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.
Why would anybody choose to be cooped up indoors when he could roam free instead? Why would anybody go to work every day in a closed box, when they could be looking at butterflies and flowers all day? Why would a chimpanzee stay in an enclosure rather than go out into the world? Why would a kitten choose to go into a storage shed, when it knows once the door closes, it can't get out till I open it?
The world is full of mysteries.
Bow, for instance, has choices now and has had choices in the past. Each of us do. Millions of people go to work every day in a closed box where they cannot see the outdoors, and they don't come out until it is practically night, and then they go home to another closed box. Yes, they say they do it in order to make a living, but most of what their income pays for is a box to live in. If they did not want to live in a box -- if they wanted to live outdoors instead -- then they would not even need that income.
But I'm not here to tell you about the average employee or about Bow. I'm here to tell you about the kitten. Yesterday, I realized that the kitten likes to be put it in storage. It actually looks forward to its time in the storage shed.
We were walking along and came across another turtle.
The kitten pretended not to be interested.
However, in time its curiosity for the better of it, and it went to inspect the turtle.
It happened like this. The kitten keeps following me on all my walks, just as if it were a dog.
When we spotted the turtle by the lagoon, the kitten took a break, while the turtle tried to decide what to do.
While the turtle was considering, the kitten moved in to inspect it. So I decided to take action. I picked up the kitten by the scruff of its neck and took it to the storage shed. But... I had my phone in one hand and the kitten in the other, so I put the kitten down gently on the grass, while I opened the door to the shed. Now, since we have been through this several times before, you would think the kitten would take this time to escape and avoid incarceration. But, no! The kitten wanted to go in the shed. It waited patiently for me to open the door, and almost walked in by itself. But it hesitated a little, instead allowing me to pick it up again and put it in the shed and close the door.
Eventually, the turtle got up the courage to walk a little.
And then I went for the rest of my nature walk.
I saw two insects sharing a thistle flower.
I saw a hummingbird moth pretty close up in my pasture.
This is the closest I have gotten to a hummingbird moth, but it still looks tiny.
And then when the walk was over -- and it was a very long walk -- I opened the shed door. You would think the kitten would bound out, hungry for freedom, right? But no, it got up slowly, ambled up to the door, sniffed, and then, as if asking itself if leaving the shed was really worth the effort, it jumped out.
I am beginning to think this kitten really wants to be an indoor cat.
The first living being I saw when I went out for my walk yesterday afternoon -- after being greeted by the kitten, of course -- was a three-toed box turtle on the grassy area in the middle of my internal road.
The turtle kept its head out, but it seemed a little traumatized, and it had white damaged areas on the top of its shell. The kitten pretended at first not to be interested at all, but it did walk by a couple of times.
"I am just minding my own business," the kitten seemed to be saying. "Do not pay any attention to me."
The turtle is alert and wary
The turtle looked alert, wary and concerned. The kitten affected ennui and rolled up in a ball on the road behind me.
The Kitten Pretending not to be Interested
However, every time I backed away from the turtle, the kitten went to examine it.
The Kitten Moves In
And when the turtle finally worked up the courage to walk away, the kitten followed it.
So I picked up the kitten by the scruff of its neck, as a mother cat would, and I let the turtle continue with its progress. But the turtle only tried to hide in the longer grass under the oak trees in the tear drop turn, and I realized it would not really go where it wanted to go until I was out of sight. And yet I could not go back in the house and leave the kitten out there, because there was no reason to suppose it would leave the turtle alone.
The Kitten in Storage
So again, as I had done once before, I deposited the kitten in the little storage shed, and after that I realized I could go for a long walk in the pasture without being followed by the kitten, while the turtle could do it its own thing.
I checked on the turtle on more time. It was still in the same spot, and then on my way to the pasture, I saw a Common Buckeye.
Even though I had seen a common buckeye up close before, this was the first time I was struck with how the markings on the back of its wings make a face, if you just look at it the right way.
Can you see the image of the face on the wings of the Buckeye?
You have to be facing it from just the right angle before it looks like a face. The big circles are like eyes, the medium-sized circles in the center are like nostrils, and the smaller circles on the sides are like ear holes. I don't know what animal the buckeye is pretending to be, but I have read that the circles are meant to confuse predators. So though butterflies predate vertebrates on the evolutionary scale, they must have evolved later to mimic their faces, so as to frighten other vertebrates away. And the intelligence that drives the design on the back of the butterfly is not that of the butterfly itself -- it's ours! Not necessarily humans, but any animal capable of making out that face drawing on the back of the wings, is the true author of the design. Now there is a twist on the theory of intelligent design: that later developed animals shape designs on the back of less evolved animals. It's our ability to recognize the gestalt that made it useful to the butterfly!
The butterfly does not need to think the design looks like a face. But if predators do and are scared, the design will be replicated. And then multiple copies will be available, just as in the case of a best selling book.
As a writer, this idea is very discouraging to me, since it means that it's not the story I wrote that is important, but only what readers are able to understand from the story I wrote. It is not my intelligence that limits the effect of my efforts: it is the intelligence of readers.
Later in my walk I came across a much plainer butterfly. It seemed to be trying to look like a dead leaf. I think it might be called a Clover Looper. Looking like a leaf is a good strategy right now, as fall is almost upon us.
It's thistle season again, and though many of the flowers are still closed, a few have already opened for business and are attended by very busy bees.
My property is like a park, a nature preserve of sorts.
I go for a walk here the way some city dwellers go to the park. And I get to decide what exotics will share this paradise with me, even if they are not native to the area and do pose a threat to the wildlife.
Letting the Kitten out of Storage
After I got back from my walk, I let the kitten back out of storage. The turtle was long gone by then. Some people say cats belong indoors all day. Some people say humans should not own animals. No matter what you do, there is going to be somebody to criticize it. But I did not ask for this cat. I found a kitten in a stroller in my barn, and I did not want it to die, so I fed it. This does not mean I am a cat lover, but I am not a cat hater, either. I am trying to find some kind of balance between what is right for the kitten and what is best for me and all the rest of the animals on my property.
Bow happily engages Leo
When I returned to the pens, Bow asked to go outside, and immediately went to engage Leo in play. He looked happy.
I have found that if I do a little mowing in the backyard every day, it does not have to become an overwhelming chore.
Leo is very invested in my mowing
I can take lots of little breaks to smell the flowers.
The Asian dayflowers bloom early each day and then wilt
Leo and Brownie and Bow are all there to participate, each in his own way.
Bow watches me as I mow from inside the outer pen
Sometimes I will take a break on the trampoline, and can view everything that is happening in the yard from a nice vantage point.
Of course, I am not as high up as, say, a kitten on the roof, but that is okay.
Even though I have only mowed about half the yard today, I can take time off when lunch comes around. Later Bow suggests that I go out for a walk in the front yard. I ask him why, and he says because it is good. But he adds: "רק אל תדברי עם החתול". "Just don't talk to the cat."
I don't talk to the kitten, but there is no way I can keep it from talking to me, as it meows at me from the roof as I go out the front door for my walk.
In the pasture there are many new flowers I have not seen before.
Because the path through the pasture passes right by the barn, I have been avoiding it, thinking this would get the kitten to following me.
But now that I know that the kitten does not spend any time in the barn at all, and that it is on the roof all the time, I feel better about venturing into this unspoiled wilderness without an exotic carnivore at my heals.
I can observe the bumblebee on the blossom without fear of disturbance from a feline follower.
"This blossom is occupied," said the beetle to the bumblebee.
On my way back down the path after completing a circuit of the pasture, I encounter a couple of turtles. They are going single file, one after the other.
Could it be mating season? Is this a male pursuing a female? (My turtle expert, Pam Keyes later confirms this.)
Just then I hear a meowing in the background.
The kitten suddenly appears and moves in to investigate.
Just let me check what it smells like!
This is a bit disturbing. What would a kitten do with a turtle, if left to its own devices? It backs away from the turtles when I am watching, but I do not trust it alone with them.
Eventually, as the kitten will not go far so long as the turtles are still there and I am still there, and I am concerned about what might happen if I leave first, I pick up the kitten by the scruff of its neck -- which it allows, as I am like a mother cat when I do this -- and I lock it momentarily in a storage building where we keep discarded toys.When I return moments later to check on the turtles, they are nowhere in sight. They move fast when you are not looking! So I go back and let the kitten out of storage. It follows me all the way home, and once I am inside it probably goes back up on the roof.
I meant to do as Bow asked and not talk to the cat, but that is more easily said than done.
Every day, my daughter and I take turns, sometimes one of us and sometimes the other, feeding the kitten in the barn. We feed it in the barn, because that's where we want it to live. But the kitten has other ideas. The kitten has discovered our house, it knows that we live there, and if we do not allow it to live in the house, it has decided to live on the house.
It all began a couple of days ago, right before the last round of rainstorms. It was fairly hot and sunny, and I was merrily taking pictures of butterflies and hummingbird moths.
The hummingbird moth would not sit still, and the yellow butterfly led me on a merry chase.
And as I was chasing the butterfly, I thought I heard a faint meowing in the background. I could not tell where it was coming from. My daughter came home from school and found me in the front yard filming the yellow butterfly, and when she went to feed the kitten in the barn that day, the kitten was nowhere in sight. She had to go looking for the kitten and made it follow her to the barn where the cat dishes are. That evening we drove to the post office, and when we returned, I saw the kitten curled up on the roof, under the eaves of the extension on the house.
That night it rained. I was sure that the kitten could not possibly have stayed up there all night. Surely, it would have had sense enough to come down and take shelter in he barn. But yesterday afternoon, when I went out momentarily, the cat meowed at my very plaintively. Could the cat have stayed there all night long? Might it be unable to get down on its own?
I was almost ready to go back inside to get the ladder, when I saw that it was slithering down the small maple tree to the ground.
So, clearly, not a helpless little kitten at all. I stopped worrying about it at once, and when I went to feed it in the barn after dinner, I did not worry that the kitten did not appear for its supper. I went for a nice stroll down the path to the twin pines, and still there was no sign of the kitten. Reporting on this to my daughter on my return to the house, I heard this: "The kitten doesn't know where the food is. You have to show her that the food is in the barn." And my daughter went out to find the kitten and lead it to the barn,
We feed the kitten in the same spot at the same time every day. You expect me to believe that the kitten doesn't know where the food is? It was probably on the roof that whole time, with a bird's-eye view of me walking to the barn with the cat food in my hand.
That reminds me of a student at Rice who was enrolled in my class, but hardly ever attended. One day, during the class period, he went to the linguistics office to ask where I was, because he wanted to discuss his grade with me. The secretary told him that I was just then in class, since this was the regular period for when the class that he was enrolled in met every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He was totally surprised to learn this. There is stupid, and then there is feigned stupid. The kitten knows.
A few days ago, Bow shared with me one of his random thoughts. החתול רשע. "The cat is evil." I asked him why he thought the cat was evil. (It was before the kitten was seen on the roof.) He replied: אל תשאלי. "Don't ask."
My daughter is about to turn sixteen. She has never had a cat, because I am severely allergic to cats. But she's always wanted to have one. I recently told her that we had a kitten living on our property, and she fell in love with at once and wants to keep it.
This is going to be her cat, though it will be a barn cat and not a house cat. The kitten is very tame, and though I have refrained from touching it all this time, my daughter picked it up and petted it, and the kitten was delighted by the attention.
Letting her keep the kitten is part of my daughter's birthday gift this year. But we have determined that the kitten is a female, and because I cannot allow too many cats to overrun my property, I have made a very painful decision: when the time is right, I will have the kitten spayed.
This is not for humane reasons. This is purely out of my own self interest. I have no wish to become a cat breeder. Cats are not indigenous to this area; they are exotic. They represent a threat to the local wildlife. So because I don't care about the feline species, I am going to see to it that this particular cat on my property does not reproduce.
What are the alternatives? I could give it to someone else who does want to breed cats. But really, most people who adopt a cat immediately turn around and have it spayed. They pretend they are doing it for the sake of the cat. That is utter nonsense. There just happens to be a conflict of interest between cats and humans, and we try to keep their population down, because it would be bad for us to be overrun by cats.
I feel sad for the cat, because infertility is no picnic. Having reproductive capacity removed also alters personality. We're talking about invasive surgery, and not everyone survives it.
But just as I eventually had to exterminate the mice that were overrunning my house -- with Bow's blessing, despite his earlier objections -- I have to be a good steward of the land for the sake of my rabbits and turtles and deer and birds. So this will not be a cat sanctuary. Sorry. One cat only.
The difference between me and HSUS is that I acknowledge how cruel and disempowering spaying is. It is not an act of kindness toward cats. It is something that we do because we don't care about them that much.
Don't let the animal rights rhetoric blind you to the facts. Any species whose propagation matters to you should be allowed to breed. If a sanctuary prevents chimpanzees from breeding, then its attitude toward chimpanzees is like my attitude toward cats.
Bow is very sweet, All unbidden, he notices the dry skin on my hand, and he volunteers to groom it.
His touch is very gentle, but the grooming he gives me is thorough.
You might think that this kind treatment is in return for something else that I have done for him, but in fact it's not. This is not quid pro quo or one hand washes the other. Bow feels an inner compulsion to groom my hand, and he only does it when he feels like it. It is neither planned nor solicited.
I have been preoccupied by the concept of mutuality, which is why whatever flower is in season that attracts the most pollinators has been topmost on my list of things to photograph. Just before the trip to Bloomington, that flower was the purple milkweed, and I even took risks trying to get close to the butterflies. I got a touch of poison ivy in one elbow capturing those photos.
But there are other beautiful flowers that are blooming now, too, and yet they attract no insects. Take the Tall Phlox.
These flowers are beautiful and fragrant, yet no bees or butterflies visit them.
Maybe it's because the phlox grows back from the root every spring that it does not need to attract pollinators, and not needing to do so, it just naturally doesn't. Where there is no mutual benefit, the unplanned exchange just does not seem to take place. However, I have spotted rabbits within sight of the phlox, placidly grazing on the lawn.
The rabbit will not tell me where the predators are; it just runs off if I get too close. Does the rabbit realize that the culling effect of predators on the rabbit population is responsible for its own good health?
Meanwhile, when I least expect it, the kitten emerges from a field full of wildflowers.
Its every move says; "I am a mighty hunter. I am king of the beasts!" Then it meows to imply that I should feed it. Will it ever catch a mouse to earn its keep, I wonder?
This afternoon I picked another ripe wild plum, and I gave it to Bow.
He took it out of the bowl and stared at it intently.
Then he slipped it unceremoniously into his mouth and ate it.
In the end all that was left was the pit.
Now lots of people would misunderstand. They might think: there's reciprocity for you! He groomed her finger, so she gave him a wild plum. But I would have given him that plum, whether he had groomed my finger or not. And he would have groomed my finger, regardless of whether later in the day I'd discover a wild plum to give him. What we have here is a relationship of mutuality, not reciprocity -- the same kind of relationship that the butterflies have with the mountain mint, or the wild plum tree has with the animals that eat its fruit.
Bow reacts to different stimulus in different ways. He gets excited by Lady Gaga, he feels warm affection toward Julie Andrews, he wants to help the dogs catch the rabbits that he sees on the screen. But sometimes he really does just listen to music. For instance, see how he swayed yesterday to the beat of Country Roads -- the Hayao Miyazaki version?
I ran out of space on my iphone, so the camera cut out in mid-dance, but Bow was swaying gently to the music till the end of the song. He gets music! He told me once that he can sing better than I can. I laughed at him, but I think maybe he had a point, though he had trouble expressing what he really meant. I tend to sing off-key. Bow would never do that, because he has perfect hearing. If only he had a human voice to go with that, he could blow any song out of the water!
I am very careful to try to give Bow a chance to express himself, which means that he can say outrageously improbable things to me, and I will give him what I consider a fair hearing. But in other ways I am very strict with him, in the sense that infractions involving disciplinary issues are not tolerated. It is the way I was raised. I had perfect freedom to express my opinion, but not destroy other people's things or hurt anyone. It is possible to bring a child up to be obedient, but not oppressed. However... in the "liberal" atmosphere in which we currently live, there are many people have trouble with this concept.
Here is a valuable piece on disciplining children by Leslie Fish:
The issue of discipline goes beyond children to all our relationships. If we want to be able to get along with someone over an extended period, the ground rules need to be set from early on, not just for our own comfort, but also so that the other person can understand foreseeable consequences and make informed decisions. It's not all just about free will. It is also about forced choice.
Here is an article I wrote a long time ago to help my interns learn how to interact with Bow:
The other day I saw a meme that said: "You can't control how other people treat you. You can only control how you react." I don't think that's true. I think that if you wait until somebody does something really bad to you and then react to it, it's too late. You need to help other people control their behavior by heading off bad behavior at the pass. You can't always be reactive.
The reason society has penalties for criminal behavior is not just to punish wrongdoers after the fact . It is also to prevent many others from ever committing a crime, for fear of the consequences.While nobody has a remote control switch to directly control another person's behavior, we all have the ability to change the behavior of those within our sphere of influence, and if we are doing it right, we are not merely reacting to things we don't like -- we are preventing bad behavior before it even arises.
The interns who did well with Bow were able to project that they were big and strong and somebody to be respected -- even when they were small women and in fact less powerful than Bow. The interns who ended up having to leave were those who made Bow feel that he could walk all over them -- even when they were much taller and heavier than he was. It's not all about physical strength. A big part of it is attitude. And because we never want to have an actual physical confrontation with Bow, attitude is extremely important. It's the difference between being active and being reactive.
Having active control over a situation is like the difference between driving by making wild corrections to the trajectory of your car every time you notice it veering off course and making small, minor adjustments that are barely noticeable, by foreseeing possible difficulties before they arise. Other people are not a car, but a relationship with another person is a situation you can control before it gets out of hand, by presenting the other person with a series of forced choices that keep him on course. This does not mean that you are brainwashing anybody. They still have free will. You are just making it very clear to them what their choices are.
Take that kitten, for instance. It knows that I am freaked out by seeing it outside the barn. I know it must wander around freely all the time, but it is smart enough not to let me see that.
There has been rain every day, and parts of my property are flooded, so I wear big rubber boots.
Yesterday, as I was heading toward the barn, I saw the kitten pop out from under the wall for a moment, bound out toward me, then think better of it, and go back in the barn, to wait for me to open the door. Then it came out and rubbed itself against my big rubber boots.
I haven't done anything to the kitten, and yet somehow it knows how to behave around me. It knows I don't want to touch it. It knows I will only set down the food dish if it backs off a little so I don't make contact with it. It is very affectionate toward me, but it understands my boundaries.
I am allergic to cats, so I simply will not touch the kitten, no matter how weird that seems.
We can control another person's behavior in many ways. If we don't want to be touched, we can move away and send non-verbal signals to the other person to back off. We can control their behavior by showing them how we react to someone else, so they can learn by example and need not ever be in a situation to receive that reaction from us. And we can control their behavior by limiting the situations in which we interact with them and giving them forced choices about entry and exit.
Have you ever seen how someone lets another person know that it is time to leave without even saying a word? Sometimes they just get up, or even adjust their posture, and the other person knows the visit is over. That is behavior control! You do it all the time. You react to it all the time, when others do it. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and it's just a natural part of how people interact.
If you want to be in control of a situation, you can't always wait to react. Sometimes you have to act before anything bad can even begin to happen. And being a good caretaker often involves realizing that the person you are with does not have complete control over his own behavior. For instance, if you know that your toddler has a meltdown every day after preschool, then it's probably not a good idea to take him to the store after preschool. It's not a matter of discipline. It's just a matter of practicality. You take the child home where he can have that tantrum in his room, because you know the tantrum is inevitable, but the public embarrassment is not.
Managing others means also being aware of their limitations. You do not put a hurdle before a blind man. You don't force a child who can't sit still to attend a lengthy church service. And you can't expect an active post-pubescent male chimpanzee to go a whole day without displaying. So you accommodate the behavior, but you don't allow it to occur in a way that would be harmful to anyone.
Can you control other people's behavior toward you? Absolutely. You probably already do many of these things without thinking about them. And it's not bad. Most of the people whose behavior you control are probably happy that you are in control of the situation. They would actually be upset or frightened if somebody were not helping them to keep their own behavior under control.
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