I am a primatologist who spends twelve hours most days in the company of a thirteen year old chimpanzee named Bow. I am also an editor with Inverted-A Press.
The cockatiel eggs did not hatch. One of them even broke, and it did not look as if it had been fertilized. Nevertheless, there were plenty of other kinds of eggs around Easter time.
While the annual Easter egg hunt for Bow had to be cut short due to chain saws in the woods behind our house and later rain, a few days later, Bow found another egg that he had overlooked on April 1.
It was a nice, sunny day for a change, and Bow enjoyed his find.
After sniffing the candy, he determined it to be good.
While the sunshine lasted. Bow and Leo made the most of it in the back yard.
But the sun-soaked days did not last long.
Soon it was snowing again.
RELATED: An Interview with Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.
Sometimes it gets very hot here. The temperature goes up to a hundred degrees or thereabouts, and everything outside seems droopy. But Bow loves the heat and the sunshine, and luckily for us the outer pen is facing east, which means that in the late afternoon it is shaded by the house. Bow can go out there and enjoy the heat and the light of the sun, but it's not too much to bear.
The bidens by the road seem to be the only flowers entirely unaffected by the heat.
Nobody authorized those flowers to grow there. Nobody planted or watered them. And if they die, nobody will weep for them, either. But when I went to check the mail yesterday afternoon, there they were, happy and cheerful, ready to greet me.
There are official flowers, and then there are weeds. But you can't count on official flowers to be there for you in a pinch. It's the weeds that help in an emergency, because they take care of themselves. Likewise, there are official fleets and there are "pirates", but who really comes to the rescue, when the government does not care if you win or lose as long as the taxes are paid?
There are official apes, and there are illegitimate apes. There are apes whose existence is authorized, and then there are "illegitimate pregnancies". One of the most astounding claims in the Slate article that I linked last time was that Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh was accused of allowing an unauthorized pregnancy to take place among the bonobos. Unauthorized by whom?
If the pregnancy took place during Savage-Rumbaugh's tenure as chief researcher, who else could authorize it but her? And what exactly was she supposed to do? Set up a puritanical set of human-based mores to teach to the bonobos to keep them from conceiving? In the name of conservation, no less?
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Teco
They're talking about little Teco. They think he should not exist. By what right?
The fact is that if you are an "official" researcher and have access to "official" apes, then you come under a very strict set of Federal laws, and your establishment is run by a committee, and your employees get to tell you what to do. For instance, the veterinarians and the caretakers do not answer to the person that hired them They answer to the Feds. Once you understand this arrangement, you start to understand why both the bonobo and the gorilla researchers are constantly under fire by their own underlings.
Even though their establishments are ostensibly private institutions, because they have succumbed to temptation of public funding, even if it's just in the form of a non-profit, they have allowed their apes to be nationalized. They have lost the most basic rights of ownership and control. The sanctuaries and zoos, likewise, are not really private institutions, even though they fall within the "private sector." All these apes are under the government thumb.
Bow is not an official chimpanzee. My research with him is not "authorized". I am just a private person, like any other. We are not an institution. It's a home. This means, among other things, that we are not merely banished from the Federal funding system. We are also not allowed to meet with any ape within that system. I don't think the public in whose name this is being done knows that, and I do think it is time that they knew.
We are free, and we are separated, but our seclusion is not something we have chosen. Instead, it is another kind of segregation that the government has put into effect. Illegitimate chimpanzees are not to mingle with official apes.
However, in a pinch, just like the privateers and the weeds at the side of the road, an unofficial ape can come in handy, can save the day, can bring happiness.
So here's to unauthorized happiness and to wildflowers wherever they may grow!
Bow and I had a very quiet weekend. We had a task to accomplish, and we have accomplished it. We needed to go over the proof of the book Transatlantic Lives. The proof came back to us from the author, marked through in many, many places. We looked it over, and eventually I corrected it. It took three days of intensive work.
Today, after correcting the entire interior, I made a book trailer for Transatlantic Lives. And then when I was done, Bow asked me to spend some time with him. Sometimes he just likes to sit next to me, both of us quiet and still and nothing much happening. Sometimes, he asks to go out, and again nothing much happens. Our lives are marked by a conspicuous lack of drama.
In a novel or a short story, a lack of drama is a serious flaw. Drama is not just something that we look for in plays. Any story requires drama to hold our attention. Epic poems, ballads, and novels all require drama.
Drama does not merely consist of a list of events that happen in a given sequence. There has to be tension. There needs to be suspense. There are plot points and cliff-hangers and climaxes and denouements. If we don't have those things, then it's not dramatic.
One of the peculiar qualities of Transatlantic Lives is that even though the book tells about extremely dramatic historical events and how they impacted the lives of two individuals, the telling of it minimizes the drama, to the point where you almost feel that you are experiencing moments frozen in time, crystallized and preserved in all their stunning detail, but with the drama sucked out.
In this day and age, drama may not be what everyone is looking for, both in their reading material and in the lives that they lead. Many avoid drama, thinking that the word refers to people behaving badly or drawing undue attention to themselves. In common parlance, drama has come to mean melodrama or false hysterics.
I don't mind, at this point in my life, that not every day involves a dramatic turning point. But I sometimes wonder whether Bow might not be missing out on the usual dramas that take place in a chimpanzee social group: males fighting over dominance, coalitions forming, couples forming and going off to mate. These are all good things to have happen in your social group, and I'll readily admit that nothing even resembling that is going on around here.
Some people think that Bow belongs with his own kind and that keeping him from these kinds of interactions is a form of abuse or neglect, because every chimpanzee longs for the drama of natural social group, so that he can practice his social skills and feel that every day is a meaningful, significant plot point in his short, but highly dramatic life.
Yes, in the wild life is much shorter, and much more exciting. And I do feel guilty sometimes that Bow has been deprived of that. If I could, I would provide him with a mate. If I could, I would give him other males to play -- and fight -- with.
But recent criticism of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has made me realize that the people who want Bow to be sent off to a sanctuary are not actually planning on letting Bow enjoy mating and striving for dominance in a social group.
Sue has been accused of "abusing" the bonobos under her charge because:
1) She allowed them to be together, and in some cases this involved two or more of the males getting injured in a fight over dominance.
2) She allowed them to be together, and this has led to copulation and pregnancy.
And now these people are saying that the bonobos should be taken away from Sue and sent to a sanctuary where nothing like that can ever happen.
If depriving a chimpanzee or bonobo of the companionship of his own kind is abusive, and if allowing them to have that companionship is also abusive, then I can't imagine what would not be abusive.
At the moment, Bow and I are pretty content with our undramatic lives. He's not yet eleven, and though he longs for a mate, he would probably not be allowed to mate by other males in his group, if he lived in a social group. In fact, he would probably get beat up a lot, to keep him from mating.
But if the time comes when it's possible to provide Bow with companions of his own kind, I am willing to put up with the drama, for the sake of the fulfillment that would come with it.
What the critics want, however, is very unclear. It's almost as if they are hoping for a utopia where all the fulfillment of striving for happiness comes with none of the drama. I think it's a pipe dream.
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