Comfortable Enough to Nap

I believe that there are many benefits from taking naps throughout the day, whenever the spirit moves us. Most of us would have trouble doing this in a public place, or where we think we might be attacked or censured. One of the benefits of working at home is that you feel comfortable enough to do what feels natural.

Bow napping indoors yesterday

A friend phoned yesterday, and while we were chatting, he asked me, almost at random: "When chimpanzees are asleep, do they sleep with their toes stretched out or curled in?" I answered at once: "Curled in." But this was not because I actually knew the answer. It's because all I had to do was glance over at Bow where he was napping, and I could see what he was doing. This is not a scientific random statistical sampling, and it may not be true of every chimpanzee, but it is of Bow.

Sometimes Bow wants to know what I have been up to while I take my walks, or when I am away, and I show him videos. Yesterday afternoon, I showed him quite a few of them, many of them from Orchard House, until he was satisfied. Then he went to lie down on his blanket, yawned and started napping. 

A damaged anglewing butterfly in my backyard, surrounded by well meaning dogs

You cannot take a nap unless you feel comfortable and safe. And I think this kind of relative safety is what even the butterflies experience on my property. After I returned from my trip last weekend, I encountered an injured anglewing butterfly. Some people call this type a tree bark butterfly, because when the wings are folded that is what it looks like: tree bark. But in fact, the Latin name of all these anglewing butterflies is polygonia, because of the polygons that their wings are shaped into. And the English name is usually after a punctuation mark. But I am  not absolutely sure if this one is supposed to be a comma or a question mark. 

The remarkable thing about this butterfly in my backyard is that it was able to rest on the ground, while the dogs walked past, and nobody bothered it. It felt that safe.

Two Monarchs embrace

Now, I wish that the Monarch butterflies felt this comfortable around me. I have to admit that they still do not. But we have made progress. Yesterday, I saw two of them embracing just on the other side of my fence. They chose to do this not on my property, but so very close to the border that I could see them clearly while standing on my own land!

There was also a pearl crescent feeding on a flower on my side of the fence. When the pearl crescent flew past them, that is when the two Monarchs came apart, and the female flew off first.

Startled by a Pearl Crescent, the two Monarchs move apart

The male was left alone for a moment, and then he flew off, too.

The male is the last to fly off

After they flew away, they came flying back. 

Flying past again

First one, and then the other appeared, going in the opposite direction from where they had fled to. 

Now these are not my Monarchs. They were in the neighbors's field. But it was so close! I have never been this close to a Monarch before, let alone, two.

Unauthorized Happiness

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?

http://www.historiaobscura.com/the-british-visit-to-laffite-a-study-of-events-200-years-later/

There are official conservationists and then there are amateurs, but who really gives a damn about the Monarch butterflies?

http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-monarchs-meet-government.html

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!