[Daniel7]

By Dave Itzkoff

Monday was a particularly clarifying day in the affairs of Michael Jackson: we learned who would be the administrators (at least temporarily) of his estate, which celebrity guests would appear at his memorial service, and now we know the full story on Bubbles the chimp.

At (appropriately) The Daily Beast, Ben Montgomery tracks down the famous chimpanzee who frequently appeared alongside Mr. Jackson after the singer rescued him from a cancer research clinic. Mr. Montgomery writes:

Bubbles lives 2,600 miles from Los Angeles, on a Florida ape preserve surrounded by swamplands and cattle fields and orange groves. He is 26 now and he makes his home most of the time in a giant enclosure surrounded by native ferns, banana trees, water oaks, hibiscus, and Florida maples. He has access to more than 4,000 feet of elevated tunnels connecting geodesic domes and large enclosures. He paints and watches television and gives piggy-back rides to smaller chimps, and when a woman comes each Sunday to play soft music on a recorder, he seems to enjoy it. He digs peanut butter out of bamboo shoots and sucks on frozen hemp milk and munches on mangoes and sweet potatoes and grapes.

He is a chimpanzee again, and if you don’t mind, his caretakers would like to keep it that way.

Sadly, Mr. Montgomery adds that Bubbles has not been informed of Mr. Jackson’s death. As Patti Ragan, the founder of the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Fla., tells him:

[T]he concept of saying to him, “He’s gone. He’s dead.” They just don’t know that word. So there’s no point in saying that to him. We join the world in being sad and mourning the death of Michael Jackson. We all enjoyed his music … What we can do is give Bubbles the best long-term future we can.

Far From Los Angeles, Jackson’s Pet Chimp Lives a Quiet Life - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com