when chimps attack

TThe Tale of Moe, in today's WaPo:

In 1967, LaDonna Davis's boyfriend went on a trip to Tanzania and came back with quite a surprise: a chimpanzee. It was a baby still, an orphan that St. James Davis said he had rescued from the poachers who killed its mother, and it was just adorable -- 'a large teddy bear,' LaDonna's mother declared. They named him Moe.

St. James, a stock-car racer, became so bonded to Moe that he would carry the little fellow in a sling around his chest as he worked at his auto body shop in West Covina, Calif. When St. James and LaDonna married a couple of years later, Moe was 'a combination of flower-thrower and best man,' LaDonna recalls, sitting across from her mother this sunny spring day.

'Tell her about . . . ' interrupts her mother, Terry DeVere.

'Oh . . . well . . .' says Davis, with well-practiced delicacy: 'Moe . . . peed on a woman.' All the excitement of the reception, maybe too much punch. DeVere and her daughter glow with the memories of the beautiful day and of the beautiful years that followed.