TELEGRAPH TIMES
May 28, 2009
McRae Chimps ‘rescued’
Elderly Mcrae man can no longer care for pets that are more like family members
By James Williams – Monitor Editor
Soggy McRae motorists were a little bemused last Wednesday to see a large, colorful van at the junction of S.R. 315C and Trawick Road. “Savethechimps.org,” it said on the side, with a large painting of just that – a chimp.
The Fort Pierce-based animal rescue group normally liberates chimpanzees from research centers and takes them to a private-non-profit enclave of man-made moats and islands in South Florida, where the chimps live out their primate lives safely and in comfort.
But why was the organization coming to McRae? It’s a story.
Lake Region resident Jack Ohlschwager and his late wife Florence raised two chimpanzees named Billy Bob and Vickie Lynn. The Ohlschwager’s took the chimps in as babies when a previous owner could no longer care for them.
Vickie Lynn had been with the family since 1972and Billy Bob since 1982. The Ohlschwager’s raised the chimps not as pets, but as members of the family that included the couple’s human children Donna, Debbie and Sherry.
The chimps slept in the kids’’ old cribs, ate at the table using silverware, and took bubble baths. They visited schools and retirement homes. They could play piano, roller-skate, and walk while balancing atop a ball. They dressed up as Santa Claus and played Indians while riding pogo stick horses.
However, the Ohlschwager children grew up and moved away from home. Florence passed away in September 2008. Now alone and in his 80s, Jack was finding it difficult to care for the chimps. Animal authorities were pointing out problems. Toward the end, the chimps were being kept outdoors in a cage in a McRae yard.
“Monkey chow is expensive,” Sherry Ohlschwager Malson said last Thursday. She added that so far as she could tell the chow was mostly corn meal, but the only place her aging father could buy it was by special order at a pet store in Gainesville.
Ohlschwager and Malson, began to look for assistance in caring for the chimps. Malson began searching for a natural sanctuary. She applied to Save the Chimps, asking the organization to take the two animals in.
However, Save the Chimps is supported entirely by donations and has to look at its own bottom lines of available space and limited finances. After a while, the Save the Chimps board agreed to take the chimps and a van trip from Ft. Pierce was planned – for last Wednesday.
The van left South Florida at 6 a.m. and faced a drenching rain much of the way up. Worse, once they arrive, Malson told them there was no way the large trailer could make it down Trawick Road, which was now under water. Other Trawick residents had already parked their automobiles at S.R. 315C when they couldn’t get them home.
Vicki Miller, a veterinary technician took the day off from her job at the Fuller Veterinary Clinic in Melrose and come to help. Miller, Malson, Ohslchwager and the Save the Chimps staff sedated the two primates, wrapped them in blankets to stave off rain and cold, and transported them in a four-wheel drive vehicle one at a time from one end of Trawick Road to the waiting van at S.R. 315C.
The staff only had a 20-minute window of opportunity before the sedative wore off. There were several precarious trips from the van to Ohlschwager’s home and back, each time driving over potholes, soggy sand and clay, through puddles and even currents across the road. The Save the Chimps staff worked through lunch and dinner, Malson said. The van didn’t make it back to Fort Pierce until 9 p.m. that evening.
So far, the story ends happily. Malson said she received a call to say that by Thursday Billy Bob and Vickie Lynn were already adapting well to their new Save the Chimps gated community in Fort Pierce. And they never missed a monkey meal.
“Our kids have been members of Keystone Heights for a long time and Jack and I will sure miss them,” Malson said last week. “But there comes a time in life where you have to look at quality of life for them.”