Credit: ABC

Sadly, nothing lasts forever. And this became especially apparent this past week when General Hospital‘s Maurice Benard (Sonny) shared some sad news. Well, we suppose it was only sad depending on how you felt about a particular fuzzy baby named Venasa. Maybe we should back up a little.

Almost exactly three years ago, at the height of the pandemic, Benard’s daughter got him a very special, very unique Christmas present: a baby orangutan he named Venasa. It wasn’t a real orangutan, of course. At least, we were pretty sure it wasn’t. Mostly sure. We’ll be darned if that thing wasn’t lifelike!

To make matters more confusing, when he brought her into the studio to show off, his invitation to gently touch her came with a warning, “She’ll bite you.” She didn’t, of course, because she’s not real… Right?

Well, Venasa’s been hanging out for the past three years, popping up here and there in Benard’s Instagram posts and videos, like that time he and Chad Duell (Michael) gazed adoringly at her like she was their newborn daughter.

But now, Venasa has, sadly, been maimed — er, broken — after his dog, Vito, got his hands on her. Benard shared a sad video, complete with Alanis Morisette’s “You Learn” playing over it as he explained what happened and showed us the horrifying end result.

“I’m going to have to put my baby orangutan away because Vito, my bulldog, ruined it by biting her face. It’s ruined. It’s ruined now, it’s completely ruined. So you guys won’t see baby orangutan again ever. Thank you, Vito.”

Now, we’re not saying the baby orangutan frightened us, but we can see how some of the fans would remark in the comments about how scary she was. Still, this occurrence was utterly tragic. Our hearts go out to Benard and Vito in this difficult time.

Actually, we take that back about Vito. He looks pretty happy with himself. But hey, at least we finally got a definitive answer as to whether she was real or not!