JUDIE HARRISON, 50 and three times married, is an extreme example of monkey love. She once demanded that her 15-year-old son give up his bedroom for a chimp, and today she is estranged from all three of her children because she put the primates first. Her passion also cost her her home.
She also took a lot of hard knocks herself. In a New York hotel for a job with Mikey, Ms. Harrison was letting the chimp groom her teeth, which is to say, pick at them — a not uncommon chimp habit and an example, perhaps, of a chimp simianizing a human.
“All of a sudden I feel a severe pain on the right side of my mouth and then I felt something dripping down my face,” Ms. Harrison says. “And there was all this blood, and I look over at Mikey and here he had my tooth in his hand, roots and all. He had pulled my tooth out with one finger.”