When we visit the zoo, we expect to receive at least some degree of separation from the animals. There may be times when we are close to them, such as inside a bird enclosure but in the vast majority of cases, we are kept apart because those animals are dangerous and being close to them could cost us our lives. This was the case back in the 1990s, when something happened at the Detroit Zoo that took many people by surprise. The truck driver named Rick Swope was visiting the zoo in 1990 and he did something that even the zoo refused to do.
Swope was visiting the zoo with his wife and three children and they were close to the chimp exhibit. It’s hard to tell how long they were in the area before a fight broke out between two chimps. It included one male chimp named JoJo and another male. They were being aggressive and it was probably interesting to watch but before long, something unusual took place that was completely unexpected.
One of the chimps became overly aggressive and JoJo tried to escape. In an effort to get away, he fell into a deep moat that was separating the chimps from the human visitors to the zoo. Chimps are unable to swim and JoJo was stuck in a very dangerous situation. He was close to drowning but Swope, who didn’t consider his own safety jumped in and grabbed the 135-pound animal.
“It was the most pitiful thing I ever saw,” Swope said. “This chimp had his hands up and his head was sticking out of the water. He was looking at the crowd. It was like he wanted someone to rescue him.”
He wasn’t successful on his first attempt and the chimp continued to struggle. The workers at the zoo were telling him to get out and the visitors were telling him to continue. “People . . . were showing me which direction he was in,” Swope recalled. “The water was so dirty you couldn`t see through it. I swam around on the bottom. Finally I found him.”
Swope was able to pull the chimp to the side and lift him over the cable that kept the chimps out of the water. “He was pretty lifeless, but you could see he was still alive. He was looking at me. I think he knew what was going on,” Swope said.
Fortunately, the chimp was not interested in harming Swope and he simply got out of the enclosure before the more aggressive monkey was able to get at him. When Swope was asked about the incident, he said: “Well, you see, I happened to look into his eyes, and it was like looking into the eyes of a man, and the message was, ‘Won’t anybody help me?’”
JoJo had lived a difficult life. His mother was killed by poachers prior to the time he was taken from the wild. “The people at the zoo, however, realized that he had a big heart and if you were to see him struggling, you would have to jump in and help.
You can watch the dramatic rescue in this video: