Antwerp: In a bizarre incident, a Belgian woman was recently banned from a zoo after she confessed to having an ‘affair’ with a chimpanzee. Well, what it seems is that the woman might have taken the term ‘animal lover’ way too seriously and claimed that she really was a lover of an animal. The Antwerp Zoo had banned the woman from visiting the chimpanzee named Chita after officials noticed that she had been spending a little too much time with a particular chimpanzee. Following this, the woman claimed that she was actually having an ‘affair’ with the 38-year-old chimpanzee and hence visited him every week.
As per reports, the woman, Adie Timmermans began visiting the zoo every week and used to interact with Chita from opposite sides of the glass enclosure and also waved and blew kisses at each other.
Adie Timmermans had been visiting the zoo for four years until now when the zoo authorities decided that action had to be taken against the growing friendship. “I love that animal and he loves me. I haven’t got anything else. Why do they want to take that away,” Timmermans said. “We’re having an affair, I’ll just say.”
However, the zoo officials banned the woman from visiting Chita because authorities there believed that Chita’s closeness to Adie was proving to be harmful to his relationship and bonding with the other chimpanzees there and also affecting his growth with them.
“When Chita is constantly busy with visitors, the other monkeys ignore him and don’t consider him part of the group, even though that is important. He then sits on his own outside of visiting hours,” the zoo said.
Reacting to the ban imposed on her, Timmermans said that she feels the zoo is being unfair and questioned, “other dozens of visitors are allowed to make contact. Then why not me?”