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.
"You keep wandering out in the wilderness!" my daughter said to me. And somebody else corrected her to say that we hardly live out in the wilderness, since all we have is a ten acre hobby farm. Well, compared to the big city where Sword will be going to college in the fall, this is the wilderness. What's more, compared to the fields on either side of my property, this is also more of a wilderness. I neither plow nor sow, and wild things grow here.
For Bow, this means a very peaceful atmosphere when he goes outside.
When we get the moat dug for Bow's island, then he too will get to come face to face with some of the wildlife here. Like the armadillo I saw just before I went to my daughter's freshman orientation in the big city.
Armadillos are so easy to sneak up on.
Rabbits, on the other hand, are not easy to surprise.
But sometimes they act as if they were statues in the hopes that we will just pass them by, as this rabbit did soon after I came back from the big city.
When I got back, I was disappointed to see that all the purple milkweed flowers were gone. Even the one in the field, surrounded by poison ivy, no longer sported any flowers. No more milkweed, I thought. But then I spotted a splash of orange!
The butterfly milkweed had suddenly bloomed, attracting small sweat bees.
Being away for a couple of days, while Lawrence stayed with Bow, gave me a chance to appreciate anew how lucky I am to live here.
The big city is exciting, but also frustrating. Here everything is calm and quiet.
The mowers came again yesterday, as the grass had been getting quite tall again. They hurried to get all done in one day this time, because as usual, we are expecting rain. Bow asked to go outside into the outer pen after they came, but when I opened the door, he gestured for me to come with him. I told him I would come, but I had forgotten to bring my phone to film with, so I went back inside
Alone in the pen with all that noise from the mowers, Bow looked unsure of himself.
When I came back out with the phone, I was surprised by a sight that I never expected to see: Bow was apologizing to Leo. I was not really ready -- it was so unexpected, that I not able to get pictures of the entire apology, so this is just the tail end of it.
Leo did not quite know what to make of Bow's apology, but even as the dog walked away, Bow was still trying to make up to him, with friendly faces.
This may look silly, but this is the face Bow makes when he is trying to ingratiate himself with someone
In case you want to refresh your memory as to what Bow's full apologies look like, you can read this post from 2013:
Now why would Bow feel he needed to apologize to Leo? What was he apologizing for? You may well ask. He was probably not apologizing for any specific thing, so much as trying to get into Leo's good graces. Bow had wanted me out there for moral support against the mowers. When I left, he felt a little abandoned. Rather than displaying at Leo, the way he usually does, Bow was trying to get Leo to help him against the mowers, in case he needed extra support. He was not saying "I am big and strong and I can beat you up!" as he usually does. He was saying: "If I was mean to you, I am sorry. Now please help me."
Bow's apologies, even when they are to Lawrence or to me, are extremely pragmatic in motivation. He does not really apologize because of heartfelt remorse. He apologizes because he's in trouble, and he is trying to get out of it. That's really not so different from most humans I know.
Even after I was out there and Bow did not need Leo's help, he still was not as aggressive as he usually is toward the dog. His focus was more on the mowers, and he did not seem to be able to decide whether he wanted to court them or warn them. In the video above, the gently rocking up and down dance that Bow initially does on top of the bench is not an aggressive move. He does break into a kind of display afterwards, but it, too, is less aggressive than usual, and you can see that he has no problem with Leo, showing only friendly regard to the dog, while he worries about the "mower problem."
Later, the head mower came in the house, and Bow said hello to him. He has known the man many years and actually seems to like him. He's just not crazy about the machinery that is used to mow the grass and the noise it makes.
When the mower and Bow were communing, I mentioned to him that the next plant about to bloom by the lagoon was the yucca, and I needed the poison ivy cleared away from around it, so I could admire the blossoms. Only just at that moment, I could not remember what the yucca plant was called. So I fumbled around for words to describe it, and here's what came out: "Spiky leaves. Tall tower of flowers. Cactus." Now, I knew that was wrong when it came out of my mouth. A yucca is not at all a cactus. But I needed a fast way to say what I wanted, and I could not think of the right classification: succulent. However, this shorthand, inexact description was good enough for the mower, and he got the job done! It's funny how faulty phylogenetic classification is good enough to communicate with another human being.
Poison ivy spreads everywhere, and I am allergic to it, so I have been trying to think of ways to get rid of it that would not harm the other plants. The last time we spoke, the mower said that he had heard of a spray that gets rid of poison ivy. But on further inquiry, he informed me yesterday, that spray would kill everything else, too. "Well, we don't want that," I commented. And he agreed.
In the evening, I enjoyed resuming my favorite walk on the newly mown trail. I got to see flowers that have only just now bloomed on either side of the path.
However, I saw no new wildlife until I got back to the mowed portion of the yard.
I spotted a rabbit from afar. But the rabbit disappeared into the underbrush by the lagoon, and then I heard a sound and saw a deer leap across my fence, and into the neighbors' field. I went toward the fence line to look.
The deer stood there for a while looking at me and twitching its tail, so that I wondered whether it was waiting for a companion to follow. But when no one else came, it went into the woods.
And just as the deer disappeared, I heard some rustling from the underbrush by the lagoon. I thought it was the rabbit coming out again. But no, it was an armadillo!
The armadillo did not seem to be aware at first that I was watching him. He went out to the newly mown grass and started digging at once.
I wanted to get a better look at its face, but when I drew closer it suddenly noticed me and initiated a program of armadillo evasive maneuvers, which are quite different from rabbit evasive maneuvers.
He went straight for the woods and took a very short break there. After taking a short rest among the cypress spurge plants at edge of the woods, he continued on his way in a more or less straight line trajectory -- no zig-zagging for him -- until he hid for a while under the storage building.
The armadillo did not stay there for long, though. Soon I could see that he had crawled out from under the storage building and was going as fast as he could toward the barn, where he seemed to think he would be able to take shelter. However, no sooner had he gone into the barn than he came out again. I think the kitten scared him away! I watched as he went into the woods by the barn and pursued him no further.
The coming of the mowers causes a temporary disruption in the normal flow of events around here, but that subsides pretty fast. The grass starts to grow again. The wildlife goes back to its usual habits, and so do the rest of us. This morning, Bow was displaying aggressively at Leo again, and Leo was bounding up in the air and barking at him. Everything is back to normal.
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