That’s a cool story I’m guessing things like that don’t happen much anymore
No those days are long gone.
Tom is 83 now his last bear died about 8 years ago.
He said that the state (Illinois) had made it almost impossible to keep his license for exotic animals.
When I was about 12 he got 4 chimpanzees. Some guy that did shows at a mall in illinois had shut down and was loosing his license so he gave them to him for nothing,
Tom was a full time farmer he had thousands of acres around the county so he decided to let the chimps live in one of his barns.
That was a bad mistake they tore shit apart and damaged some of his equipment so he just let them go after a while.
They were a menace and got into lot's of trouble, one got into a neighbors hog barn and started busting lights and messing with the pigs.
One stayed around the farm and would taunt his bear dogs,
Tom had the dogs staked to do houses with a chain there were 10 dog houses in a row and then straight across from those 10 he had 10 more.
He could walk down the center of them and feed and water them on both sides, there was about a 6 foot gap he could walk through.
Well the chimp started walking down the center path and he had a stick and when he came around the dogs went nuts.
The chimp would then clobber each dog as he walked by.
Tom got sick of this so one day he lengthened all of their chains, that was the last day the chimp ever hit a dog.