He said Game and Fish issues wildlife holding licenses to applicants only "if it determines that issuing a license is in the best interest of the wildlife, it will not adversely impact other wildlife in the state, and does not pose a threat to public health or safety."
But agency records for fiscal 2006-07 show that it denied only one of 180 applications for wildlife holding permits that year. In his own 24-year tenure at Game and Fish, Lucas said, the agency has rejected fewer than six applications.
Jamie Peachey
Jamie Peachey
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He conceded that Arizona does issue licenses for animals that do pose a health and safety risk to humans, such as venomous snakes and other creatures.
But he added, "There's a threat to Ms. Pruett herself, in my mind."
Kristy Pruett is a native of Illinois who migrated to Arizona in the early 1980s with her pet tree sloth, then a baby she had "rescued" from an uncertain fate.
The sloth is another "restricted" animal, but its presence in Arizona is allowed under a "grandfather clause" that allows a prior regulation to apply.
"I've always loved animals, obviously," Kristy says. "I have a soft spot for them."
The mother of a 21-year-old son from a previous marriage says she's always tried to lead a normal life despite her lifelong battle with diabetes.
"There have been a lot of ups and downs along the way," Kristy says. "I haven't been able to work for a long time, and I can't get health insurance now because of my pre-existing condition. But I've been lucky in a lot of ways."
The upside is that she has immediate family in Arizona (though her mother and a brother died last year), as well as a steady financial position, made possible by her ex-husband — a successful real estate agent — and her father.
Kristy says she long has been fascinated by primates and bought her late macaque Andy in the mid-1990s.
"He was a calm, intelligent animal who took to training like nobody's business," she says. "Honestly, he saved my life, or kept me from slipping into a coma or whatever many, many times."
Soon after Andy died in June 2006, she started to think about replacing him with another primate, Kristy says.
A frequent visitor to the Sunset Exotic Ranch — the Texas bed-and-breakfast animal ranch near Austin — she already had met baby Joey.
The ranch curator had taken Joey from his indifferent mother, Jenny, at the ranch soon after his birth.
She says the curator "told me that he's fallen in love with you. This was even before Andy died. I could see that [baby Joey] was smart as a whip and had been around people, and was a very good little guy. And we were already bonded from my visits out there."
But Kristy didn't purchase Joey until after the unborn female chimp she originally had identified as her replacement service animal didn't survive her mother's surgery.
"The training started right away, but it's a long and endless process," Kristy says. "But he's a smart one; believe me."
He's also a handful, and considering the chimp's daily routine in Surprise, it seems that Kristy and especially her ex-husband Andrew spend as much time being "service humans" to Joey as vice versa.
Andrew says he changes Joey's diapers about six times a day and awakens hourly during the night to give the chimp an eight-ounce bottle.
Every hour?
"Yup," Andrew says. "You get used to things, and it becomes part of your life."
Joey is allergic to soy products and several other substances, so the couple fixes him meals compatible with his dietary needs — chicken Caesar salad with special dressing is a favorite.
They make sure the chimp gets hours of exercise every day, though his "house arrest" status doesn't allow them to walk Joey to the jungle gyms at a nearby park, where the neighbor kids used to enjoy him.
With Andrew's help, Joey takes a shower every day and has learned how to brush his teeth with an electric brush.
Earlier this year, Assistant Attorney General Rachel Bacalzo grilled Kristy in a deposition conducted as part of the federal lawsuit.
Kristy told the attorney, "I just need [Joey] at my home when I'm alone. It isn't that I want him to grow old here. I just want him to be my service animal while he's living in my house. I can't lead a normal life. I'm dependent on food, insulin, and medical help at all times."
"Have you ever read in any of your research that chimpanzees can bite off fingers?" Bacalzo asked her.
"That is always adult chimpanzees," Kristy replied. "I am very, very careful with who I allow to be around my primate, and how he is with me . . . A lot of the primates, when you look at them, they're biters, and I didn't want one I wasn't familiar with, that I hadn't trained with. I did not want to be fighting a biting monkey."
Kristy agreed that Joey may well pose physical danger to her after he matures, "but not while he's an infant. He couldn't attack and hurt me."