Owner of pet chimp who attacked woman interviewed on Today Show; 911 call released (VIDEO)

Travis the chimp in happier days with his owner, Herold.
(Photo courtesy Today Show)

The recording of chimp owner, Sandra Herold's, 911 call is so horrifying to hear that Matt Lauer of the Today Show called it "chilling" to listen to. 

On Monday afternoon, Herold's 15 year-old pet chimpanzee, Travis, so viciously attacked her friend, Chandra Nash, that Nash is reported to have lost her face and both hands. She remains in extremely critical condition.

Trying to stop the attack, 70 year-old Herold hit Travis with a shovel and stabbed him with a butcher knife. When that failed to subdue her pet chimp and he turned on her, Herold fled into a nearby car and called 911.

In a frantic, terrified voice, Herold pleads for the police to come and shoot her chimp. 

“Send the police up! With a gun! With a gun! Hurry up!” she screams.

911 Operator: “Who has a gun?”

Herold: “Please hurry up. He's killing my girlfriend!”

911 Operator: “Who is killing your friend?”

Herold: “My chimpanzee.”

911 Operator: “Oh, your chimpanzee is killing your friend.”

Herold: “Yeah. He ripped her apart! Hurry up! Hurry up, please!”

911 Operator: “There is someone on the way.”

Herold: “With guns, please. Shoot him!”

911 Operator: “… What is the monkey doing?”

Herold: “He ripped her face off!”

911 Operator: “He ripped her face off?”

--Transcript of 911 call

In an interview with Jeff Rossen of NBC News, Herold recounts the terrible afternoon. "After I stabbed him," Herold says of Travis, "he looked at me like, 'Mom, what did you do?'"

The chimp, who Herold raised since he was three days old, is the only family she has left. Her husband, Jerome, died five years ago, and her only child--a daughter--was killed in a traffic accident. Herold raised the chimp like a child.

He couldn't be more my son than if I gave birth to him.

--Sandra Herold, speaking of her pet chimp, Travis, who brutally attacked a woman on Monday

Herold taught Travis to brush his teeth and dress himself. She fed him "filet mignon, lobster tails, and Lindt’s chocolate.” He drank wine from a stemmed glass, could log onto her computer to look at pictures and channel surfed while watching television. 

"He could drive. He took off with the car a couple of times," Herold tells Rossen in the interview. "Isn't that dangerous?" the reporter asks. "Well..." she says, trailing off. 

But she is unequivocal when asked if she thought it was wise to keep a chimpanzee as a pet.

“Would I have done it again?" Herold says, with a tone of defiance (or self defense). "Yes! ... They're the closest thing to humans — to us. We can give them a blood transfusion, and they can give us one. How many people go crazy and kill other people? This is one incident that I don't know what happened...It was a horrible thing, but I'm not a horrible person. And he wasn't a horrible chimp. It was a freak thing.”

Still, wildlife experts say that chimpanzees, while very similar to humans, remain wild at heart. "Sooner or later, the chimp is going to blow," says one expert. 

"A two hundred pound chimp is much stronger than a two hundred pound man," says one official.

"I will miss him the rest of my life," says Herold. 

Nash remains in critical condition. Doctors said today that she is "not doing well."

Watch the Today Show interview...