Michael Jackson’s pet chimp Bubbles turned 40 with a party fit for pet royalty

nypost.com:

Bubbles, Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee, turned 40 and celebrated with a party befitting the King of Pop’s pet.“He did get a cake — but it’s a special ape-healthy cake,” said Patti Ragan, founding director at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Fla., the “retirement home” where Bubbles has lived since 2005.“We frost it with mashed bananas and add a little bit of blue food coloring … and then we wrote his name in blueberries,” Ragan said.

The theme, fittingly, was bubbles.“We had tubs of bubble bath. They had paper bubbles everywhere,” she added.And Bubbles was a gracious host.“He just wanted to see who was visiting,” she said. “He came and looked at all the staff that had come to be there for the party.”The “We Are The World” fan club gifted Bubbles a photo blanket with his pictures on it.

Jackson, who died in 2009 at 50, bought the chimp as an infant in 1983 from a Texas research facility. The pampered primate lived in Neverland Ranch and slept in a crib in Jackson’s bedroom.

By 2003, Bubbles was too large — and therefore unsuitable as a pet, so he was moved into the California ranch owned by trainer Bob Dunn. “When he became too big to be around people, maybe about 6 or 7 years old, Michael Jackson’s trainer had him with his other chimps,” Ragan explained.Bubbles now stands at just under 5 feet tall and weighs about 185 pounds, according to Ragan.Staff at the ape sanctuary entertain Bubbles and all their primate residents with DVDs of Jackson. “If he saw Michael Jackson [in person], of course, he’d remember him and go crazy in greeting him,” she added.