Sian Evans, director of Florida's DuMond Conservancy for Primates and Tropical Forests, was the sole dissenting voice before a House committee.
She said she's no advocate of private pet ownership, but "my own life has been enormously enriched by the close contact I have experienced with most of the common monkey species."
Jamie Peachey
Joey brings juice to Kristy Pruett.
Jamie Peachey
Joey has his own bedroom, though he sleeps between his "parents," Kristy and Andrew.
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Evans said the oft-repeated claim that primates are a threat to public health "is of special concern to me . . . Pet primates are not a documented source of disease to humans. The housing that primate pet owners provide can equal and sometimes surpass that at zoos and is far superior to conditions in any research laboratory that I have visited."
Evans is an expert witness for Kristy Pruett in the federal lawsuit.
With their 30-year-old organization suddenly imperiled, Helping Hands in Boston immediately sought an amendment to allow capuchins to keep training to be service animals.
"What's pending does threaten our work," says Andrea Rothfelder, the non-profit's director of development and communication. "We truly feel that trained capuchins are appropriate to have as pets in the disabled community."
Last month, U.S. Representative Don Young of Alaska introduced legislation that would allow trained capuchins to cross state lines to serve the severely disabled.
Passage of his bill seems likely.
Moe the chimp seems to come up in about every discussion of private ownership of monkeys.
Now 42, Moe was rescued as a baby from poachers in Tanzania and taken to California by his longtime owner, a former racecar driver.
His surrogate "parents" taught Moe how to eat with a knife and fork and, like Kristy Pruett and her ex-husband, let him sleep in their bed.
California authorities tried to remove Moe for years and finally succeeded in 1999 after the 140-pound chimp bit off part of a woman's finger when she stuck her hand into his cage. (His owners later insisted that Moe had mistaken the woman's red-painted fingernails for a piece of licorice).
That incident happened shortly after Moe had bitten a cop on the hand after briefly running away.
Authorities ordered Moe into an animal sanctuary near Bakersfield, where the chimp's owners came for a visit to celebrate his 39th birthday in 2005. Two teenage chimps, Ollie and Buddy, both with résumés in the entertainment industry, escaped from their cages and attacked the couple.
Moe's "mom" lost a thumb. His "dad" fared worse, as the chimps bit off his nose and caused serious injuries to his testicles, legs, skull, and mouth before the sanctuary owner shot the animals to death.
During the attacks, Moe sat silently in his own cage and looked on.
As a postscript, news reports last month said Moe escaped from his cage at his latest residence, a sanctuary in the San Bernardino Mountains called Jungle Exotics.
Moe still is missing and is feared dead.
Not surprisingly, the accounts of Kristy Pruett and her antagonists at the Arizona Game and Fish Department about Joey's importation vary dramatically.
Jay Cook, now the agency's education branch chief, testified in a deposition earlier this year that Kristy could have applied for a wildlife "holding license," under one of four categories, for the restricted Joey.
The categories are educational purposes, commercial photography, humane treatment, and advancement of science.
Cook said in his deposition that Kristy "told us that she intended to get a chimpanzee for use as a service animal. And then she also said that she was within her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that she could have any animal she wanted and we needed to modify our regulations."
Kristy counters, "All I wanted was to know what I was supposed to do in Arizona. Jay Cook told me what was needed, and I did what I was told — got the birth certificate, vaccination records, a letter from my doctor's office about my diabetes and other stuff. If Joey was going to be illegal because of the 'restricted wildlife' rule, why did Jay tell me to do all that?"
Both sides agree that Kristy first contacted Game and Fish in early 2007 to inform authorities that she was planning to buy an about-to-be-born female chimp at the ranch in Texas.
Cook testified that he'd never processed a request for a service animal and that he didn't know much about them, other than seeing-eye dogs.
"I'm not a lawyer," he told Kristy Pruett's attorney. "My expertise is in wildlife."
Cook also said he didn't know what brittle Type 1 juvenile diabetes is, though information about the disease is readily available on the Internet and elsewhere.
According to the American Diabetes Association, brittle diabetes "is a term used to describe uncontrolled Type 1 diabetes. People with brittle diabetes frequently experience large swings in blood sugar (glucose) levels."
Those who suffer from the disease, according to the literature, "are often troubled by frequent medical problems and hospital admissions."
Cook said the case of the felonious monk became "a criminal matter" in the summer of 2007, after a federal Department of Agriculture inspector told him that Joey was in Arizona.
Rod Lucas, a regional supervisor for Game and Fish, testified that he ultimately rejected Kristy Pruett's request to use Joey as a service animal because "they are inherently dangerous animals capable of transmitting disease and causing serious injury or death to human beings."