moe, four years old, was hungry after a day in the park, and he wolfed down his plate. Now he's clapping his hands because St. James has just turned on his favorite cowboys-and-Indians show.
LaDonna joins her boys on the couch. In two hours, they'll all be on the floor sleeping, their bodies linked at the arms.
Then there was the first trip to the dentist. When Moe was about two, St. James took him to a veterinary specialist to have a crooked front tooth pulled. As the doctor prepared a shot, St. James stroked Moe's tiny arm and concentrated on keeping him distracted. He spoke to him softly: "What are you looking at, Moe? Are you trying to see out the window?" Just before the doctor plunged the needle into Moe's forearm, St. James gripped him tightly. Moe let out a yelp but fell asleep in seconds. St. James never left the room during the forty-five-minute procedure.
As soon as they got home, St. James carried Moe to the couple's bedroom. He gently placed Moe, still in his T-shirt and plastic diaper pants, on his chest so the sleeping chimp could feel him breathing. They remained in bed together that way for more than six hours until Moe, groggy and glassy-eyed, finally woke up.
LaDonna spent hours with Moe every day, essentially trying to home-school him. She would sit beside him in the living room, coaching him as he played with Erector sets or colored with crayons. She was stunned by how thoughtful Moe appeared to be. He stared at the page, sometimes rubbing it with his hairless palm, before putting crayon to paper. Whenever Moe motioned for a new color — sticking out his hand palm up — LaDonna offered a few and asked Moe to think about which one he wanted: "Do you want this green one? Or would yellow be better? Think about it, Moe. Think."
Moe had his own bedroom, complete with a bed, a large closet where his clothes were kept — the Davises dressed him in plaid button-down shirts, blue jeans, and even dinner jackets and trousers on formal occasions — and a bureau with his toys on top, though of course Moe preferred to sleep with St. James and LaDonna. When he got too big — by age six he weighed about fifty pounds — St. James would carry Moe back to his bedroom after he fell asleep. Hours later, the couple would awaken to Moe at the foot of their bed, climbing back in.
From the beginning, Moe's demeanor surprised St. James and LaDonna. He was gentle and well-behaved. Moe seemed to take pains to avoid scratching anyone with his flat, sharp fingernails. He was affectionate and loved to hug and kiss, throwing his hairy arms around St. James's neck often. And when he wanted St. James to sit down next to him, he'd bound over and softly push on the backs of his knees.
There was one bright day about 1973. For nearly half an hour, St. James and Moe had been frantically running back and forth, trying to catch falling leaves underneath a massive maple tree in the park. St. James, exhausted, lay down on the grass. "I need to rest, Moe. I can't run like you anymore." Moe, with all the energy and insistence of a seven-year-old boy, grabbed his hands, pulling him along. They played for a while more before ending up in a heap on the grass again. St. James looked at Moe and asked him a question: "What are you going to be when you grow up, Moe?"
St. James and LaDonna hadn't planned to keep Moe forever. In truth, there never really was a plan. At first, St. James thought he'd drop Moe off at a zoo, but he says they all turned him away. In time, it became clear that there was no way the couple was going to part with the chimpanzee. So St. James and LaDonna kept Moe and raised him in their home. They taught him how to eat with a fork, use a toilet, even, they say, how to crudely write his name. Over the next thirty years, the Davises' devotion to Moe would push the boundaries of human love. It would also test the limits of that love.
"Okay, then, now you're talking," St. James says after I offer to help him with his car. We'd been sitting outside his mother's old home for a couple of hours, and it had become clear that St. James was far more concerned with getting work done on his car than talking about his life. Zooming ahead in his motorized wheelchair, he leads me to the driveway, where the wooden frame of a 1923 Franklin is resting on a table. It's shaped like a six-foot-long tuning fork and is covered in rusty bolts and nails. St. James is giddy. His condition has kept him from working on the car for three years, so LaDonna has taken over the labor. Having another pair of hands is priceless to him.
On his instructions, I pick up a hammer and start prying out some of the decaying bolts. A half hour later, holding a yellow angle grinder, I'm smoothing out a section of the gray fender as St. James provides an excruciatingly detailed real-time tutorial: "Okay, turn your thumb toward your nose. Now drop your elbow two inches and press the machine against the metal. You don't have to be gentle."
Watching from a few feet away, LaDonna is laughing. She's thin and pretty at age sixty-five. Guided by her husband, she has taken apart the Franklin over the past three months. Now she's rubbing epoxy on the fender with a piece of cardboard. St. James is less patient with her.
"LaDonna, what are you doing?" he says as she applies the epoxy. "It's dripping all over the place."
LaDonna doesn't get flustered. She knows he's just frustrated. After St. James commands her to pull out an extension cord, she laughs. "I can do that," she says, "because I love you so much."
Later, over some In-N-Out burgers that we eat sitting around the Franklin, the couple begins to tell the story of their lives. And, as it often does with St. James, it comes back to cars.
St. James and LaDonna were high school sweethearts in West Covina. They dated for a few years before St. James reluctantly agreed to get married. He was obsessed with cars and worried that marriage would put a wedge between him and his hot rods. By 1966, everything was in place for their wedding at a small brick church in West Covina, but St. James never showed up. Instead, he spent the afternoon under the hood of one of his cars while LaDonna was left alone in the church before all their friends and relatives.
The following week was the worst of St. James's life. The story of the jilted bride became the talk of the neighborhood. The entire town, it seemed, had turned against him. When he saw the ad in the paper, he knew he had found his way out: A merchant ship was looking for deckhands for an around-the-world voyage, all expenses paid. St. James had never been on a boat, but he didn't care.
What happened over the next several months altered the course of St. James's life. It is impossible to know for sure how he ended up with a baby chimpanzee. The tale he tells strains credulity in places, but he recounts it passionately, in vivid detail. By now, its facts are beyond any proof or evidence besides St. James's earnest telling. In any case, it seems to be what St. James has come to believe. It goes like this:
The ship suffered damage off the coast of Africa, forcing it to come ashore in Tanzania. Days later, while following a group of Tanzanians he befriended on a hunt, St. James witnessed a band of poachers slaughter a female chimpanzee just after she gave birth. He returned the next day, found the helpless newborn chimp alive, and began caring for him. St. James jumped ship, and for a period of several weeks and perhaps months, he provided for the animal, foraging for food, nurturing him with fruits, bird eggs, and rainwater as he searched for a way home. St. James lost weight. The chimp's fingernails left him riddled with sores. His ordeal finally ended when a tall villager, who called the chimp Mogambo, took St. James to German missionaries, who eventually secured him a flight bound for Los Angeles. Moe sat on his lap on the plane. He behaved like a prince.
By the time St. James stepped off the plane into the warm air outside Los Angeles International Airport, he was a changed man. His imposing frame had wasted away. His cheeks were hollow. Gaping sores covered his face and neck. And in his arms there was no luggage, only a baby chimpanzee.
Waiting for St. James inside the terminal was his mother, Estelle. LaDonna was there, too, and she was seething. She hadn't seen him since the day before he left her at the altar.
St. James hugged his mother. He and LaDonna locked eyes but didn't exchange words. She was waiting for him to start explaining, and she had no idea what to make of the tiny monkey at his side. St. James and LaDonna left the airport that day not knowing if they were ever going to speak again.
St. James brought the infant chimp to his mother's home in West Covina. He was tiny, about a foot long, and more playful than the most rambunctious child. Then there were those big, brown eyes. Estelle fell for him immediately. LaDonna's mother, who happened to be Estelle's close friend, began coming over. She, too, was captivated by Moe.
In time, LaDonna's mom started dragging her daughter over to play with the chimp. Like everyone else, LaDonna soon fell in love with Moe. It wasn't long before she also fell back in love with St. James.
The wedding, on June 6, 1970, was a modest affair, held at LaDonna's parents' home in West Covina. Moe was St. James's best man. The four-year-old chimp, dressed in a tight-fitting black tuxedo, walked down the aisle holding hands with the flower girl as she tossed rose petals on the floor. At the reception, Moe scampered from table to table, stealing sips of champagne. When one of the guests, a friend of LaDonna's mother's, began sharing her glass with him, the chimp clung to her for the rest of the night. Moe got drunk and pissed all over her pale yellow dress, which everyone in the room thought was about the funniest thing they'd ever seen.
As St. James told his friends, Moe was the "bond between us two." That bond would only deepen with news they received less than a year into their marriage. The couple had talked about having a large family, maybe as many as five children, and LaDonna had gone for a routine OB-GYN visit. St. James was sitting in the waiting room with LaDonna's mother when a doctor approached with a solemn expression. The doctor told them that LaDonna had cancer and needed a hysterectomy. She was in the exam room, crying.
LaDonna left the hospital with her mother and didn't come home. She refused to see St. James. She was overcome with guilt and began talking about a divorce, but St. James would have none of it. "We already got a kid," he reassured her. They spent hours and hours on the phone, talking it through. After five weeks, he convinced LaDonna that not having children should not drive them apart. Moe would remain the couple's only child.
So it was that an unconventional household began to transform into something truly different, even for southern California. Over the next three decades, the Davises lived what they considered a near-perfect life. They brought Moe along with them everywhere — to shopping malls, restaurants, weekend trips to the beach. The couple bought a three-seat bike and rode around town with Moe in the middle. And the chimpanzee, who developed a fondness for cheese burritos and coffee, took his meals with the couple at the kitchen table.
In time, as Moe grew, so did his notoriety. Already an honorary citizen of West Covina — he'd earned that distinction at the time of the trial — Moe attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies and fundraisers, once manning a kissing booth at an Actors and Others for Animals event in Burbank with Doris Day and Lucille Ball. The Davises fielded dozens of TV and movie requests for Moe. He appeared in episodes of Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, BJ and the Bear, and Bowling for Dollars and had bit parts in movies, including the 1975 comedy Linda Lovelace for President. St. James, meanwhile, gained notoriety of his own. Though he still earned most of his living through the auto-body shop he and LaDonna owned, St. James competed on the Nascar circuit, with Moe often appearing at his side for racing events.
The Davises' feelings for Moe deepened as his behavior became more complex. According to biologists, chimpanzees are humankind's closest genetic relatives on earth. The subtlety of Moe's expressions and emotions could be uncanny. There was the time with the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Moe was obsessed with peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Standing on a chair at the kitchen table, he'd always make one for himself and then one for St. James. One day, when he was about nine, there wasn't enough peanut butter for a second sandwich. Moe tried to cover up by overloading St. James's bread with jelly. But St. James reached for Moe's sandwich, throwing him into a tantrum. Moe stomped his feet and made gagging noises. He stormed out of the kitchen, found LaDonna in her bedroom, and dragged her into the kitchen. Indignant, he pointed at the sandwich, pointed at St. James. Finally, St. James capitulated and offered Moe the good sandwich. The chimp shook his head and refused to eat it.
As he matured, Moe began to understand no and yes. He knew that shaking one's head up and down meant okay and side to side meant disapproval. Eventually, he developed his own form of sign language. He'd cross his arms over his chest and tap his shoulders to signal he wanted a hug. He'd motion as if he were turning a steering wheel back and forth when he wanted to go for a ride.
Moe's playfulness continued through his teens and twenties. One night in 1984, the eighteen-year-old chimp methodically prepared his bed of multicolored blankets inside his cage in the backyard before bounding into the kitchen to give LaDonna a goodnight kiss. She handed him a flashlight and a cup of hot chocolate. Holding one in each hand, Moe carefully walked back into his cage and sat down. He grabbed one of the blankets, draped it over his head, and began flicking the light on and off, on and off. LaDonna could hear her boy making laughing noises as she headed for her bedroom.
By this point, of course, Moe looked nothing like the baby monkey who held hands with the flower girl at their wedding, a rascal straight out of Curious George. He stood four feet tall, weighed roughly 130 pounds, and was covered in deep black fur. Over the years, St. James had gone to the library and studied chimpanzee behavior. He had learned what foods they eat and what their habits were. And he'd also read that no matter how docile they were when young, chimpanzees could turn aggressive as they grew older.
"We had a really good relationship," LaDonna says. "There was no tugging and pulling. Everybody kind of understood everybody. It was a lot of harmony, a lot of happiness, a lot of fun."
The Davises say they never saw aggressive behavior from Moe, even as he began to age. And it's true that Moe never harmed the couple.
"He was just such a happy little guy," LaDonna says.
They're still sitting near the car. The sun is setting, but now St. James can't stop talking. His hands are flying through the air as he talks about Moe.
"Listen closely now: I've told this story to very few people," he says more than once. He talks over LaDonna frequently. She barely seems to notice. She's hunched forward, her elbow on her knee, her face in her palm-clearly lost in the past. Still, a huge smile spreads across her face when St. James taps me on the knee and says: "I used to tell people, 'My son is thirty years old, and he still wants to live at home.' "
But what happened later in their lives is difficult for the Davises to discuss. The details force them to pause often. LaDonna buries her face in her hands. At times, she shakes her head and keeps her eyes fixed on the ground. St. James stares off into space. He can't get through the next few minutes without breaking down several times.
The unraveling of the Davises' near-perfect life began on a hot day in August 1998. Moe was about thirty then, with broad shoulders, thick arms, and long fangs. A welder who was repairing Moe's cage accidentally left a piece of equipment turned on and gave the chimp an electrical shock, spooking him so intensely that he bolted out of the house. Moe didn't return immediately. The police were called, and they closed the street. By the time the standoff ended, Moe had dented a police car, injured an officer's hand, and scratched an animal-control agent.
A year later, on September 2, 1999, a visitor came to meet Moe. The woman was told not to put her hand in his cage, but she did anyway. Moe bit the tip of her finger. Afterward, the Davises argued that Moe mistook her long red-painted fingernails for his favorite candy, licorice. To the city, why Moe bit the woman didn't matter. Now a mature ape and packing the upper-body strength of four or five grown men, Moe was too dangerous to remain at the Davises' home, West Covina officials decided.
A team of officers arrived at about 2:00 p.m. the following day. Police cars swarmed the street trailed by ambulances and fire trucks. Officers cordoned off the streets surrounding the Davises' home. Moe was inside his cage when two cops arrived at the front door. St. James confronted them. "Where's your court order?" he demanded. "Where's your warrant? Get out of here!"
A fiery argument broke out, and St. James was wrestled out of his house while cops and animal-control officers, some armed with dart guns, swarmed inside. Moe screamed as one dart, then a second, pierced his stomach. His shrieking turned into gagging noises as he furiously banged on his cage with his hands and feet. St. James was on his knees on the front lawn, bawling, when Moe, unconscious and bleeding from the stomach, was carried out of the house and tossed into a horse trailer.
The Davises were broken. They cried for hours, and they couldn't sleep. The community rescued them. Four days after Moe's removal, St. James checked his mailbox and found it filled with notes, cards, and a petition, titled "Citizens to Bring Moe Home." Within days, more than eight thousand people had signed, and many put yellow ON BOARD WITH MOE signs in their car windows. Scores of people stopped by the house. Even more honked in support as they drove by.
A single phone call punctured the Davises' brief optimism. It came nine days after Moe was taken, and it was from the operator of the facility Moe had been taken to — the Wildlife WayStation in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, a 160-acre refuge for exotic animals. The woman on the line called to ask St. James a brutal question: Have any arrangements been made for when the chimp dies? Moe hadn't eaten since he arrived and wasn't expected to live much longer. The Davises rushed to the facility with a vet in tow. They found Moe splayed on the floor of his tiny cage, covered in his own stool. His eyes were vacant. He was too weak to acknowledge them. The vet injected Moe with a drug that perked him up immediately. Within minutes, he went for a few grapes, drawing tears from the Davises, who resolved to return weekly to monitor their boy.
The court battles stretched for years. Gloria Allred, a high-profile civil-rights attorney, took the Davises' case pro bono. The couple filed a due-process suit against the city as they fended off criminal charges once again for harboring a wild animal. Animal-rights groups got involved. The petition grew longer. In a span of five months, more than twenty-four thousand people signed it. St. James and LaDonna visited Moe every week, all the while clinging to the hope that they would someday be reunited. The visits sustained them, though they were also heartbreaking. Moe started doing better after the couple installed a new cage complete with a TV three months after he arrived. But the Davises — who were not permitted to come close enough to touch him during their fifteen-minute visits — could see the pain in Moe's eyes. He'd signal that he wanted a hug. He'd put his hands up and turn an imaginary steering wheel. He wanted to go home.
After extensive negotiations, in 2004 the couple succeeded in getting Moe transferred to Animal Haven Ranch, a private sanctuary near Bakersfield where they could visit him without restriction. The sanctuary, tucked into rolling hills just a few miles south of Lake Isabella, was a home for exotic animals dumped mostly from zoos and circuses. Its owners, Virginia and Ralph Brauer, had seven primates in all, but everyone agreed Moe, now thirty-eight — approaching elderly for a chimp, his flat brown face rimmed with gray — would remain alone in a specially built cage during his first few years there. The arrangement was a dream compared with the Wildlife WayStation. The Davises made the two-and-a-half-hour trip every week, delivering new toys for Moe and food for the other primates as part of the arrangement. They'd arrive early and spend all day with their boy, playing with him inside his cage.
On March 3, 2005, St. James and LaDonna drove to the sanctuary to celebrate Moe's thirty-ninth birthday. They left home early, around 7:00 a.m., in a car filled with toys, presents, balloons, and a white-frosted sheet cake with raspberry filling. After arriving at Animal Haven about 10:00 a.m., St. James hopped out of the car and headed straight for Moe with a carton of chocolate milk in his hand. Moe was going mad — clapping his hands and hooting happily. LaDonna set the cake down on a picnic table, cut two slices, and handed them to St. James. St. James handed one to Moe through the bars of his cage, and the animal's eyes went wide as he devoured his piece. LaDonna savored the moment. The family had been through so much over the last six years. Moe was finally at a place where he seemed content and where the couple could spend as much time with him as they wanted. If they couldn't ever live together again, this seemed like the next best thing. St. James and Moe were kissing each other. The moment was beautiful. Perfect almost.
Out of the corner of her eye, LaDonna suddenly noticed a large form about forty feet away. It was a chimpanzee, a young adult male, somehow out of his cage, and he was glaring at her. The chimp held her gaze for a moment, and then charged. St. James rushed to his wife. The animal barreled into LaDonna's back, knocking her into St. James. She wrapped her arms around her husband's neck, but the chimpanzee locked his jaws around the thumb of her left hand. With a single, ferocious jerk of his neck, he tore it off.
St. James threw his hysterical wife under the picnic table and pushed her further underneath as the chimp tried to pursue her. LaDonna was screaming commands — "No! Stop! Sit!" — in a desperate bid to stop him. The remaining cake was on the table, still in its box, but the chimp didn't go for it. Instead he went after St. James.
As St. James confronted the chimp, the six-two former running back turned to find a second chimp — also a male, this one older and bigger — bearing down on him as well. With both hands, he pushed the bigger animal. Both chimps pounced. One of the animals grabbed him in a bear hug before chomping into the bone above his right eyebrow. He then stuck his finger in St. James's right eye, gouging it out. The same animal clamped his teeth onto St. James's nose, biting it off, as the other chimp chewed away at St. James's fingers. In the melee, one of the chimps dug in his claws and ripped the skin off the right side of St. James's face, causing it to flop over and cover his left eye, temporarily blinding him. One of the primates sunk his teeth into St. James's skull. He then closed his jaws on St. James's mouth, ripping off his lips and most of his teeth. St. James tried to put one of his hands down the animal's throat, but the chimp just kept chewing on it and chewing on it, and he couldn't get it out.
St. James fell to the ground, no longer able to defend himself, and for at least five minutes, the mauling continued as he lay helpless. One of the chimps gnawed on his buttocks and bit off his genitals. They ravaged his left foot, leaving it shredded. Blood poured from his body, and LaDonna was screaming. It looked as if they were eating him alive. Finally, LaDonna's screams drew the owners' son-in-law, Mark Carruthers, who came running armed with a .45-caliber revolver. After struggling to find a clean shot, he opened fire on the younger primate. The shot had no apparent effect, and Carruthers raced back to his house, a few dozen yards away, to reload with more-powerful ammunition. When Carruthers returned, he focused on the older male, the prime aggressor. Kneeling down, he shot him once in the head from close range. As the animal fell to the ground, the younger chimp began dragging St. James's mutilated body down a hill leading away from Moe's cage. Dirt filled St. James's lungs and seeped into his bloody openings.
For the briefest of moments, LaDonna looked toward Moe. He was sitting in the corner of his cage, frozen, seemingly stunned.
The lone chimp continued tearing at St. James's limp body with his teeth until Carruthers caught up to him and shot him once in the chest, ending the attack. St. James, lying facedown, felt the lifeless animal fall on his back.
An investigation later found that the chimps had escaped from their cage after one of the sanctuary's owners failed to lock two of its three doors. Animal behaviorists suggested the chimps' aggression could have been caused by a number of factors, including jealousy over the attention the Davises lavished on Moe, an innate desire to defend their territory, or abuse they may have suffered at the hands of humans in the past.
Despite the ferocity of the attack, when the paramedics arrived, St. James was still conscious. His face and body, however, were mutilated beyond recognition. Where his mouth, lips, and nose had been there was only a bloody hole. Where his right eye had been there was a pit. Where his fingers had been he had only stumps or simply gaps. "I had no idea a chimpanzee was capable of doing that to a human," Kern County fire captain Curt Merrell, who was among the first on the scene, told the Los Angeles Times. "It looked like a grizzly-bear attack."
LaDonna kept repeating the same five words as St. James was loaded into an ambulance: "Don't you die on me." She held on to his arm until the vehicle reached the main road, where St. James was lifted into a helicopter and rushed to a nearby hospital.
After arriving at Loma Linda University Medical Center, St. James was immediately put into a medically induced coma. He would remain unconscious and in critical condition, and LaDonna rarely left his bedside. St. James underwent dozens of surgeries. LaDonna was in agony for him.
And — how could it be otherwise? — she also worried about Moe. She visited Moe the day before Mother's Day. And when doctors temporarily woke St. James up for the first time, in May, his first question was: "How's Moe?"
The couple's dusty blue Dodge minivan has just pulled up near the Franklin on this Wednesday afternoon. LaDonna hops out of the driver's seat and rushes over to the side door. She hauls out St. James's wheelchair and places it on the ground just outside the passenger door. After opening it, she links her arms under St. James's armpits and grabs him around the back. Grunting in pain, St. James slides his body so his legs are hanging out the door. He then places his arms on LaDonna's shoulders. On the count of three, LaDonna hoists his massive frame out of the car, her thin body enveloped by his. Teetering under St. James's weight, she somehow guides him into the chair.
A few minutes later, St. James is sucking on a cherry ice pop as he describes how the attack has changed his life. LaDonna is hovering over him with a cloth to wipe away the red slush spilling out of his mouth. "I can't do anything on my own anymore," St. James says, "except sit around like a potted plant."
Three years after the attack, St. James is completely dependent on LaDonna. He cannot bathe himself, go to the bathroom, or even eat without her help. He still has no teeth and limited control of his mouth. His vision in his remaining eye is blurry. His swollen, punctured left foot remains in grim condition. The Davises were awarded $100,000 after the city settled their original due-process suit, but St. James says he doesn't have enough money to afford a special boot for his mangled foot. (The couple decided not to sue the ranch where they were attacked because it had no liability insurance.) Doctors are now recommending amputation because he has contracted the MRSA superbug. "They say if the MRSA activates while the wound is open, they probably couldn't amputate the foot fast enough to save his life," LaDonna says.
It's not until later in the day that St. James starts crying. It's a loud, whooping wail. His tears have nothing to do with what happened to him, though. He never complains about the attack or how it left him. He's just begun talking about something that happened more recently — something that happened to Moe.
The phone call came around 11:00 a.m. last June 27. LaDonna answered. On the other end of the line was Tammy Maples, co-owner of Jungle Exotics, a business that houses animals and rents them to the entertainment industry. Moe had been transferred to Jungle Exotics' sixty-acre sanctuary in the San Bernardino Mountains eight months earlier.
Just two days before the call, the couple had made the forty-five-minute drive to see their boy, a weekly ritual that, despite everything, they resumed in 2007, when St. James was finally able. Although the compound is on such uneven terrain that it prevented his wheelchair from approaching Moe's cage, the trips were still the highlight of St. James's week. On this visit, they brought Moe a hairbrush and an old computer keyboard. And they discussed their plans for their aging chimpanzee, chief among them installing solar panels on his facility, which would allow him to watch TV. It would also enable the Davises to set up a video camera and monitor, so they could interact with him every day.
Maples's voice on the line was shaky. LaDonna was so stunned by what she heard that she asked Maples to repeat it.
"I want to let you know I went by Moe's facility, and he's not in it."
"What do you mean he's not in it?" LaDonna said.
Moe, Maples said, had disappeared.
The couple sped to the ranch. They were met by Joe Camp, Maples's partner, who told them Moe had somehow broken off six steel welds from the cage, allowing him to open a sliding door and escape. By the time St. James and LaDonna saw the enclosure, it had been repaired and cleaned. LaDonna was perplexed. The cage was spotless. There were no blankets, there was none of Moe's stool. It was as if he had never been there. She wanted to see his stool, how he had slept the night before. She wanted to see what his thinking was.
A frantic search began. For weeks, Jungle Exotics workers and volunteer searchers combed the dense brush around the facility on foot and in 4x4 vehicles. St. James and LaDonna drove through the hills in their mini-van calling out for Moe. Bloodhounds were brought in. Helicopters flew overhead. The search was a media sensation locally and drew national and international press attention as well. The couple waited for news-and worried. A month went by and still no trace of Moe was found. The search was officially called off last July 31.
Camp remains baffled as to how Moe escaped. On the day of his disappearance, Moe's enclosure was cleaned as part of the daily routine, he says, and his cage was repaired so quickly because he expected the chimp to be found within hours. "We were hoping he'd wander back in. That's what they usually do," Camp says. After Moe inexplicably managed to break through the cage's welds, workers spotted him hopping over a security fence before disappearing into the hills, Camp says. "This was an animal that liked to be around people. The mystery is why this animal left and where he went. Or did somebody find him and move him off — we don't know."
St. James's phone rings as LaDonna is rummaging through the garage for a pair of pliers. It's a call for her from a friend, and within seconds it's clear she's being asked about Moe. After several months, there hasn't been a single sighting of the chimpanzee.
The couple has received calls constantly since Moe went missing. That's the word they use: missing. LaDonna protests the use of the word escape.
"We don't know what happened," she says.
St. James and LaDonna refuse to speculate about what led to Moe's disappearance. But with Moe gone, St. James is painfully lonely. The two were so close, there was no room for anyone else except LaDonna. Neighbors fascinated with the chimp stopped coming by years ago, and St. James's racing days and the camaraderie they brought are long over.
"I can talk for days about Moe," he says. "I just miss him so much. I've never loved anything as much as I loved Moe."
"We haven't heard anything new," LaDonna, pacing in the driveway, tells her friend on the cell phone. "Not a thing. Oh, no, no, no, this isn't something that's going to be unsolved. It's going to be solved."
St. James and LaDonna expect to see their boy again. The fruitless search convinced them Moe did not slip off into the woods. Chimpanzees are social creatures. Even in the wild, they are unlikely to venture off alone, St. James and LaDonna both explain, an assessment shared by primatologists. Something else must have happened. What exactly, they do not know.
But they're convinced that Moe is alive somewhere.
"He was brought up to use his brain," LaDonna says, "to always make decisions." Now it's as if she's talking to Moe: "There are lots of things here. I want this tool, but maybe you don't want that tool. Or maybe I'm going to eat this, but maybe you don't want that. There's choices here, Moe. Make the choice you want. Think about it. Think. Do you want a yellow crayon or do you want this green one?"
She pauses. "I'm hoping that wherever Moe is, he's making good choices for himself."
Much of the Davises' lives today revolve around caring for St. James — getting him to doctors' appointments, looking into new procedures, and simply negotiating the world given his physical difficulties. Progress is slow but continuing. By the end of the year, St. James hopes to have a new mouth and a fully formed left hand. He'll need to have his upper lip surgically reconstructed, then prosthodontists will outfit him with a special set of dentures so he can eat more easily and speak more clearly. And doctors have already designed prosthetic fingertips for the three stumps on his left hand, which St. James hopes to be wearing in a matter of months. St. James wants to one day work on his cars again. His right hand presents more of a problem, though, since on that hand most of his thumb is gone and two fingers are missing entirely.
And of course, what's also missing is Moe. What became of Moe we simply can't know. But what's left in his place, as painful as the vestige of a lost limb, is the Davises' singular devotion.
After all the years St. James and LaDonna shared with Moe and everything they've endured, how could he be gone forever? How could they not someday see their boy again?
A Clarification and a Correction
The article above includes the Davises's account of their chimp, Moe, in the days after authorities seized him and placed him in an exotic-animal shelter. The couple say his health quickly deteriorated, and he required their intervention to survive. The operator of the facility, the Wildlife WayStation, disputes that version of events, and the story should have pointed this out. The same article incorrectly reported that the Davises decided against suing a different animal shelter, Animal Haven Ranch, where St. James sustained grave injuries. The Davises have indeed filed a personal-injury suit against the shelter in Kern County, California, Superior Court. Trial is pending.
Did they succeed? In my mind: “yes”. In actuality: they had hit the jackpot on building a bridge between my mind and actualized digital art… so another “yes”.
Until 2009. Then came a flood of children.
