IN MEMORY OF CHICO ON DEATH ROW

SPOKANE -- The Spokane Regional Health District has euthanized Chico, a pet monkey that escaped from its owner's South Hill home and bit three people last week.

Chico was euthanized by a local veterinarian with health district officials in attendance early Monday afternoon. The decision to euthanize Chico came after the health district rejected an offer to have the three people bitten by the monkey to be treated for possible exposure to rabies. Instead, the monkey's remains will be shipped to a lab in Shoreline in western Washington to be tested for rabies post mortem.

Earlier in the day a doctor in Texas offered to pay for expensive rabies shots for the three victims bitten by Chico last weekly. Dr. Ned Buyukmichi, the a resident doctor at Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in southwest Texas, hoped that this would prevent the monkey from being put to death but the offer was declined.

Dr. Buyukmichi said that there was no medical basis for the decision to euthanize Chico and doesn't understand the rationale of putting a monkey to death when that animal shows no signs of neurological disease.

"It sounds like this is a political decision not a medical decision," Dr. Buyukmichi said.

Buyukmichi offered to pay the roughly $900 per person that it would take to get the three people bit by the monkey the shots necessary to definitively determine that they did not contract any disease.

He also offered to provide a permanent home for Chico and supply transport for the primate. However he said that when he made this offer to health officials in Spokane it was roundly rejected as "not an option."

Numerous animal rights activists gathered outside the Spokane Public Health Building Monday morning to protest the decision to euthanize Chico, holding signs that equate the decision with murder.

Dr. Larry Jecha, acting Health Officer of the Spokane Regional Health District, made the decision to put Chico to sleep over the weekend. As cause he cited the minimal but potential risk of disease transmission, the unwillingness of bitten victims to pay for the expensive shots, the inability to contact the pet's owners, and the fact that an animal must be killed to sufficiently test for rabies as that testing is performed on the brain.

However, Dr. Buyukmichi says the chances of Chico having a neurological disease "were virtually zero anyway" and that probability was completely negated by the fact that the animal has been kept in captivity for a period long enough to determine with what he says is complete accuracy that the animal is not rabid.

Dr. Buyukmichi added there hasn't been a case of a pet monkey contracting rabies in the United States since 1911 and in that instance the monkey was bitten by a rabid dog.

"I don't understand why they're doing this," he concluded

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• SPOKANE
• --
• The
• Spokane
• Regional
• Health
• District
• has
• euthanized
• Chico
• pet
• monkey
• that
• escaped
• from
• its
• owner's
• South

[CHICOONDEATHROW]

Chico the monkey tests negative for rabies

[CHICOONDEATHROW]

Chico the monkey tests negative for rabies

[teahnme]

I am very sorry for your lose. I know personally that chico was very close to all of you. I hope justice is done. Also that god helps all of you thru this horrible time of your life. My prayers and thoughts are with you all.

[shrimpscampy]

poor monkey.

[killbabymonkeys]

For Pete's sake. You show all those photos of a baby monkey pulling at people's heart strings but you fail to recognize that an adult monkey bit three people. Monkeys are not children. If they aren't in the jungle or a lab they should be dead.

[killbabymonkeys]

This ANIMAL bit three human beings. Monkeys do not belong in clothes or diapers or in civilization. They are not children and you are not their momma or daddy. This monkey needed to be put down and so should all other monkeys living in homes and not in a tree. They are dangerous.

[chippedbeef08]

That piece of shit bit 3 people! End of story. Glad it got what it deserved!

[Ihatemonkeys666]

Sorry, but I fail to see how one little monkey was such a threat to Spokane. If the proper time was waited, and no signs of any disease was found, his blood was checked, then he should have been turned over to you with the agreement that you would find him a proper home. There are hundreds of agencies that would have took him. At least you would have known that he was alive.

At the risk of my rep of hating monkey, very bad form Washington.

[applemaniac123]

those bitches. sew them!! they euthenized ur bff!!! and he tested NEGATIVE to rabies! FUCK THEM

[mostlymonkeys10]

Yes, I remember the fate of Chico and it made me sick. There has never ever been a case of a monkey having rabies in the US. They knew this too but they murdered him anyway. It's a sick world we live in and I will always remember what they did to Chico! And the ones before him and the ones since...all which tested negative for rabies of course.

[bowlskiforme]

DEATH TO CHICO!!!!!! FOR ONCE THE BLEEDING HEART LIBERALS LOSE!!!!

[bowlskiforme]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...WHI­TE TRASH WITH A MONKEY...NOW IVE SEEN IT ALL...

[superpiemonster]

@DARKKNIGHT908 apparently martin luther king never taught you any thing so go and worship hitler like every other racist person on the damn planet