Inside the envelope addressed to him, but with no return address was a birthday card with a cat on it.
The cat was a ginger kitten that reminded me of Nile. When the card was opened, it played the birthday song, only with cats meowing.
Bow listened, chewed on the card a little, shook it along with the beat of the music, then closed it to silence the cats and handed it back to me.
Afterwards he pointed toward the front door frantically several times, before spelling. "הם לא באו" -- "They didn't come!"
It turns out Bow thought it must be his birthday, if he got a birthday card in the mail today, and he was a little upset that nobody had come to his birthday party. I had to reassure him that today is neither his actual birthday nor the day we set for his birthday party to take place this year. Eventually, he calmed down.
It is hard to explain to an intelligent, literate, but impatient chimpanzee that the arrival of a birthday card in the mail does not necessarily mean that today is his birthday.
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Good job thank you for sharing
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting - trying to explain the concept of time to him. Do you know who sent the card?
ReplyDeleteHi, Kathy. Bow actually has a pretty good sense of time, when it comes to 24 hour increments. He can tell you when it is time for lunch or dinner without looking at a watch. But the whole lunar versus solar calendar question has got us all confused, I think. It's not as obvious which timetable we should be going by -- the sun or the moon.
DeleteI think the card was from Bow's friend who brings the bananas. She is the one who also brought the issues of the Missouri Conservationists. But the card was not signed.