Star-crossed lovers:
Adie Timmermans and Chita the Chimp
A story that caught my eye earlier this week concerns a woman in Belgium who has been banned by a zoo in Antwerp from visiting the ape enclosure, due to the fact that she was conducting an affair with one of the residents; a chimpanzee named Chita.
For the past four years, Adie Timmermans has visited Chita - who has been held captive at the zoo for thirty years - on a weekly basis and developed a close bond with him, waving and exchanging kisses through the glass (and across the species divide) that separates them.
But now the zoo have stepped in, expressing concern that what they regard as an illicit relationship is negatively impacting upon Chita's natural affinity with members of his own kind; other chimps - perhaps jealous of his rapport with a human - have allegedly begun to exclude him from group activities.
And so, rather cruelly I think, the zoo has banned 38-year-old Ms. Timmermans from making any further contact with Chita, breaking his heart and hers; for parting isn't such sweet sorrow when you don't know if you will ever see one another again.
Keepers have been instructed to help Chita interact more with his fellow chimps. But surely they could have made alternative arrangements; building a private space, for example, in which Chita and Adie could have lived happily ever after in zoosexual bliss ...
