Travis: A chimp attack's fallout

What happened

A Connecticut police officer shot and killed a pet chimpanzee that mauled a friend of its owner on Monday. The 200-pound chimp, Travis, who once starred in an Old Navy commercial for cargo shorts, had been running loose after using using a key to get out of the house. (New York Daily News)

What the commentators said

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"I'm very sorry for the injuries" sustained by Travis' owner and her friend, said Emily Moulton in Gather. But isn't this the sort of tragedy we should expect when someone keeps a wild animal as a pet? "There's a good reason you can't go to your local pet store and buy your own Travis the chimp."

Travis was living the life of a human being, not a chimp, said Chris Rovzar in New York magazine. Travis' owners—Sandy Herold and her husband, Jerome—raised the 13-year-old chimp like a human member of the family after the death of their daughter a decade ago. The animal drank wine, and could log onto the Internet and use keys to get into the house and car. When you give a pet "skills and substances you wouldn't give a human child, doesn't that seem like a recipe for disaster?"

Maybe chimps don't make the best pets, said The Women on the Web blog. But the most important concern here is that a human being—the owner's friend, Charla Nash—is now hospitalized in extremely critical condition with life-threatening injuries to her face, neck, and hands. Police are trying to figure out what triggered the attack, but for now we should all be wishing Nash "a speedy recovery."