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One Swedish zoo, seven escape chimpanzees by Imogen West Knights.

Some names have been changed. The problems began when Linda was about 18 months old. For a year she had lived in harmony with a Swedish couple and their three young children in

Liberia.

Hers had not been an easy start in life.

As a baby in 1984, she saw her family shot by poachers in the Liberian jungle.

Adult chimpanzees are sometimes sold as food in bushmeat markets in Central and West Africa.

But the poachers knew that they could get a higher prize by offering the baby chimpanzee to Westerners as a pet.

They took Linder to the town of Yea Caper

where there was a base for a US Swedish iron ore mining company.

The company's managing director initially bought the baby chimpanzee, but it was soon decided that

Linda, as she had now been named, would be happier growing up with other children.

She was offered to another of the company's employees, Ball Benkton and his wife, Pia, who had three young sons. The Swedish couple looked into

Linda's light brown eyes and long soulful face and decided that they could offer

the little chimp a better life as a member of their household.

When the town wasn't being drenched in monsoon rains, Linda spent long hot days outside,

playing with the boys and other children in the hilly gated community of a hundred or so houses that made up the neighborhood.

Climbing the Tamarine tree behind the Benson house.

Although some of the neighbours found it a little tiresome

that the energetic young chimpanzee enjoyed ripping up their flower beds.

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