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JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

Slain chimp's owner now says it wasn't on Xanax

World Feb. 19, 2009 - 06:00AM JST ( 14 )

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14 Comments

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TriumvereFeb. 19, 2009 - 09:14AM JST

After police arrived, one officer radioed back: “There’s a man down. He doesn’t look good,” he says, referring to the disfigured Nash. “We’ve got to get this guy out of here. He’s got no face.”

This is horrifying. They couldn't even tell she was a woman, she was so badly mauled.

Herold, a 70-year-old widow whose daughter was killed in a car accident several years ago, told the AP the chimp “was my life” and that she “never, never, never” gave it Xanax. “He never had anything but love.”

I hope for her sake that this is true, though I find it highly suspicious that she should have mentioned Xanax in the first place if she didn't give it to him, or that Xanax would come into the story at all if it wasn't mentioned. People are entirely too casual with drugs these days. The idea that you can just mix drugs from different doctors or pharmacies, randomly dole out medication to your friends or kids, sans prescription, or that you should stockpile old perscription stuff and then self medicate when ever you feel like it is remarkably foolish. Giving medications intended for humans to animals is a whole other level of irresposibility.
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cleoFeb. 19, 2009 - 09:26AM JST

domesticated chimpanzee

No such creature.

I’m not a horrible person

Just a terribly misguided one.

and he’s not a horrible chimp

Just a very confused one forced into an unnatural situation. Although she probably had the best of intentions and would be horrified to hear it, this lady abused her chimp. He belonged with other chimps, not wearing clothes and drinking wine and eating lobster in her house.
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TriumvereFeb. 19, 2009 - 09:27AM JST

Personally, I don't even take cold or pain medication unless I consider my condition to be intollerable (which is a fairly rare occurance). Perhaps I am lucky in this in that I don't get sick that often, but even then I rarely use medication. I can't imagine slipping my kid Xanax (as clearly Herold considered Travis to be). I have to assume there was a control issue, here. The lady is 70 years old, and is home alone with an adult male chimp weighing 90+ kg. There is no control there. Reportedly, Travis was acting up (apparently the reason Nash was called to the house), so I kind kind of see Herold not being able to deal with it and thinking "well, maybe if I give him this Xanax he'll calm down." Just another reason why people shouldn't keep such animals as pets; I'm sure Travis was lovely 99.9% of the time, but the exception was clearly lethal.

Goodluck to Mrs. Nash. Perhaps recent advances in face-transplant surgery can be put to use here.
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dennis0bauerFeb. 19, 2009 - 12:36PM JST

So Xanax is an anti-anxiety drug that can make you agitated? good job Farmacy company
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BadseyFeb. 19, 2009 - 12:41PM JST

Where were the parents?

There is a illustration (NY Post) that this chimp is the one writing Obama's bailout bills -Will the bailouts end?
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BadseyFeb. 19, 2009 - 12:46PM JST

This story makes you wonder how many chimps drugged out on Xanax cohabitating with 70yr old women are really out there?
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AltriaFeb. 19, 2009 - 01:24PM JST

I thought Xanax was an anti-metabo drug...
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bebertFeb. 19, 2009 - 01:46PM JST

There is a great book co-written by Jane Goodall titled Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People. Many chapters cover incidents just like this where people keep chimps as pets or as performers. In one, a pair of married psychiatrists tried to raise a female chimp as a human, including giving her free access to the bar and gay pornography. The experiment ended when the chimp tried to rape their 10-year-old son. Also, the reason Michael Jackson got rid of his pet chimp, Bubbles? Bubbles body slammed Michael to the ground one day. It was probably the only decent discipline anyone has given Jacko since he became an adult.

The lesson of the book is that while it might seem fun to have a chimp around and let him smoke and drink as much as he wants, it really isn't. And this lady is going to learn the consequences when she gets sued for everything she has.
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cleoFeb. 19, 2009 - 02:37PM JST

I think part of it is that owners are incapable of seeing their animals for what they are. A baby chimp is cute and cuddly, and if you spend every day with it you probably don't realise that in the meantime it's grown into a 90 kilo adult. I still see my Dobie as the cute little puppy she was when she first came to us, and sometimes it's a bit of a surprise to realise that outsiders don't see her the same way.

I call this the Greebo effect.
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timorborderFeb. 19, 2009 - 03:27PM JST

Chimp on Xanax. Whatever next? Lots of good comments here. I find it really hard to understand why people go in for these exotic animals and try and rear them as pets (or as something even closer to human). Putting on my environmentalist hat for a moment, wouldn't this chimp have been better off in a zoo or some form of wildlife refuge (I assume it was born in captivity thus making a return to a natural habitat impossible).

Also a good comment from Cleo regarding the mentality of pet owners. It is easy to sometimes forget that fiddo (who you see as a lovable dog) is in reality a rather scary proposition for those who are unaccustomed to such animals.
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HawkeyeFeb. 19, 2009 - 04:26PM JST

anax hyped up or down chimp can be easily determined because they have the head of the chimp at one place for medical analysis for rabies and the body at another location for analysis for skin and bacterial infections in order to determine how to treat the woman he mutilated. It sounds to me as if an attorney for the chimp owner has told her to change her story about giving the chimp xanax??? Gee the friend of the mutilated woman is already changing her story to avoid the huge legal lawsuit that looms on the horizon.
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nandakandamandaFeb. 19, 2009 - 05:52PM JST

Not indicated for old people, so why would she have Xanax in the house? Scary stuff... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alprazolam#Side_effects
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graftonFeb. 19, 2009 - 10:25PM JST

I suspect that a 14-year-old 90 Kg chimp is likely to have certain biological urges that are not (we hope) being met while living with a 70 something old lady who thinks that treating it to wine & icecream is going to make it a happy chimp. This was a frustrated time bomb just waiting to explode. Sorry to say this but if it was going to rip anybody apart it should have been the foolish old lady, not the visitor.

As for giving animals drugs of any kind that are not actually prescribed for them, that is crazy & she needs prosecuting for that alone. The only one I feel any real sympathy for here is the chimp, it was killed because of a stupid woman who thought she pretend it was near human. The visitor knew the chimp & at 90Kg should have known to be careful, with a dog they would have been. Wow! 90Kg is heavier than me!
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usaexpatFeb. 20, 2009 - 12:31AM JST

When I read the headline I just had to go "Huh?" Anyway, keeping a chimp is the problem here not wheteher it was on Xanax or not. Chimps are not house pets as much as some of these wierdos like to act that they're just like kids.