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.
We have been snow bound for several days now. I have gone for a walk each day, but Bow has not wanted to go out.
At first there was not much snow on the ground, but it was nice to take a walk down the path in the snow flurries.
On the second day, there was much more snow on the ground, though by afternoon when I took my walk, it was not snowing any longer.
On the third day, I saw deer bounding over the path. On the fourth day, it was so cold out that I cut my walk very short, and we concentrated on grooming.
And today, on the fifth day, Bow asked to go outside. I did not know whether to take the request seriously. Sometimes when he is bored, but it is too cold out, he will drag me all the way to the outer door, but never actually go out. But this afternoon he jumped out without hesitation. Naturally, his feet never touched the snow. He landed on the bench.
Bow shook his head at the cold, but did not ask to go back in. Instead, he lay on the rim of the bench's backrest and sunbathed for a good long time, before asking to go back inside.
The logging continues, but Bow and I are finding ways to ignore it and get on with our lives.
Bow leafs through an issue of the Missouri Consevationist
Yesterday, for instance, Bow watched the loggers for a while without getting too upset. and then he led me in an exercise session indoors.
The loggers are here in the morning, but they leave long before noon. So when I go for my afternoon walk, all is calm, and I can enjoy the wildlife.
Yesterday, I got to watch a leaf fall from the sky, a common buckeye butterfly resting on my path, and two different groups of deer.
Some deer bound away at the first sight of me, and others stare at me long and hard.
This morning, Bow was so accustomed to having the loggers around that he let me go to the post office to mail off some bills and to buy new stamps. I chose the stamps featuring Monarch butterflies.
When I got home, Bow had been good. No accidents, no mess. So I showed him the stamps I had bought. Later he asked me to go out, saying he'd heard the loggers had food. (שמעתי שיש להם אוכל). I went out expecting to see the loggers eating sandwiches. But instead I spotted the twin fawns, nearly grown, taking shelter near the house.
Today the clock was set back, and Bow was annoyed with me for not getting up at the usual time. By 5:30 am he was vocalizing loudly, even though it was still dark.
The day was warm. Somebody online reminded me that it was Guy Fawkes Day. Bow wore no mask, although a few days earlier, just before Halloween, when we had our first big freeze, he had looked a little like jedi master when he greeted me that morning.
Today, we spent a lot of time outside in the outer pen. Bow groomed me, and then I groomed him.
Then we went indoors, but Bow did not want to groom anymore. He just asked for a drink of water, which I promptly provided. It's all so undramatic at our house. Elsewhere in the universe, somebody shot a church full of people -- in Texas! But that's not what happened for Bow and me in the pens.
Sometimes we do hear the neighbors shooting, but that's to do with deer season. However, no one is shooting at the deer on our land, and, for the time being, they are perfectly safe to graze on the front lawn, in plain view.
If only the rest of the world could be as calm and peaceful as our little corner!
Bow and I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth: the Missouri Ozarks. However, I am not a native of Missouri, and while Bow was born in this state, he is not a wild animal In Missouri, all the chimpanzees are domesticated, and none is subject to the Department of Conservation. But Bow still enjoys reading The Missouri Conservationist and looking at all the big, colorful pictures of Missouri wildlife that can be found within its covers.
"What is that book about?" my reader from Scotland asked when he saw Bow leafing through the Missouri Conservationist. I answered: "It's not a book. It's a magazine about wildlife and the flora and fauna of Missouri, the state that Bow and I live in. It has pictures of the same kind of deer and the same kind of butterflies that lie just outside our front door." And that is really what it is. This issue featured Monarch butterflies and white tailed deer of the very sort that showed up in the last few entries in this blog.
Deer come almost right up to my front door. I go out to the meadow and each time I meet a different butterfly.
We don't really need to read the Missouri Conservationist to see these sights, but the Missouri Department of Conservation puts out the magazine, and Bow's friend Charla subscribes to it and brings Bow copies to read.
Another friend who saw the video of Bow flipping through the pages of the Missouri Conservationist had this to say: "Sorry Bow, no cute chimps (other than you) in the Ozarks." But that's not quite factual, so I replied: "There are actually quite a few here in Missouri, but they are, of course, not native wildlife." I meant that because all chimpanzee in the US are domesticated, they would naturally not pose for the Missouri Conservationist, the way the deer and the butterflies do. But my friend said she thought Bow was looking for girlie pictures. Well, that's what we have Harper's Bazaar for. But it's something that I am very thankful for that the Missouri Department of Conservation has shown no interest in our locally born and bred chimpanzees.
The same cannot be said for US Fish & Wildlife, who, by declaring that American domesticated chimpanzees are an endangered species, have opened the door for PETA to harass local breeders into giving up their chimps and sending them to sanctuaries where they will not be allowed to breed, based on the claim that the species is endangered. Attempts to get a declaratory judgment to say the Endangered Species Act does not apply have proved fruitless.
Right at the moment, I am very glad there are no pictures of chimpanzees in the Missouri Conservationist. At least our local government has not yet lost its mind. They know that conservation of Missouri wildlife only applies to Missouri wildlife, not exotics and not domesticated animals.
Over the weekend, my daughter came home and made some no-bake cheesecake. She even let Bow lick the bowl.
There was just one stipulation, that the bowl not touch the ground. So the little folding table was brought in to Bow's side
There was nothing about not putting his head inside the bowl, though.
It is a funny thing about rules: there are always ways around them, and there are always loopholes.
I was preoccupied with rules that weekend. There was a Bylaws Committee meeting in Kansas City, and I had sent in a proposal for a change in the rules. Of course, I could not go to attend the meeting, but it was going to be streamed on Facebook. On Thursday the fourteenth, I was uploading a twelve minute explanation of the proposed change, but the internet was very slow that day. In Licking, the local paper's news room had no internet service all day.
It had started out as a foggy morning, but turned into very nice weather later on. Nature is just outside the door, and while things were uploading, I went out into the field, where I came across a very accessible Monarch butterfly.
Because it was still morning, the sun was in the east, casting my shadow on the butterfly as I drew closer.
The entire encounter did not take long.
I should have been thinking about the Bylaws, but the butterflies in the field distracted me. There was a pipevine swallowtail, too, and it had a damaged wing.
At first I filmed the pipevine swallowtail from a distance, afraid to frighten it away.
But the swallowtail did not show fear when I came closer.
When I had had my fill of butterflies and was on my way back to the house, I noticed there were strange green seeds embedded in my pants.
I went back inside, but the twelve minute talk about the LP Bylaws was still uploading. All afternoon, it was still uploading. After a while I went back outside, and I saw a turtle.
As I came closer, it went back into its shell.
.My friend Pam estimates this turtle, who appears to have suffered a serious injury to its shell, might be over sixty years old. As I was returning to the house from the field, I saw a deer in the front yard.
I thought surely ,my twelve minute video would have uploaded by lunch, but it didn't. It didn't upload until two pm. Bow had a some pickle ice as a snack about then.
The internet continued slow all that day. Bow's friend Charla came with the bananas, and Bow had a nice time socializing with her. In the evening, I was able to just catch the sunset after putting Bow to bed
The next day was very exciting. Sword came home for the weekend, and a man came to repair the lights in the pens. Bow was so excited, he is barely visible in this action shot of him flying through the air on his rope while the repairman was on the ladder.
And then there was the preparation by Sword of some thirty-odd no-bake cheesecakes, and Bow licking the bowl, while I remotely listened in on the Bylaws Committee meetings. That was quite a weekend!
When Sword went back to college, we had leftover cream cheese, so I made blintzes.
Yesterday, I decided to bake some poppy seed muffins.
I let Bow lick the bowl. While the muffins were in the oven, I looked out the window and I saw some deer.
It was the doe and the twin fawns. I went outside to see if I could get a better look.
The doe looked at me. One of the twin fawns decided to go into the back pasture, but the other one kept looking at me. Then the doe decided that she would leave, and they all bounded away.
As a result, the poppy seed muffins were a little overdone. But Bow did not seem to mind. He ate them with great relish.
I see deer almost every day, but quite often they catch me unaware. They appear in a flash, and there is barely time to glimpse them with my own eyes, much less take a picture. Yesterday, when I went for my afternoon walk in the pasture, I saw two deer in close succession near the southern boundary of my property. One turned east and bounded into the woods. The other turned west and disappeared in the thicket. And, no, I did not get a single picture. But I was glad to have seen them, and I told myself I should content myself with that.
But then, when I was returning home from my walk, a deer appeared in a spot between me and the barn, a place I needed to pass in order to go home. I waited for her to bound into the woods, as I expected she did not want a closer encounter, but she stood her ground and looked at me, almost defiantly. That's when I knew. Somebody else was in the thicket behind her. She was watching out for that somebody else. So I stood there for a while, and she stood there, too, and then I took a few steps forward.
And that's when the little one emerged.
The mother must have given the signal, for the escape into the woods was well timed.
That was a good mother, but it was also a well-disciplined, obedient child, I think. You can watch the entire sequence in the video below.
Deer are more intelligent than many think. They communicate with one another and coordinate their actions. I bet they know exactly who lives on this property. They probably even know about Bow.
They may never have seen him, just as I do not see most of the spiders that spin webs on my property. But just as I know there is a spider by the circumstantial evidence of the web it has spun, who on my property can fail to know that we have a chimp here, when they can plainly hear the vocalization.
I asked Bow what he thought had happened to the cat. "הוא מת" --"He died." I asked him why he thought the cat had died. "כל אחד מת" -- "Everybody dies." End of story. For Bow, it's an easy answer, and completely unproblematic.
"But he was so young, Bow!" No answer.
I personally do not know what happened. It could be that Nile found a new home. But let's face it, a lot of the animals I enjoy seeing on my property probably do meet violent ends, long before they ever arrive at old age. It's the way of all things.
I saw a Prairie Kingsnake hidden among the leaves the other day. That was a day after I spotted the black rat snake above my door.
I could not see its head clearly, and I was afraid it might be a venomous snake, like a copperhead, which it somewhat resembles from a distance. So I got a fallen tree branch in order to investigate from a safe distance.
From the shape of the head and the eyes, I could see that it was non-poisonous, and so I left it alone. By the presence of the snakes on my land who eat rodents, mice and voles and even small birds, sometimes, you can tell that there is a lot of dying that happens on my land, as much dying as living. Because in order to eat, one must also kill.
That's not true of everyone, of course. If you are a plant, like my beautiful wondrous red maple, now in the process of turning colors, then you do not kill. You are a producer and rely on the sun. But who wants to be a tree? And even if we wanted to, we could not all be trees.
The butterflies on my land make a living as pollinators. The flowers offer them a fee because they serve as artificial inseminators, which is really a very odd profession to be in. But when there are fewer flowers blooming, you often see the butterflies landing on dead leaves or grass.
Do they die because their time has come? Could their life be prolonged if summer never ended?
A few intrepid flowers are still blooming, refusing to give up the fight.
I continue to spot deer in my front yard. The last time it happened was yesterday, before dinner.
I saw the little one first. It looked so weak and vulnerable and alone. But I only had to take one step forward, and I saw it was not alone at all.
I wished them well as they took off into the pasture. But let's face it, I don't know the deer as individuals. I don't know how many have to die at the hands of coyotes and hunters, in order to keep the herd that remains in top health.
Someone suggested that to keep the good snakes close to the house, I should put out a bowl of milk. But I don't feed the wildlife. They feed on each other. And that is what keeps an ecosystem healthy.
Bow, in his own impenetrable way, may already have learned this lesson from his perch on the rim of the bench, where he studies nature, while remaining a disinterested observer.
It is definitely, unmistakably fall now. The maple leaves are turning the most brilliant colors.
Some trees are supposed to give fruit in the fall.
The persimmon with its orange baubles looks as if it is decorated for Halloween.
But for others, the rare fruit they are sprouting now is unseasonable and slightly disturbing, like the odd, last child of an overly fertile woman long past her prime.
Here is the last of the blackberries, ripening when the rest of the bush has gone dormant.
Here is the first cherry, nursing a single green fruit and willing it to ripen. Who is this cherry for? Who will get to eat it?
Right beside the first cherry tree, is the second cherry tree, with its seemingly pregnant open bloom.
Will this blossom come to fruition as well? And if so, what will become of the fruit?
There is one branch of the service berry by the fence line that still bears blossoms.
Will there be service berries for the deer to eat in November?
The deer are still coming by in the evening in the front yard, though they do seem a little more shy now.
They come with the setting sun, and they leave when they see me.
I read somewhere that the Japanese fry maple leaves and then eat them, and I wondered what Bow would do, if I offered him an assortment of leaves.
So this morning I went out to gather leaves in a Wal*Mart bag, and I brought them in to the pen for Bow to inspect.
Bow was not impressed. He took the first leaf out of the bag, turned it over then handed both the leaf and the bag back to me.
I thought that perhaps if I laid them out on the floor, so he could see how different and varied they were, I could get him more interested in the leaves.
Bow was very patient with me. He lay down on the floor quietly while I arranged the leaves to my satisfaction.
Then, when he could tell I was done, he got up, picked up every leaf from the floor, picked up the bag and handed them all back to me, with an unmistakable gesture that said: Get them out of here. After all, they were just dead leaves!
When I took the leaves away, Bow asked to go outside.
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