Scrotum Piercing Baboons

LIKE many longtime couples, Carlie and Bob, independent animal rescue workers in upstate New York who have been together 21 years, have a difference of opinion about one big issue in their relationship. In their case, it is about a 7-year-old Hamadryas baboon named Higgins, who spends a good part of most evenings watching HDTV in his heated monkey house, often holding hands with Bob. Carlie thinks that it is time to ship Higgins to a baboon preserve, and Bob wants to keep him at home. “Here’s the bottom line,” Carlie says. “I only believe people should have pets that are domestic animals. Bob believes that everything is fair game. He would have a lion if I let him.”

Did Carlie say HDTV? “Yeah,” says Carlie. “I only got one at Christmas. Higgins has had one for about a year. He’s a TV fanatic. If you forget to turn it off, he’ll be sitting there at 3 in the morning. “His favorites are ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and ‘Walker, Texas Ranger.’ ” Bob, who’s owned wild animals all his life, admits Higgins has not always been a model pet. When Higgins was 3, he slept with the couple, often awakening Bob in the morning by climbing to the bedroom rafters and dropping onto Bob’s stomach. On one occasion, they got in a wrestling match, and Higgins put one of his “steel-like fingernails” through Bob’s scrotum. Bob has considered moving him to a sanctuary, but “I’m just too attached to him,” he says. Bob — who agreed to be photographed but would speak only on the condition that his and Carlie’s last names and hometown not be published, for fear of harassment from “ill-informed bleeding hearts” — is not the only human who has lost his heart to an inappropriate primate.

Last week, the country was mesmerized by the story of Sandra Herold, a 70-year-old widow in Stamford, Conn., whose 14-year-old, 200-pound chimpanzee, Travis, horribly mauled a close friend of the owner, tearing off her face. Ms. Herold, whose daughter had died in a car accident, had developed a relationship with him that went far beyond the ordinary owner-pet dynamic. She referred to Travis as her son, spoke of sleeping and bathing with him when he was small, and, in an interview with Jeff Rossen on the “Today” show, showed off his drawings, which, like a parent, she kept on the refrigerator door.

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The primates are taking over.