EXCLUSIVE - Tonia Haddix from Chimp Crazy

and only Carrie bmore and Tony Little this is Carrie and Tommy yeah there is a new show on binge uh it is making worldwide news and we're about to speak to the star of this show and her first major interview since the docko was there the show is called chimp crazy uh you've seen a bit of it um our it's chimp crazy it is chimp crazy it takes you into the unique world of chimp owners and really whether people should be able to keep these wild animals as pets uh T hadex is the one we're going to be speaking to she calls your the Dolly Parton of chimps um in it she has a chimp called Tonka who you may have seen in you know films like George of the Jungle I think Tonka was in babe maybe um been in heaps of Hollywood movies and she keeps Tonka as a pet um they are incredibly close what she gets up to with tonko we're about to speak to about her up next but part of the criticism around this doco it was made by the people that uh created Tiger King and Tanya agreed to do it under the false premise that it was being made by someone else she wouldn't have done it she says had she known it was being made by the same people that made Tiger King we speak to her about all of that next The Fallout how she's being represented which she believes is is um being misrepresented really and let's not forget the face ripping off stuff K oh my God yeah in the doco you hear audio and see the aftermath of a woman who's had her face ripped off by a gorilla a gorilla t goria a chimp t a chimp sorry T herself um at the end of the doco you see her having been injured by an animal there's so much to talk to her about um we going to do that on the other side of this Tanya thank you so much uh for joining us we have watched the doco it is um extraordinary for many different reasons which we're going to get to today but we wanted to start by talking to you about how you feel about it as far as overall the documentary um I just feel like that it's really cheeky and it's pretty scripted and definitely not accurate obviously it was made by um the same man who made uh Tiger Tiger King something which he kept secret from you guys do you feel like you'd been done over oh definitely um and they know how we feel about it um we've had many discussion about it um because it wouldn't have existed if they would have been honest about where it was coming from and definitely if it was Eric good because that was a specific question that I asked Cunningham when he approached me and he swore to me that Eric good good entertainment had nothing to do with it ton I think it's something particularly um you know on the other side of the world the owning of exotic animals is something that we don't fully understand where you're from it's legal so you're not um doing anything wrong by the letter of the law if if the documentary painted you out in a more accurate light in your vision what do you think it would say about um chimp owners well there isn't first of all that many chimp owners left in the US because Peta has um done their work for quite a number of years to place all chimps that are um privately owned into their uh globally Federated sanctuaries over the last few years by using um an act that we have called The Endangered Species Act and they have a civilian clause in the end of that act that basically says that anybody that is a civilian can sue another person um by interpretation of the law that says that if they feel like that the Exotic is being harmed and harassed which that leaves a broad spectrum of interpretation there's no set rules that says what they establish as being um harming and harassing so it's by interpretation only so it's not black and white and Peta has used cookie cutter case after case between the chimps and um Tigers to eliminate them out of um you know private sector because they want to further their agenda to have no exotic or no animals for that matter into private ownership I had no idea about all of this I had no idea about raising chimps the the doco was so eye openening to me to watch um as you said there's not many chimp owners left but to see chimps being raised as from babies breastfed by humans and raised alongside other children all almost as siblings it was just mindblowing for someone like me that had no idea it focuses a lot on you and your chimp Tonka can you tell us a bit about Tonka for people that have no idea tonka's past and how you came to love Tonka Tonka everybody that met Tonka loved Tonka he had been a movie chimp his whole entire life so he was bred and raised by different trainers throughout his life to perform in Hollywood and to be around humans so he is what I call a humy which is half human half um chimpanzee because we inert the behaviors of a human by allowing them to live amongst us and to act and be just like children um hence the word humy I feel like that Tonka just had the greatest personality in the world he was the most amazing chimp you could ever run across he definitely chose the um Human Side versus the chimp side on majority of the occasions um and that's what he felt comfortable with and that was my huge concern and that's why I hid Tonka was because Tonka was just that and it was funny while I was waiting to talk to you guys I ran across an article that uh people did uh seven hours ago in the US uh People magazine that one of the caregivers um from The Professional sanctuary as Peta calls them um had said to People magazine that when Tonka first arrived at the facility that he was more humanized than he was chimp so that just goes to show that everything that I said and what I Stood Beside to try to protect honka was was definitely noticed not just by us the people that believe in private ownership but also to the professional Sanctuary that currently houses him you say that you in the doco that you love your chimps more than your kids in some way how how come what is the difference and how can that love be stronger well it's not really stronger when you're in the mode and you're coming out of court and you're you know so hyped up over uh the court case and you know trying to make sure that everything is done appropriately you kind of like are so you have so much adrenaline that you don't exactly know how to express yourself so to say that I love um Tonka more than my children is probably not politically correct what I really mean is I was a foster parent for many years and I adopted the little girl that I have so I have one biological son and I have a daughter that I adopted when she was well I got her when she was six weeks old she was in the foster care system till she was two so I actually got to adopt her when she was two and basically the same love that I have for Erica is the same that I have for my biological son which is the same that I had for Tonka so basically whenever I took Tonka in and my heart melted for him and I considered him my boy I did the same thing with the the biological human child that I adopted T I feel like um even if people disagree with the owning of exotic animals that you do I think it would be undeniable to say that um intentions aren't pure and that you you love them do you feel uh do you feel very misunderstood oh very much so and in fact I've been wanting to just get my side of the story out without somebody else telling me scripted what to say or how to act or what to do I just want people to realize that as far as Tonka and my relationship I've begged people to please give me the opportunity to prove to you guys that Tonka would rather prefer to be home and by that I mean that I would like to be able to take my transporter cage no sedation drugs out to the island and I have not seen Tonka for two years and I would just like to be able to go out there be able to open that transporter cage and ask Tonka if he wants to go home and I 100% And they can have social media there they can have you know pea there they can have the sanctuary there they can have anybody they choose to be there and I can 100% guarantee you and I truthfully feel this way that I could always just say hey Tonka do you want to go home come on let's go home and if he got in that transporter cage without any sedation drug any coaxing anything else but those words and if he did I begged them that to let me try that and if if he does to let me be able to bring him home where he belongs and where he chooses to be it's interesting he heing you say all that despite that the at the end of the whole series we see some graphic injuries your ear um your ear partly taken off you were really hurt we've seen a woman's face completely taken off like the these are still aggressive animals how do you reconcile the fact that I'm sure you weren't expecting the attack to happen or the lady wasn't expecting to have her face ripped off but she still did but yet this is an animal that is allowed to be around little children and and you know like it's from the outside it's hard to understand how you can't also see the danger and how problematic that might be for people well first of all that documentary is not politically correct about any of that and to go into details about that would be longstanding and would be a long conversation with you guys but that actually did not take place what do you mean which bit the part about that uh cha me that did not take place at all what what so what were we watching that was um it's it's just a very very long story but I self assure you same thing that I had a debate with the documentary crew about is uh it's just longstanding but I can self assure you I've never been injured by a chimpanzee ever and definitely not those traumatic injuries sorry sorry just to um labor on it because it is such a big part of the do the dock I feel like it we can't just stop here not getting an understanding then of what actually happened cuz I feel like if you're trying to set the record straight for people watching it they are walking away thinking you've been injured by a chimp what then was it someone else that injured you or another animal that injured you or um it it's like I said it it would take forever to go into the whole story because nobody else is aware of it but I can self assure you I did not get hurt by a chimpanzee T but a lady did have a face ripped off she did but there was extenuating circumstances because you got to realize Travis was one of Connie's babies and so we know the situation behind Travis from you know birth on and that was not handled appropriately by the handlers that H had Travis and that tragedy would have never have happened if you would have had the appropriately hand handling of that chimp yeah but I I guess you've got to understand that we are trying to be empathetic with your point of view and you know I said your intentions seem very pure and and it's clear that you love um your animal but you've got to kind of also understand for people watching they've seen someone's face get ripped off and that is quite confronting and so surely you can also see from an outsider's perspective how they would think these animals are incredibly dangerous well exactly and I I do from an outsider's um perspective see that but it would be the same thing as the pit bulls because if you ever look at case scenario play byplay how many children are attacked by their pet Pit Bulls um and that's a decision that those um parents make for those children and they put them In Harm's Way so are we to eliminate all the pit bulls and are we to blame all the pit bulls for having um certain attacks versus some that never would attack it that's that's kind of a broad spectrum and that's you'd have to do an more of a deep analysis as to what the situation was about and also to um to realize that there are other animals whether they be as large as a chimp or whether it be something of an exotic animal doesn't mean that we don't have domesticated animals that can do the same thing you the doco there is sorry in the doco there's photos of your injuries your hands bandaged and in your own words you explain those injuries are you saying that what you said in the doco um is that what you were told to say and that's not your own words or how do you explain that part of the documentary again I I'm I just feel like that that whole situation was scripted do you think that was because they gave you a a fake director and there was trust there that you thought um it was someone kind of from your world I mean this was someone who used to work at the circus involved with animals and do you feel like they built up a trust that was shouldn't have been there in the first place and so you were coerced into saying things that you didn't necessarily believe or were true well I think it was taken out of context just like a lot of the other stuff was taken out of context and yes it is because I had private conversations with somebody that I did not realize was basically bought and paid for by Eric good and I think all of the if anybody could just listen to the real version of everything that happened with Tonka and everything that happened with Connie Casey's case and everything else I think people would be quite amazed at the discrepancies with this documentary versus the reality I guess that's what um we're trying to do now on the reason I keep talking about it is cuz I feel like people are going to walk away with an idea in their head that you were attacked and this is an opportunity for you to say what you saw is not what happened but because you're not willing to say what happened I think people are still going to walk away thinking you were attacked what can you not explain a little bit about or give some context as to what we saw so that people can understand that accurate representation that you're so desperately trying to get across well first of all I had told them that a baboon had attacked me um so like I said there the context is totally different than what really happened and so it's it was just misleading on the document documentary and I think that was to further their agenda with Peta to be able to go ahead and um you know further the agenda for the um primate safety act that's currently being in legislation to ban the primat so if you want to know the truth I think it was all slanted for AR purposes to try to uh further their agendas which is to get all primates out of the um private sector so I think that they beefed up or maybe embellished or exaggerated a lot of the documentary was that your baboon or somebody else's baboon it was not my baboon no hey T while we are kind of setting things straight um are there other major glaring things in the doco that you really think were misleading and that you would like to set straight now actually I just had this conversation with Jeremy McBride and Eric good um via text this tonight because I'm really disappointed with the way the documentary went and the way that they led me to believe things were going to be different um and so I they wanted me to give them a couple of clear examples as to uh what it is that I feel was not appropriate and one of them is when um in the first series or the first segment when um jerem I mean Eric good no sorry um um Jared Goodman the attorney for PETA said that all I had to do was make a few uh improvements and and that was not his exact words but it was like improvements to to lead people to believe that all I had to do was simply fix a couple things at Connie's current facility and that I would have been able to keep Tonka to make it look like I didn't make any efforts to try to keep my kids but that's far from the truth and the whole thing of it is is it's outlined in a court document in the eastern district federal courts of Missouri where I signed a consent decree with Peta that plainly laid out the groundwork as to what I needed to do to try to save my kid and what happened was um I was supposed to build a facility from ground up buy a piece of property build a facility uh do all the things that I needed to do within a six-month time frame well the problem with that was 6 months was not long enough and I had two month extension um if I hadn't a good enough reason to get the extension and I tried to reach out to them in January way before I need my time was up to get an extension and they refused to even listen firstly but secondly is if people look at the date that that consent decree was signed it was signed right when Co hit and there would have been no way anyone humanly Poss possible could have done more than what I did to get a facility built for those three so that I could be able to maintain those chimps but in the docu series they both made it like that I just nonchalantly didn't care or didn't make efforts to try to save those kids and just made me seem like I'm just this like frivolous person that that really didn't put out efforts and that's far from being the truth and like I said it's all lined out because uh Britney Pete just did the paa director just uh did a a interview recently um like yesterday with uh not people but I can't remember who she did it with but I read it where she even she was very cordial to spell out what exactly that I had to do and in the she did omit the time frame and she did omit that Co did hit but at least she was more fair and um stating what really took place instead of just made up fiction facts the links that you went to to not have Tonka taken away from you and to I mean you are lying to a federal court about Tonka not being dead you used I think you used your friends uh you dug up a dead uh chimp from your friend's house that was buried there and drove it across different states to make sure you could provide ashes of aimp if if not toners to prove that um you know you didn't have Tonka and that Tonka was dead I start to imagine like what would have happened if you were pulled over like do you ever think back to some of those links you went to and and have any regrets over any of them oh yeah I definitely have regrets first of all I don't want to have to lie to a federal court judge because that was unfair to her she didn't deserve that and um that it's that I mean I I mean I admit whenever I do wrong or I don't feel like that that was an appropriate thing to do and and that at that time I was just desperate and I I just didn't know what else to do to be honest with you it wasn't thought out it was just played out every day because just like I whenever I presented the fact that um Tonka died um and Peta got the other six chimps I thought once they got the other six chimps and they were able to write about their victory that they would just leave that situation alone with Tonka so I didn't have any like like you know set plans on how I was going to handle it if they didn't so basically if you want to use the analogy that I was flying by the seat of my pants that's pretty much what I was doing and all I just knew is every day I'd look at tonka's face because I had made a promise to him back whenever he was still at home that I would not um ever ever ever let him have to go anywhere that he did not feel loved every single solitary day and that he didn't have the attention that he deserved and that he no more had to ever work again in movies and that he didn't have to breed to make other people money that he would never ever have to work to ever make somebody else's money and that we would just love him for him and give him the best life that he possibly could have until he died so I disappointed him and it it's just a mess you obviously there's no doubt the love you have um for Tonka and you obviously making those decisions in his best interest how do you know it's what Tonka wanted how do you know that ton wanted to be kept in those you know there's accusations of you know feeding we saw you know Coke and macers and all these things that you know others have said is not appropriate for a Chim how do you know that that Tonka loved that life and wanted to be with you well again again just like I told you about that article tonight the people that are supposedly what Peter considers professional sanctuaries admitted that Tonka was so humanized when he first went there so obviously he knew nothing else so it's the same thing that I say about kids that live in poverty-stricken areas but they are well cared for their parents still provide them with clean clothes and food and and uh a roof over their head yes they may not live in that mansion that some of them other kids like the Kardashian kids but are they less loved and do they not deserve to be able to live like that if if that's what they're used to and if that's something that they have no objections to and how I know this is because whenever they came to get Tonka it took them 45 minutes to Dart him to get him out of here he screamed the whole time so I don't think he wanted to go and how I know he wanted to stay whenever I brought him here I didn't use any sedation drugs and I was able to get him home safely without having to do that so I think that's by proxy by choice and on top of that again I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and tell you that Tonka wants to come home still to this day and if everybody's so self assured that that I'm lying or that I'm not politically correct with that statement give me the opportunity I'm challenging everybody that's hearing this give me the opportunity to go out there with no sedation drugs to that big chimp that everybody else seems to be intimidated by let me go up to him and just ask him if he wants to come home and if he gets in that create on his own then obviously that's what he wants T I want to give you a hug I um we come from very different world but I think there's something about your passion and humility that is um relatable to everyone uh your name now um from what it was what a month ago is going to be one of the spoken most spoken names um on the planet for allbe it maybe a short time but what's the reaction being like people I'm assuming can access you pretty easily via social media what what have they said oh they've been very cruel which you know to be honest with you I expect that because you know Peta and a lot of people have really driven it in people's heads that animals don't belong there uh but I have said this time and time again and I'll state it to you and I'll state it to Peta because I have had the same conversation with peta's attorney um Jared Goodman you know I can understand New World New Life New People's outlook on things and if that's how people truly feel that's fine I'm not one to um like try to push my um opinions and my desires on to somebody else because we can have difference of opinions and still exist in the world but what I say about that is is just leave and this is what I told him leave the chimps and the animals that are they consider dangerous where they are and where they've lived their whole entire life let them live and exist that way because that's what they're accustomed to and if you feel like it's wrong select new legislation go get new legislation passed that says chimps are you know are dangerous or chimp should not be in private sector or they shouldn't be in somebody's home or however they View their their opinions and if if that's the way it should be and God you know is okay with that let them pass new legislation for the upand cominging that could be and let them animals not have to start out that way and live that life for 32 years or 60 years because we did have a chimp that was 64 that was a zippy chimp let them live the life that they've lived and live their life out and just don't bring anym into that environment if that's strongly how they believe and if that's something that they feel like they have to be passionate enough about to fight for but don't hurt the other animals that already there and and don't you know they talk about The Endangered Species Act about harming and harassing these kids well and they say that that's what Connie did and that's what initiated the lawsuit well if that's the case what do they think they're doing by taking those chimps out of the only environment that they ever knew and like I told them you know I understand because I'm a human and I understand that there is courts and I understand what courts are about and I understand about rules and regulations but the one that got affected most and foremost is that little boy and he doesn't understand where his mom is he doesn't understand why he don't get a ice cream sandwich at night and a warm blanket to go to bed with and somebody to kiss him good night maybe to everybody else that's not normal but to Tonka that was normal and sorry if they don't agree with it and just like everybody trying to make me out to be a bad guy by saying that I kept him in a small cage I made sure that that cage was the same cage size that he had at the facility um and I also did not plan for that to take place and he was not there the full year you know he was in Ohio for six months he was at the facility for three months he was only in that basement for a short period of time and that was just because people started putting out rewards for him and I had a building started being constructed to put him out there in and I I he would never have had to be and he would have had outdoor access to but because of the situation that Peta put us in was what we had to deal with so it wasn't like that that was a long-term goal plan for him or a life for him and he didn't stay in that cage when it was just he and I he could come out with me and he could sit on the couch with me and he could surf the TV channels he could do whatever he wanted well he would just surf the channels I would make him quit after a while because channel surfing drives me insane but I tolerated it out of him more than I would anybody else but he would just basically like hanging out he he you know he liked watching um YouTube or not YouTube sorry um videos on um Instagram of his kids that are at Doc anel's place and and he liked watching animals on TV and stuff he had an iPad that he could scroll and watch things it wasn't like and I played with him just like if he i w he was a chimp or I was a chimp we play Chase just tickle me just like they would if they were playing with another chimp I let him groom me all the time we did um uh foraging we foraged for stuff we did a lot of the same stuff that that a chimp would be able to do and if he would have been a younger chimp I would have felt horrible for him to be where he was but because Tonka had fractured his elbow he he had limited mobility and because of a stroke that he had had um in May of 20 20 2020 i i i his Mobility was quite different he had to pull himself up to get on the table it wasn't like he was a jumper and that type stuff so people need to realize the situation first before they pass judgment on me and realize that there there's a lot more to the story the documentary crew took pictures of the building um the last time they were here but they sure didn't show that in the documentary to where would have been so there's so much more to this story than what has played out like I said it was definitely spe specified for AR agendas and it was not fair to me and it sure sure wasn't fair to my boy is there limits do you are there any limits or lines you wouldn't cross like I found it quite a lot watching a chimp being breastfed you obviously didn't have Tonga from that young age would that have been something that you felt quite comfortable with or even or is that too far for you like within the chimp Community with people that own chimps is there is there your own boundaries that you would not cross well I wouldn't even breastfeed my own son that's biologically mind so that definitely would be Out Of Reach for me but if I um if I could save him any other way sure I would um and would I be opposed to feeding him breast milk if I had to pump I guess I could I don't know that part I I to be honest with you I wouldn't do it for my son or didn't do it for my son which he was healthy of course but but I fed him a bottle and and um store bought formula so you know for me that might be Out Of Reach but no to be honest with you if Tonka needed it I would have done it sure hey T hadex um thank you for uh giving us a bigger picture to uh the documentary that everyone is talking about at the moment we really appreciate you taking the time and and clearing some things up thanks da thank you verying much