Travis Terminated (With Extreme Prejudice)

The sad story of Travis, the celebrity (he advertised 'Old Navy' clothes and appeared in several TV shows) and hard living (he drank red wine from a long-stemmed glass and watched baseball on TV using the remote) pet Chimpanzee in Connecticut USA(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5755497.ece). Although house-trained, an avid brusher of teeth and a user of the Internet, the almost 90 kg, 15-year old animal seemingly went berserk, grabbing the house keys to escape and eventually attacking a female friend of the 70 year old woman owner. The friend had arrived at the house to help (and was very seriously injured). The owner stabbed Travis with a butcher's knife (to try to stop the attack on her friend) and a police officer (fearing attack) subsequently shot him dead. There is some speculation that the Chimpanzee may have suffered complications from an infection with Lyme disease or the anti-anxiety drug, Xanax, that he had been treated with. The point remains that, no matter how 'human' in appearance and action, Travis was a potentially dangerous animal. It is easy to forget this basic fact when you get close to a beast.