Chimp Owner, "I Did Everything I Could Do"

Travis the chimp's owner owner Sandra Herold is speaking out. Two days after her longtime companion was shot by police after mauling her friend, 55-year-old Charla Nash, Herold, who slept with 200-pound chimp, described trying to save her friend by stabbing him with a butcher knife, reports the Associated Press. "I stabbed someone that I raised as a son. I did what I can do," Herold, of Travis, who she considered her son. "He would comb my hair; everything I did in the house was for him."

Meanwhile, the ordeal has primate activists outraged. Connecticut law prohibits exotic animals over 50 lbs., but somehow the 200-pound chimp was grandfathered in. “Beer commercials, soda commercials, you know, people watch the Super Bowl and think it’s terribly amusing to see primates in commercials,” F said, in an interview with WTNH TV in Stamford, CT. Feral blames it on the pet trade industry, saying a chimpanzee like Travis can be very lucrative. As a baby, he would’ve sold for about $30,000 and brought in much more for the work. At one time, Travis did star in commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola. Read the interview here.