Michael Jackson's pet chimp Bubbles retires in Florida

Posted on Sat, Jul. 11, 2009 in the Miami Herald
By ROBERT SAMUELS
rsamuels@MiamiHerald.com

The phone calls clamored in from Miami, Europe and Australia to the line of a tiny office near Perez's Produce and Pig Farm.
Is it true? they asked the receptionist. Do you have really have Bubbles, Michael Jackson's old chimpanzee, there in. . . how do you pronounce the name of that town?

Yes it's true. Bubbles -- Jackson's beloved chimp, the primate skeptics used as telltale sign of the pop star's eccentricity, the darling face in the video -- had long left Neverland. And he's retired in an ape sanctuary in the middle of Florida.

To understand the long reach of a single sequined glove, a parable exists about 200 miles northwest of Miami off of U.S. 27 at the Center of Great Apes. Bubbles has lived here alongside 41 other aging chimpanzees and orangutans for four years, with virtually no one squealing about it. That was until two weeks ago, when his infamous owner confounded the world and suddenly died of cardiac arrest.

A place that averages three media requests a year soon received dozens in days. For the first time, they needed a publicist. The media kept badgering with similar, strange questions: Does Bubbles still moonwalk? Does he know the King of Pop is dead? And, most important, can we go see him?

Founder and director Patti Ragan told the vast majority of them no, fearing a tranquil locale -- not open to the public, it is a sanctuary after all -- would be transformed to some media zoo that conflicted its actual purpose.

Here, Bubbles the Chimp got the life his owner coveted for himself: a chance to live outside the public eye.

He is 26 years old now, around four feet tall, a pudgy 165 pounds. The chimp who dined with Liz Taylor and sat in the very studio while the Bad album was being recorded now spends his days in a 35-foot-high, 35 feet wide, 90-foot-long enclosure with his new, hairier family: Sam, Oopsie, Boma, Jessie, Kodua and the baby, Bobby Stryker.

Some days, he likes to climb to the top of his futuristic cage and sit alone. Up high, he stares into the distance.

''He's a very dignified chimp,'' Ragan said at the center's office. ``Everyone knows him as the pink-eared, pink-faced chimp in the red suit. But the world has missed his adolescence and adulthood. He's not the same.''

***

The tiny office is barely a dot on the lush, 120-acre property, where treetops overshadow treetops. The apes all live in large geodesic domes that connect to 4,000 feet of elevated tunnels, allowing them to peer into the kitchen where a cook prepares food, mosey into the veterinarian's center when they seek treatment, or gossip over a creek that runs through the property.

Ragan jumped into a slow-moving cart. Tracing along a path she rides several times a day, she's serenaded by the whoop of the woodpecker and the howl of the orangutan.

''Hi, Sweetheart,'' she calls to him in a high-pitched voice. ``How's my boy?''

Bubbles stands on his knuckles and turns his neck to see her. His pouts his upturned lips. The broad face is the same as always. His hair is unkempt, with a touch of gray. Taking a few ginger steps, he gently nods his head toward Ragan.

His new family can relate to him. Save for baby Bobby, they, too, are also former child stars. One was in the most recent version of Planet of the Apes. Another was in a popular Career Builder commercial. Ragan dubs them ``The Hollywood Chimps.''

When they argue, it's bitter. They squeal, poke, yell at one another, take sides. In seconds, they hug and make up.

While the others blow kisses, stomp and puff their chests, Bubbles stares and nods.

He is the sensitive one. He rarely starts a fight. If one occurs, he defers to Sam, a 40-year-old and oldest male of the group, to help quell the differences.

No one's ever seen Bubbles moonwalk -- they don't know if he still can. The chimpanzees love watching DVDs -- but Bubbles is never shown the ''Dangerous'' tour in Bucharest or the Leave Me Alone video, where he is seen riding an amusement park model plane with Jackson. The Chimps are more Jane Goodall buffs.

''Bubbles was obviously a well-loved chimp,'' Ragan said. ``It is obvious that Michael Jackson took good care of him . . . But it's hard to say whether he inherited anything from Michael.''

Except for one thing: If someone raises a camera, he'll turn and walk away.

***

Like most chimps, Bubbles' rendezvous with fame was short. After they pass the age of 7, they grow too strong and too independent to be cajoled into performing tricks for treats.

They suffer the fall of a young celebrity whose gimmick goes stale. They become sideshow acts in unaccredited zoos or tools for breeders. And as the public becomes fascinated with newer, younger chimps, older ones can be left to endure invasive tests in the name of scientific query.

Apes at this sanctuary aren't used for research. The females are given Depo-Provera and the males receive vasectomies to prevent breeding. There are no indignities like species-bending outfits, cameras or pies in the face. There are just stuffed peppers with peanuts and cinnamon and socialization into a new group of primates just like them.

It's not always easy or consistent. Sometimes those animals will meld well, playing and laughing and giggling with others and then -- Ragan can see it -- they have this existential moment when they wonder, just how did life get to this?

Staff has never seen Bubbles in that crisis. He was about 3 years old when he left a cancer research lab and was given to the King of Pop. He had some small roles in commercials and television shows, but was mostly known as socialite -- traveling with the star to Japan and hobnobbing with Quincy Jones, Brooke Shields, Liza Minnelli and others.

When Jackson's children came along, he gave Bubbles -- by then, a teenager -- to Hollywood trainer Bob Dunn. In 2004, Dunn stopped training apes and donated the Hollywood Chimps to the west-central Florida sanctuary, one of 10 in North America.

Ragan, a Miami native, founded the nonprofit in 1993 after acting as foster parent to an orangutan who had a sick mom. Through the work, she became concerned about how showbiz apes live out the next 30 years of their lives. She searched throughout Florida for the perfect spot for the sanctuary before deciding on rural Wauchula.

The citrus groves, cow pastures and sweet air of the countryside give way to a tiny downtown, where country music is played through city-owned speakers on Main Street. This week, signs planted on green spaces advertised foreclosure relief and an upcoming concealed weapons class. The businesses are just starting to put up lettering indicating ``Se Habla Español.''

The last time anyone could remember anyone on national television invoking the name of this 4,000-person city was in 1981, when two families discovered that a nearby hospital had mistakenly swapped their babies. Last week, the city found themselves being talked about on Anderson Cooper, The Today Show and The Colbert Report, courtesy of a resident most will never see.

''I didn't even remember he was even here until I saw him on TV,'' said Amye Mitchell, a 34-year-old, sixth-generation Wauchula resident and local waitress. ``I thought how this is great publicity for us. It put some attention on a small-town . . . Most people don't even know where Wauchula's at. Or how to spell it.''

When he arrived, Bubbles was undoubtedly the chimp with the highest profile. The center downplayed it. Until two weeks, Bubbles' biography only said that he was once in a music video.

In 2006, Richard Shepard, the local emergency management director, was taking a tour around the center when Ragan introduced them.

``Is that the Bubbles?''

''Yes,'' she said.

''It's sort of a well-kept secret here,'' Shepard recalled. ``I bet six in 10 people in Wauchula don't know he's here.''

The day 31 million people stopped their daily routines to watch Michael Jackson's memorial service on television, Bubbles -- who is an ape, not a monkey -- sat atop his balcony.

Bobby Stryker, the baby 5-year-old chimp with a white tuft on his back, climbed to sit with him. Then, he poked him. Bubbles tickled back, turning him around in a large red plastic bowl made of discarded parts of an old McDonald's Playland.

Ragan hasn't attempted to let Bubbles know that Michael Jackson, who had not seen the chimp in at least six years, has died.

''How do you expect me to explain it?'' Ragan said. 'I'm not sure if he would recognize the words `Michael Jackson.' I'm sure it was a big part of his life when he was little because he got experiences most chimps don't get to have. But this was only a fifth of his life.'' 

 

Bubbles Speaks

By: Ben Montgomery
July 7, 2009

Ben Montgomery is a reporter for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.  He can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com

In a Daily Beast exclusive, Ben Montgomery meets Michael Jackson’s beloved chimpanzee, Bubbles, who is now retired and living the good life in Florida with other celebrity apes. Among the revelations: Bubbles didn't commit suicide, he wasn't cryogenically frozen, and he has not been told of Michael’s death.

Bubbles the chimp won't be at Michael Jackson's funeral Tuesday.

He won't emerge from the Staples Center wings wearing tiny overalls or moonwalk through the hot lights or cheese chimp-like for the cameras.

In fact, Bubbles doesn't even know Michael Jackson is dead.

No one has told him, and there is good reason.

Bubbles lives 2,600 miles from Los Angeles, on a Florida ape preserve surrounded by swamplands and cattle fields and orange groves. He is 26 now and he makes his home most of the time in a giant enclosure surrounded by native ferns, banana trees, water oaks, hibiscus, and Florida maples. He has access to more than 4,000 feet of elevated tunnels connecting geodesic domes and large enclosures. He paints and watches television and gives piggy-back rides to smaller chimps, and when a woman comes each Sunday to play soft music on a recorder, he seems to enjoy it. He digs peanut butter out of bamboo shoots and sucks on frozen hemp milk and munches on mangoes and sweet potatoes and grapes.

He is a chimpanzee again, and if you don't mind, his caretakers would like to keep it that way.

"Michael has a special relationship with Bubbles." —Animal trainer Bob Dunn, People, 1987

Bubbles met the world in March 1986, when a 14-year-old heart-transplant recipient named Donna Ashlock emerged from Michael Jackson's estate with a souvenir.

A photo.

Ashlock is on the right, beside her hero, awestruck. Michael's in the middle, the early Michael, the pretty Michael, the pre-allegations Michael. He has a soft smile and his left arm is stretched around the little girl's shoulder. In his right arm sits a fully dressed chimp, clinging to Jackson like a big hairy baby. This photo is important because here stood the World's Biggest Star, sweet and innocent, mostly unaltered, still... normal. And here he was holding a chimp, like a giant question mark.

The story spread that Bubbles had been rescued from a lab and sold to a trainer who gifted the animal to Jackson. At first we thought: Well, we would own a baby chimp, too, if we could afford to indulge our desires. But before long, Bubbles was accompanying Michael to a pre-tour presser, drinking green tea with Japanese dignitaries, moonwalking for the media. In Japan, it was widely reported, Jackson had his hairy friend's hotel walls re-papered because Bubbles didn't like the smell of smoke. He went with Michael on a world tour and spent down time at Jackson's house (In his house? we wondered. Where did the chimp sleep?).

And in every public appearance, as Michael's eccentricities began to overshadow his musical accomplishments, we humanized Bubbles a little more.

Every time Michael spoke fondly of his chimp, we wondered what they were really up to.

"That's not so bizarre. It could be cocaine. Besides, I like the chimp, Bubbles. He's a funny little guy." —Quincy Jones, 1987

In 1989 came reports of Bubbles' untimely death: run over by a Jeep on Jackson's estate. (Not true.) A year later, the press speculated that Bubbles died when a fire tore through Jackson's Santa Barbara menagerie. ("Michael Jackson's pet chimp, Bubbles, is not dead," USA Today reported. "We repeat: Michael Jackson's pet chimp, Bubbles, is not dead.") The following year The Globe had Bubbles becoming a daddy and the papers reported he would be ring-bearer at Elizabeth Taylor's eighth wedding. (Sounds true, but no.)

He soon became another check on the Wacko Jacko Inventory: kiddie sleepovers, Elephant Man bones, hyperbaric chamber, surgical mask. Bubbles.

Then came the ugly news: Jackson's former brother-in-law James DeBarge claimed he caught the singer inappropriately touching Bubbles during a diaper change. The charges went public around the time of Jackson's child-molestation trial, and it was easy to assume the worst.

"Whenever Bubbles sees himself in a magazine, he'll pick it up and kiss it." —Bob Dunn, People, 1987

Patti Ragan guides her golf cart toward Bubbles' enclosure. The other chimps are climbing and swinging and collecting leaves while 165-pound Bubbles approaches the edge, sits on his haunches and drapes a hot dog-size finger through the mesh.

He's magnificent, stoic, a little white hair bordering his face. The broad-shouldered chimp seems at ease and curious, and as Ragan creeps along the edge of the enclosure, he stands and follows the cart, his marble-size eyes locked on his visitors.

"Morning, Bubbie," Ragan sings. "Are you following us?"

Though the center is closed to the public, Bubbles likes people, Ragan says, and is fond of his caregivers. Bubbles has lived here since 2005, when he was quietly transferred from California. That was the same year Jackson was tried on sexual-abuse charges, but by then Bubbles had been living with trainer Bob Dunn for several years.

Until now, his life here has been uneventful, save the rare snake that makes it into the preserve. The phone has been ringing like crazy at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Fla. All the reporters ask the same thing: Does Bubbles know?

Ragan wants to be friendly. She wants to appease the public's curiosity, but not at the risk of upsetting the animals or jeopardizing their dignity or exploiting Bubbles' celebrity for profit, even if the annual operating budget of this preserve is $900,000 and we're in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

To understand that, you must know that Ragan gave up her Miami business and her Mercedes and her weekly manicures to care for chimps, to live here, and once in a while, after the staff of 15 has gone home, Ragan slips out to the enclosures and sits with the animals. Just her and the mosquitoes and 28 chimps and 14 orangutans. Entertainment outcasts and roadside-zoo refugees and circus trash.

There are other bold-faced apes: Bam Bam, who played an orangutan nurse in the Passions soap; Kodua, who copied her rear in that CareerBuilder ad; Jonah, from the Planet of the Apes remake; Mowgli, from the Dennis Miller Show; and many more who helped folks make big money until they grew too big to work. Though it has been rumored that Jackson planned to visit Bubbles here, it's rare that celebrities are curious about what becomes of the ape actors when they exit the business.

"You wonder if they ever think, 'I wonder what ever happened to those old stars?" Ragan says.

''My chimp Bubbles is a constant delight.'' —Michael Jackson, in Moonwalk, 1988

Though many reporters have called, Ragan has agreed to let three into the preserve. She does not want TV trucks lining the dirt road that leads to the unmarked compound. She even turned away a pushy New York Post reporter who showed up at the gate and demanded to see Bubbles.

If you think that's silly, consider this: CNN's Anderson Cooper was invited into the preserve last week and his crew filmed Bubbles in his enclosure. Up popped freebubbles.org, with a CNN screen-shot of Bubbles with the message: MICHAEL JACKSON'S CHIMPANZEE IS IN MONKEY JAIL, Y'ALL! WE NEED TO GET HIM OUT!! Ragan has walked a fine line since Jackson's death. She has become Bubbles' publicist, knocking down rumors that he committed suicide or is cryogenically frozen. She appreciates the spike in the center's Web traffic that has resulted in a few donations, but she must protect her big boy from the prying and exploitative world outside. That's why it feels so odd asking the question: Does Bubbles know?

Ragan obliges.

Chimps can understand English, she explains. Some even sign. When Ragan approaches a young female, Noel, and asks her what she had for breakfast, the chimp signs “banana” and “apple” and then suggests she wants some berries.

And they do mourn their dead comrades.

"But the concept of saying to him, 'He's gone. He's dead.' They just don't know that word. So there's no point in saying that to him," she says. "We join the world in being sad and mourning the death of Michael Jackson. We all enjoyed his music ... What we can do is give Bubbles the best long-term future we can."

Good health. Space. Enrichment. Protection.

She sometimes shows the apes videos from their pasts. Sammy the orangutan has watched himself in Dunston Checks In, and he seemed to be interested.

Ragan has not shown Bubbles the clips of himself moonwalking or wearing tiny tailored clothes or making goofy lips at the cameras.

She thinks she will, someday, but she won't tell a soul.

To donate to Bubbles or any of the other apes, visit the Center for Great Apes online at www.centerforgreatapes.org.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-05/bubbles-speaks/

What do chimpanzees and motor oil have in common? If you said nothing, you probably missed Super Bowl 43, when these otherwise incongruent entities shared the screen in a 30-second commercial for Castrol Edge.

In the spot (titled "Grease Monkeys" despite the fact that its simian stars are not monkeys but apes), a slacker lounges in his garage as chimpanzee "mechanics" work on his car. Crowned with an oil filter, the man tells his neighbor that the chimps have made him their king.

The half-minute commercial may have generated a few laughs, and somehow even spiked motor oil sales, but the price paid by the animal actors isn't worth it, according to Patti Ragan, founder of the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida.

Ragan's facility is home to 42 chimpanzees and orangutans, many of whom are retired from show business. Some starred in previous Super Bowl commercials, including popular spots for E-Trade and CareerBuilder.com. It's because she is caring for these former Super Bowl stars that Ragan was troubled by the new Castrol spot.

"Having animals that have appeared in Super Bowl commercials before, and knowing what the issues are, it made me very sad to see those chimps, and to see that we haven't moved beyond that," Ragan said in a phone interview. "People don't think about what happens to these animals after they appear in these commercials. They don't know that we're sacrificing an endangered animal's future to make money for a company selling a product."

The use of apes in entertainment is nothing new (just ask Bonzo), but thanks to recent campaigns by Jane Goodall and other primatologists, we now know the problems inherent in the practice. On her website, Goodall points out that performing primates are separated from their mothers as infants and discarded by the time they reach puberty. Since chimpanzees live 50 to 60 years in captivity, that means these hirsute has-beens will require decades of costly care after the end of their short show-biz careers.

The lucky ones -- like Jason Alexander's orangutan sidekick from Dunston Checks In -- end up at places like the Center for Great Apes. The Castrol chimps may not be so fortunate. "I'm beyond capacity," Ragan says, noting she has more than a dozen apes on her waiting list but lacks the resources to take them in. It costs approximately $15,000 a year to care for one ape, and like most non-profits, the Center is feeling the pinch of the current economic crisis.

While everyone involved with a commercial -- from the network and ad agency to the actors, caterers, and animal trainers -- makes money, nothing is put aside for the animals' future. No residual checks are wending their way to Wauchula for the former stars of the CareerBuilder ads, even though their likenesses are still being used on the company's website.

"CareerBuilder has stopped using chimpanzees in their commercials, which is wonderful, however they still have their Monk-E Mail campaign on their website," Ragan says. "They have our chimpanzee Bella, in a pink dress and pearls, and Ellie, a female that was seven-years-old, whom they put makeup on to make her look like an old male executive."

Ragan, who has urged the company to remove the chimps from its website, adds, "I would like CareerBuilder to consider the revenue they get from exploiting those chimps that we are now taking care of, and to think about where those chimps are right now."

Beyond their effect on the lives of the individual apes in the ads, commercials like Castrol's may have a negative impact on conservation, according to a recent study published in Science. The study found that because chimps are so widely used in TV shows and commercials, people assume they must be thriving -- a dangerous misconception according to lead author Steve Ross, chair of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association's Chimpanzee Species Survival Plan. "This inaccurate and inappropriate portrayal of chimpanzees may negatively influence the way the public perceives this endangered species, which is in need of serious conservation efforts," Ross said.

Needless to say, dressing chimps in clothing and prompting them to mimic human behavior further distorts public perception of these apes. Such depictions may tickle the funny bone, but at what cost? "For us to get a few yuks," Ragan says, "it doesn't justify jeopardizing the lives of these animals -- taking them away from their mothers, using them for a few years, and leaving them with an uncertain future."

Some advertisers have chosen to get out of the ape business altogether. Honda, Subaru, and Yahoo! are among the companies that have pledged to quit using apes in their advertisements. Ragan applauds those companies and urges others to follow suit. She also calls on the advertisers, networks, and the Super Bowl itself to consider their complicity.

"The people who write these commercials and sell the companies on using great apes, and the people who buy these commercials and sell the airtime, they need to think about what they're doing to impact wildlife, impact animal welfare, impact people's attitudes about conservation, and impact these individual animals' lives."

The Men's Journal - Forbidden Places

Tue, Jan 6, 2009
Travel
Wauchula, Florida

Remember those rambunctious chimpanzees from the “trunk monkey” car ads? Or the Careerbuilder.com chimps, one of whom photocopied its ass in a celebrated Super Bowl commercial? Chances are you’ve forgotten about these and other great simian thespians. Which is why the Center for Great Apes near Wauchula, Florida, had to be built.

“Apes are used by the entertainment industry only as infants and juveniles,” says director Patti Ragan, who founded the center in 1997. “By the time they reach adolescence they’re too strong to manage, so they get outsourced. But few accredited zoos will take animals from the entertainment industry because their social skills have been so stunted.”

Dropped in the middle of orange groves between highways 17 and 27 near small Wauchula, the center occupies 120 acres of well-hidden forest to provide what Ragan calls a “retirement home” for apes. Only 25 acres are used as habitat; the rest serve as a buffer from the outside world. The 42 resident chimps and orangutans — including all those mentioned above — live in large geodesic enclosures, connected by three-quarters of a mile of elevated passageways through tropical growth.

As the only celebrity chimp and orangutan sanctuary in the U.S., the inconspicuous center might help meet expenses by following the amusement park–crazy blueprint of central Florida economics. Instead it relies on private donations. “We’re not here to be an attraction,” says Ragan. “We want to give these animals some peace and a life of dignity.”

The highly restricted facility opens its doors just once a year, in the spring, and only to member donors.

How to Get There: To become a member with a $40 donation, contact the Center for Great Apes; 863-767-8903, centerforgreatapes.org.

Ape Crusaders - Wauchula Center a Sanctuary for Chimpanzees, Orangutans

By Gary White
THE LEDGER

Published: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 10:30 p.m.

You might recall the series of commercials for CareerBuilder.com that began running during the 2004 Super Bowl. Set in an office, they showed chimpanzees in shirts and ties cavorting unproductively, swigging Champagne, smokingcigars, listening to Quiet Riot and generally exasperating their sole human co-worker.

The commercials were a success for almost all involved, yielding money for the chimps' trainers, the human actor and the production crew, earning an award for the advertiser and generating buzz for CareerBuilder.com.

The ads, though, didn't do much for their simian stars, including a chimp named Kodua. The ape's acting career soon ended when the trainer left the business, and Kodua might have wound up in a roadside display or even in a biomedical research facility were it not for a sanctuary in Hardee County.

Kodua is one of 42 chimpanzees and orangutans at The Center for Great Apes, something of a simian actors retirement home hidden amid citrus groves several miles outside Wauchula. The population also includes Sammy, an orangutan who played the title role in the movie "Dunston Checks In," fellow orangutan Geri ("The Flintstones") and a chimp called Mowgli ("The Shaggy Dog").

Apes used in entertainment become uncontrollably strong by age 6 or so, yet the apes can live 50 years or more.

"Nobody takes responsibility for the future of these animals," center director Patti Ragan said, "and that's why they end up in roadside zoos and backyard cages. ... Kodua is a million-dollar commitment for me."

In addition to the apes from the entertainment industry, some at the sanctuary were rescued from small tourist attractions. Others had been kept as pets, often in deplorable conditions, and a few came from scientific research facilities.

Ragan said it costs nearly $15,000 a year to provide for each ape, and the 120-acre center, which is closed to the public, relies on donations to meet its annual budget of about $900,000.

The 28 chimps and 14 orangutans live in spacious, high-topped wire enclosures furnished with swings and climbing structures. It's no substitute for the wild, but Sammy the orangutan appeared contented enough on a recent morning as he thrust his narrow-eyed, cinnamon-bearded face against the wires of his enclosure and gazed quizzically at a visitor. Taking air into his throat pouch, Sammy emitted a guttural rumbling, which Ragan explained is similar to a cat's purring.

IT BEGAN WITH PONGO

The sanctuary had a long genesis. Ragan, a former teacher and business owner, became interested in apes while working as a docent at Miami MetroZoo in the 1980s. She later began volunteering at a small tourist attraction in Miami that held an infant orangutan named Pongo.

The ape contracted meningitis, preventing his owner from selling him to a circus trainer, as planned, and Ragan took over Pongo's care and eventually adopted him. After selling her business, she created a nonprofit organization while caring for Pongo and a few other apes at the tourist attraction. She began looking for a place to establish a sanctuary, and in 1997 she bought two houses and 15 acres in Hardee County, bringing five apes with her, including Pongo, now 18.

The sanctuary has expanded to 120 acres and now has 11 large enclosures, several smaller ones and 10 houses to which the apes can retreat at night and during bad weather. Three-quarters of a mile of elevated walkways allow the apes to roam, though the center's staff is careful to limit contact that could lead to violent encounters.

The center, licensed and inspected by federal and state agencies, has 15 employees, seven of whom live on the grounds. The apes' meals are prepared in an immaculate kitchen, which on a recent morning held large bins of apples, bananas, lettuce, oranges, kiwi fruit and sweet potatoes. A small clinic allows an outside veterinarian to provide routine and emergency medical care.

A barn from 1911, used for storage, and a two-seat outhouse add rustic charm, and dozens of pine tree stumps testify to the effects of the 2004 hurricanes.

LIVES OF DEPRIVATION

Many of the center's apes have unhappy histories.

Toddy, a 24-year-old chimp, had been a family pet and resided in a small exhibit and a breeding facility. Ragan said the chimp has bullet fragments in her head, probably the result of her mother's killing when the ape was seized in Africa.

Linus, an orangutan, arrived after 10 years in a garage, his hair encrusted with several pounds of filth. Ragan said the first time it rained after his arrival, Linus remained outside while the other apes took cover, and he thrust his face upward.

"This is a rainforest animal that had never felt rain before," Ragan said. "He still goes out when it rains."

Mickey, a chimp, spent 20 years in a small cage as a family pet and arrived obese and emotionally stunted. Ragan said it took two years before he could tolerate being with other chimps.

In the wild, chimpanzees nurse for about four years and remain with their mothers for eight years. Ragan said chimps born in breeding facilities or harvested from the wild are ripped from their dams soon after birth, and those not reared by their mothers don't learn how to interact with other chimps.

"We can't just put these chimps into this enclosure," Ragan said. "It takes a lot of training."

Ragan said Kodua, the chimp who photocopied her bare bottom in a CareerBuilder commercial, was seized from her mother within weeks of birth. When Kodua came to Ragan's center, she was adopted by her grandmother, Oopsie, who had never been allowed to raise her offspring during 30 years in a breeding facility.

Ragan said she regularly learns of other apes in need of rescue, but her center is at maximum capacity until she can afford to have more enclosures built. She also hopes for enough donations to create a sustaining endowment for the center.

"While our day-to-day operations are huge, they (the apes) live 50 years - they'll outlive me," said Ragan, who is in her 50s. "We have an endowment established, but it's not enough. We need millions."

Photos, drawings and paintings of chimpanzees and orangutans cover the walls of offices at the sanctuary, along with a few photos of the "patron saint of apes," Jane Goodall. The British researcher and activist visited the center a few years ago.

Like Goodall, the staff at the Center for Great Apes displays an undisguised affection for hirsute hominids. Ragan said she didn't take a salary until two years ago, and she said other employees work for relatively low pay.

"It's wonderful to be in the vicinity of these animals," Ragan said. "It's wonderful to see animals that lived in tiny cages in back yards and garages for a decade or more turn around and get healthy, get active, learn to be social with each other. ... They all have a greatly improved life, but the bottom line is they shouldn't be in captivity at all."

[ Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or at 863-802-7518. ]

---

 

Rescue Apes Take To The Skies In Cover Story

Conservation photographer Joe Zammit-Lucia's images feature in the cover story of the August edition of Southwest Airlines' Spirit Magazine.

Rescued Apes

Founded by Patti Ragan, the Center for Great Apes provides a shelter for orangutans and chimpanzees most of whom come from the entertainment industry after they have been discarded because they have grown too big and strong and are no longer 'cute' - a requirement for them to appear in movies or commercials.

Joe Zammit-Lucia visited the center and created portraits of the rescued apes for the I AM portfolio of images. Besides the cover image, portraits of the animals appear in the magazine as a gallery entitled "Great Apes".

The gallery follows "Back To Nurture" an article on the work of Patti Ragan and her staff at the Center for Great Apes. Founded in 1993 in Miami, the Center moved to central Florida in 1997 and now cares for over 40 apes providing them with care and attention and a comfortable lifestyle.

"It is hard to imagine that these and many other animals are used for entertainment for a short period of their lives and then discarded", said Joe Zammit-Lucia. "What I was trying to capture in my images was the fact that these are individuals with different personalities and emotions. They are creatures with feelings, not products that we should be using to market a health drink and then discarding when they become inconvenient."

Donated Fees

The photographer's fees for use of the images in Spirit Magazine will be donated to the Center. The article has also already resulted in sales of fine art photographic prints of the ape portraits. All proceeds will also be donated to the Center for Great Apes.

About The Center

The Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, FL has annual expenses of $800,000 excluding capital expenditures. Each ape costs $14,000 to $15,000 to maintain. The Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and all donations are tax deductable.

Joe Zammit-Lucia is a photographic artist whose work focuses on Heritage, Conservation and the Environment.

He is currently working with environmental organizations on multiple projects around the world.

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In The News

Whatever Happened to Michael Jackson's Chimp Bubbles?

By Johnny Dodd
PEOPLE.com
Originally posted Monday June 29, 2009 07:10 PM EDT

Past Media Hits

CFGA Newsletter

 
Spring 2007

Special Visitor

The Center for Great Apes has invited a number of visiting primatologists, animal welfare advocates, and sanctuary directors come to Wauchula to share ideas and meet our great apes.

When Dr. Jane Goodall visited , our chimpanzees greeted her with “pant hoots” and were very excited to hear her answer them back with a chimp greeting.

Grub made a mask for Dr. Goodall, which she modeled for him.

Special Visitors Gallery