Hi, everybody. I've been working on an update about my recent travels, but I wanted to make a post today because there's been an update in the news about the Travis situation. You probably remember that back in February, a 200-lb chimpanzee named Travis attacked a woman and some policemen after being fed tea and Xanax by his owner. This horrible incident led to Monkeygate -- a large scale movement by lawmakers and media people to control and restrict the rights and travel of all non-human primates -- including monkeys, like me. This was an outrage!! Some politcians and countries wound up on my watch list because of their support of the restriction of our precious monkey rights. Thanks to today's follow-up story on Travis, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection is also on my watch list!!! It seems that they were warned years in advance of the Travis attack that Travis was a potentially DANGEROUS non-human primate. Don't get me wrong, readers -- there are bad monkeys out there the same as there are bad people out there, but you can't let a bad apple like Travis take away rights for all of us. If anything, it's situations like these that highlight the importance of monkey rights. 200-lb chimps shouldn't be kept as pets!! Moreover, if a government agency like the DEP receives SEVERAL WARNINGS of the potential risk posed by such a chimp, don't you think they are at least a little responsible for failing to investigate the situation? If the DEP had knocked on Sandra Herold's door back in 2003 when the warning letters first arrived, maybe this never would have happened!!! I'm not blaming it all on the DEP -- I'm just saying there's a lot more that can be done to ensure the health and safety of both the human and non-human primate population, and taking away all monkey rights is NOT THE ANSWER!!! I'm hoping we can all work together to figure it out.
In the meantime, we here at PieceofMoJo.com would like to extend our well wishes to the family of Charla Nash, the victim of Travis' February attack. I want you to know that not all monkeys are BAD PRIMATES, and our thoughts are with you while you recover from this atrocity.
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