March 13, 2008

SPOKANE, Wash. – A pet monkey that escaped from its owners’ home before biting three people has been put down, much to the dismay of the public and animal activists who fought for the animal’s life.

Chico was a 15-pound Java macaque whose owners raised him from infancy. They said before this incident, he’d never inflicted harm to anyone. But earlier this month, he escaped from his South Spokane home and ran amuck before being captured.

Aaron Trujillo was the first to be bitten. He told KTVB news that he and some friends had been walking his dog when Chico came running up to them.

“At first when he came out, I thought he was a little bit cute, until it growled,” said Grey Pressentin, a friend of Trujillo and one of the first to see the monkey after its escape from a suburban south Spokane home.

“Then one of my friends tripped, and the monkey bit him on the thumb,” said Aaron Trujillo.

Aaron ran home and told his mother what had happened. Hardly believing her son’s story, the pair got in the family’s minivan and went looking for the supposed monkey.

Minutes later, they spotted him going in and out of the front door of a nearby home. Dorothy Trujillo got out of her car to investigate.

“I got a little closer, and the monkey looked like he was going back in the house, but then he came and charged at me and grabbed my leg and bit it,” said Dorothy Trujillo.

Witnesses said Chico bit a third person, an 18 year-old woman, before animal control officers caught him. The victims were treated for minor bite wounds, but there was some concern that Chico may have been infected with rabies.

There’s a two week window to vaccinate victims of rabies bites, and for Chico that fact didn’t bode well.

Soon after, he was quarantined, and that’s where the story took a turn for the worst for the little monkey. It was later determined by public health officials that he would have to be euthanized − in order to definitively determine whether or not rabies has infected an animal, its brain needs to be examined.

The decision was handed down by the Spokane Regional Health District Health Officer Dr. Jerry Lecha to the Spokane Animal Shelter, also known as Spokanimal. But shelter employees refused to perform the euthanasia, requesting that the victims be tested instead of killing an animal they believed to be basically harmless. After all, none of the injuries he inflicted was severe.

But rabies treatments are extensive and expensive – nearly $900 per person and the victims didn’t want to pay for them, leaving only one option for determining whether rabies was a real threat – necropsy (editor’s note: an animal autopsy).

Dr. Lecha cited the potential rabies risk, the victims’ unwillingness to pay for the expensive treatments and the fact that they hadn’t yet made contact with Chico’s owners as the reasoning behind the decision.

Just hours before he was euthanized, Dr. Ned Buyukmichi of Texas based Born Free USA Primate, called Spokane Regional Health to ask if he could pay for the victims’ treatment, hoping to prevent Chico’s death.

He later said that there was no medical cause behind the decision to euthanize. Based on shelter workers’ observations following the incident, officials said Chico showed no signs of the neurological disease.

Dr. Buyukmichi said that there hasn’t been a case of a monkey infected with rabies in the U.S. since 1911, and that primate had been bitten by a rabid dog.

“I don’t know why they’re doing this,” he said.

But regardless of activists’ protests and the aid from Born Free USA Primate, Chico was put down Monday. His corpse was sent to a lab in western Washington for testing. Results came back Tuesday – Chico was not infected.

The monkey’s owners were later contacted and according to one report, had paperwork showing that Chico had been vaccinated as a baby. The existence of those documents could not be verified.

And though they asked not to be named, the owners face misdemeanor charges for keeping an inherently dangerous animal. It’s also illegal to keep a primate within Spokane – a law the owners, who recently moved to the city, say they weren’t aware of.

They’re still now sure just how Chico was able to escape that day.

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