While stood at my kitchen window, doing the washing up this morning, I became increasingly concerned about the whereabouts and welfare of Michael Jackson's pet chimp Bubbles.
Bubbles was born April 30th 1983, he was born in captivity at the Texas Research Institute where chimpanzees were bred for animal testing.
Jackson kept Bubbles at his home on Neverland ranch and treated him like a human baby, in fact he often weirdly referred to Bubbles as his first child.
Bubbles was often dressed in matching clothes and was even taken on tour to Japan with Jackson. He slept in a crib in Jackson's room, was often used for photo ops and even learned to "moonwalk".
Although, this last feat is a stretch of the imagination, if you look at the videos online he's basically just walking backwards which I guess is an impressive feat for a chimpanzee and also a similar level of my ability to moonwalk.
Like all wealthy pricks that buy wild animals and treat them as pets, Jackson failed to factor in that bubbles would grow up to be a potential superhuman killing machine.
A male chimpanzee, relative to it's size, has three to four times the strength of an average human male. They also have carnivore sized canines.
While the romanticized version of a chimpanzee is it sitting peacefully in a tree eating a banana; in reality communities of chimpanzees are known to hunt smaller primates ripping them limb from limb and eating them.
In 2003 of the age of 20 and being a fully mature 80 kg male chimpanzee, bubbles became too much to look after and was sent to an animal trainer in California.
When this facility closed in 2005 he was then sent to Florida to the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula.
Seems Florida is the go to point for retirement.
To this day Bubbles still lives there quite happily, he likes to paint and is the alpha male of his community. His upkeep is still paid for out of the Jackson estate.
Despite allegations of mistreatment while he was in Jackson's care, all's well that ends well and Bubbles gets to live out his life in comfort. He's 38 years old now so that could well be another 30 years or more.
Curiosity sated and mind put at ease I can return to my household chores.
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