Do not disturb the wildlife
Travis the Chimp
Travis is being boisterous today. He stole Sandra's car keys and escaped into the yard. She is trying to calm him down, as she always managed to. After all Travis is a docile and well-trained chimp, and he is more like a son to her than a pet. She raised him like a child for 11 years, after she and her husband, Jerome Herold, adopted him when he was 3. Travis eats cake, wears diapers, and is well-known in the neighborhood for acting in some television commercials. But Jerome died a few years ago, and now Sandra is alone taking care of the pet with the help of her friend, Charla Nash. Today Charla's help is well-needed, the tea laced with xanax that Sandra gave Travis is not enough to calm him down. She calls her friend and explains the situation.
Charla soon arrives, but for some reason she is not driving the same car as usual, and her hair is done a different way. As soon as she leaves the car, Travis charges at her. He rips her face off with his jaws, mutilates her hands, tears off her nose, her ears, blinds her, making a mess of flesh and blood out of her body. Realizing her friend is going to die if no-one stops him, Sandra grabs a shovel and hits him as hard as she can, in vain. Travis just won't let go of Charla. Sandra runs back inside the house to get a butcher knife and stabs Travis. He looks at her as if thinking "Mom, what did you do?", but she knows she has to, for she understands that Travis is no longer the docile childlike animal she knew, but that he now became a savage blood-thirsty creature. Stabbing only strenghten his animality, and he becomes even more aggressive. He stops mauling Charla for a second and turns against Sandra. She only has time to run and take refuge in a car in the yard.
In panic, she calls the police. Her friend is probably dead by now and Travis' loud screeches are a constant reminder to her that she is not safe yet. "Hurry up, they've got to shoot him, please!", she begs the operator as outside the animal is still mutilating Charla's body. "She is dead, she is dead! He ripped her apart, everything!". She screams even more desperately, out of breath. The operator tries his best to calm her down. "They're on their way". But it is not enough to reassure Sandra. "He's eating her", she yells, terrified at the thought that Travis is going to attack her next.
The police soon arrive and try to corner Travis with their cars. Sandra, who is still on the phone, is now shouting at them to shoot him. In panic, the chimp runs to one of the vehicles, opens the door, just as his owner taught him to, and attacks the officer inside. The policeman quickly escapes, pulls a handgun on Travis and shoots him multiple times. "Rounds fired!". But the animal is still alive, he runs into the woods, then back into Sandra's house. Some officers chase him. Others runs to take care of Charla and realize the extent of the attack.
Her body is awfully mutilated. Her face is unrecognizable and she no longer looks like a woman. “We’ve got to get this out of here. He’s got no face", explains an officer over the radio. Indeed, her face and her scalp have been ripped away. Her hair has been pulled off, her eyes are severely injured. There is so much blood and flesh on that face that you cannot even make out any part left of it. Her hands are crushed and torn and she only has one thumb left. They look as if they have been wrecked by a machine or went through a meat grinder. While some of the officers are looking around out of fear that Travis comes back and attacks them, a policeman checks Charla's breathing, and realizes she is still alive. To see if she is conscious, they ask her to move her foot, which she does. She did not even get the chance to fall unconscious during this long 12-minute attack. She is put on a stretcher and brought away to a hospital.
Meanwhile, in the house, the officers discover Travis. He ran back to his room, where he felt safe, and died there.