Wow. Moe. Wow.

A 42-year-old chimpanzee who is toilet-trained and can eat with a knife and fork is believed to be at large in a Southern California forest after escaping his cage.

The chimp called Moe disappeared Friday from Jungle Exotics, which trains animals for the entertainment industry.

The chimp wandered into a house next door, surprising construction workers who saw him head for a nearby mountain. A weekend search in the San Bernardino National Forest 50 miles east of Los Angeles came up empty.

"We think he may be hunkered down near a water source," said McCasland. "We think he's in a contained area a quarter-mile away but he's probably disoriented and the brush is extremely heavy."

St. James Davis brought Moe home from Tanzania in 1967 after the baby primate lost his mother to poachers. He and his wife treated Moe as their surrogate son, toilet-training him, teaching him to eat with a knife and fork and letting him sleep in their bed and watch TV.

Over the Davises' protests, Moe was taken to an animal sanctuary. But in 2005, when they took a cake to celebrate Moe's birthday with him, the couple was viciously attacked by two other chimpanzees who had escaped their cages.

The chimps nearly killed St. James Davis, chewing off his nose, testicles and foot and biting off chunks of his buttocks and legs, before the sanctuary owner shot the animals to death.

The couple, who have no children, broke down in tears at a press conference in Los Angeles. "What am I going to do?" sobbed LaDonna Davis.

"He meant the world to us," said St. James Davis. "He was the best man at my wedding."