![]() A day earlier, the Caseys had shot a tranquilizer in Suzy and removed Travis from her cage. Travis was the son of Coco, who’d been snatched from the jungles of equatorial Africa in the early seventies and purchased for $12,000, and an 11-year-old retired zoo chimp named Suzy. In her arms, swaddled and in a diaper, lay tiny Travis-named after her favorite singer, Travis Tritt. “Sandy,” she said, “your baby has arrived. A few days earlier, she had received a call from Connie Casey, a breeder in Festus, Missouri, a rural town 35 miles south of St. Louis International Airport one day in 1995. Jerry was home tending to the businesses as Sandy landed at the Lambert–St. Seemingly all of a sudden, she saw herself and Jerry drifting beyond the outer periphery of middle age. Then each of her parents became sick and died. ![]() And so when Sue married an employee from her parents’ shop and moved away, Sandy was bitter and heartbroken. Mother and daughter were engaged in one endless conversation. The two raced side by side, country-line-danced, worked together at the businesses. Sue grew into a platinum-blonde version of her mother. He jumped down, ran on two legs, and leaped into her arms.īetween the expanding businesses, the horses in the yard, and their many dogs, the Herolds lived a happily frenetic life. Later, back atop his horse and wearing a cowboy hat, the chimp spotted Sandy in the audience. ![]() One day, Sandy and Charla spotted a chimpanzee dressed in Westernwear who rode a horse around the ring. It was during a stint with the country singer Loretta Lynn’s traveling rodeo that Sandy struck up a lifelong friendship with an 18-year-old runaway named Charla Nash, who was rodeoing her way around the country. Sandy and Jerry opened several businesses in Stamford, including a tow operation and an auto-body shop, that would soon make them unlikely millionaires.įor a time in the seventies, Sandy, Sue, and Jerry towed their horses from state to state so that Sandy (and later Sue) could barrel-race semi-professionally in rodeos. Her life stabilized she, Jerry, and Sue, whom Jerry raised as his own, ultimately settled in the house on Rock Rimmon Road with Sandy’s parents. At 30, Sandy married her third husband, Jerry Herold, who was kind, intelligent, and devoted. Her second marriage was romantic, intense, and desperate-she adored her new husband, with whom she had a daughter named Suzan, in 1961, but they fought violently over his frequent affairs and divorced after four years. She married shortly after high school, then again in 1960. At birthdays, her parents outfitted her in silk dresses and cardigans and had her pose for photographs, smiling, near multitiered cakes, Gretchen standing at her side. As an only child, Sandy spent much of her time playing with her German shepherd Gretchen and tending to the horses on the property. She was born in 1938 to a Jewish mother and Italian father who operated a popular bakery downtown and eventually built an unassuming shingled house on a windy road called Rock Rimmon, to the north of the city. She spoke with a strange accent, a New York–New England hybrid, and spent her entire life in Stamford, Connecticut. She applied bright-pink lipstick and copious amounts of bronzer. She wore it down below her shoulders, her bangs cut straight across. Throughout her life, Sandy Herold had long, straight hair so black it almost looked wet. They are then often abandoned at roadside zoos or-as was the case with Travis-stay in the home of a person who remains unaware of their tremendous strength until it’s too late.Ĭhimpanzees and other exotic animals were never meant to be confined to people’s homes, and keeping them as “pets” can often be lethal to both the animals and those who live near them.Travis holding Sandy's grandson, Andrew. Once chimpanzees reach adolescence, they become too strong and aggressive for their guardians to handle. ![]() The images of Nash are shocking, her buoyant hopefulness is inspiring, and both of those points should prompt another look at Travis’ trajectory from his days as a baby chimpanzee to his years as a confined adult “pet.” Travis, who appeared in several commercials when he was an infant, was just one of many exotic animals who have been torn away from their mothers at a young age in order to be raised by people who don’t fully understand their needs. During the show, Nash declared her readiness to move on and said that she had an optimistic outlook on the future. Nash, who has been in a hospital since the attack, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and spoke for the first time about her recovery. Earlier this year, Travis, a 15-year-old “pet” chimpanzee, was stabbed repeatedly, pounded with a shovel, and finally shot to death after he attacked a Connecticut woman named Charla Nash. ![]()
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