PORTLAND, Ore. — A memorial service for the Oregon Zoo’s longtime chimp Charlie drew several hundred friends and fans and even featured a drum and dance group pounding out the rhythms of the African bush.
Charlie, who had lived at the Portland zoo for 37 of his 39 years, collapsed and died last Thursday. He had been considered in good health; a necropsy was inconclusive.
Zoo keepers say his demeanor could swing from goofy to cantankerous; he would invite staff members to play games of “chase’ but was also known to toss feces and chunks of wood at visitors.
Charlie clearly favored blonde women and was wary of guys in ties. While he could rattle off words in the American Sign Language he’d learned as a youngster, he was just as likely to repeatedly sign “Me, me, me” as he swaggered about the exhibit.
He spent three decades as the lone male among the zoo’s chimps, which also include Delilah, Leah, Coco and Chloe.
Zoo veterinarian Mitch Finnegan called him the “prince of the zoo.” Senior primate keeper Dave Thomas, whose relationship with Charlie lasted 36 years, called him “my friend” at Tuesday’s memorial.
Keepers and the zoo’s vet staff say Charlie was extremely intelligent and remarkably cooperative. Thomas said he introduced people to the big chimp with a sense of “You’ve got to see this guy.
“Morning after morning, I would not take him for granted,” Thomas said.
Keepers and volunteers who knew him as a youngster routinely returned to visit years later, and he recognized them with great excitement.
Tributes poured in after Charlie died; there were dozens on the zoo’s online memorial page and they came not only from Oregon and Washington, but from Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont, Florida and Arizona.
“A beautiful creature of God,” one writer called him.
Charlie was rescued as an infant by an American mining contractor working along the Liberia-Sierra Leone border. The year was 1970. Contractor Edward Miller saw villagers dragging an infant chimp along a road at the end of a rope. The chimp’s mother was dead, killed for “bushmeat,” and Miller feared the baby would meet the same fate. He bought the chimp for $25.
“I felt sorry for him, I knew his end wasn’t going to be good,” said Miller, who attended Tuesday’s memorial.
Charlie spent about two years with Miller and his family in Longview, Wash., sleeping with the contractor’s sons, playing on a backyard swingset, going to school for show and tell. In 1972, Miller gave Charlie to what was then called the Washington Park Zoo on the condition the chimp not be caged and not be raised as part of a colony.
For the next 37 years, Charlie had a safe home, a stable group of companions and a succession of people, led by Thomas, who cared about him.
Miller sought out Thomas after the memorial, gave him a hug and said softly, “I think you’re the best thing that happened in his life.”
Information from: The Oregonian, www.oregonlive.com
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