Michael Jackson’s legacy is already dubious enough — and now another new documentary has unearthed yet more skeletons from his closet. And not human ones.
A new ITV doc, Search for Michael Jackson’s Zoo, will cover an aspect of the King of Pop’s eccentricity often overlooked among the more salacious: the menagerie of animals he kept at his Neverland estate. And according to his former maid Adrian McManus, who is interviewed for the television special, the creatures at the ranch were NOT treated well.
Among the horror stories about MJ’s animals includes many pets passing away prematurely, “with two giraffes dying in a fire and another from a broken neck,” per The Sun. He apparently let children hurl rocks at his lion Kimber and kept elephants chained by their legs in small enclosures. He also allowed guests to continue petting the giraffes even after one of them attacked an adult and child.
McManus, who herself was attacked by the singer’s two orangutans and bitten by his untrained chimp Max, said her boss thought of himself as a “real-life Doctor Doolittle.” She explained:
“Michael said he was an animal lover, but many animals were poorly treated. The zoo should not have been there because no one ever really properly looked after the animals and all of the staff were in danger. I am shocked no one got seriously injured or attacked.”
People apparently did get attacked, as we’ll see in a moment. We believe she means no one got “seriously” attacked — as in killed or maimed. She continued:
“Michael should never have been allowed to have kept those animals. It breaks my heart to think about all the cruelty. Animals died and disappeared all the time at Neverland, but unusually it was considered normal. No one seemed to investigate or ask questions.”
Yikes.
So yeah, remember those attacks we mentioned? In one alarming incident, McManus recalled:
“One day a security team sped across the property to pick me up from cleaning the movie theatre in a small white pickup truck. They told me I had to get to Michael’s room immediately as he was asking for me, but they didn’t know for what reason. They raced back to the house, I ran into his private chambers and saw Michael sat on the right-hand side of his bed, looking furious. One of his child friends was sat there next to him, looking scared and nervous with blood trickling down his face.”
She continued:
“Michael sternly said: ‘We couldn’t find you… I need you to go find some antiseptic and a band-aid as one of the chimps has bitten him.’ The boy, his eyes watering, said nothing, but his face was swelling up. He looked in utter shock and trauma. Michael turned to him and raged: ‘I told you not to tease the chimp.’ I ran to a walk-in pantry for medical supplies and handed him what creams we had, bandages and Michael cleaned him up on his own. It was not spoken about ever again.”
If we needed any more proof that the Thriller artist was unconcerned about the safety and well being of his child visitors…
The ex-employee added:
“Soon after that experience, all the staff were sent to a doctor’s office in Solvang to get tetanus shots. We were told it was for our safety with the animals.”
That wasn’t Adrian’s only awful tale. She shared:
“On another occasion, I was out by the merry-go-round ride at the back of the main house. Me and another maid on a break, went over to see them with their trainer. Max ran up to me, knelt down a little and stuck his head under my skirt. I panicked and asked ‘Who taught him that?’ It felt like he had been trained to do that move, but the handler just laughed at me. Then Max ran off and played on the merry-go-round.”
SO creepy!
Adrian admitted:
“Animal encounters going wrong would be treated like a joke and gossip by staff, rather than actually serious concerns.”
Yeah, those are some pretty damn serious concerns. It sounds like a terrible environment for the animals and the guests. MJ really got away with a lot of unsettling behavior during his lifetime…
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