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.
Although the weather has not been kind to the baby birds, Bow and I have been doing well despite it all. This is a snapshot I took this morning, while Bow and I were in the outer pen. After spending some time grooming me, he put his head down on my shoulder and rested. The weather outside is beautiful now, and I have not seen such splendid irises blooming next to the lagoon in years.
When we first moved here, there were irises and peonies blooming by the lagoon in large bunches every spring. Then, little by little, the poison ivy encroached on their territory, until they were entirely choked out.
The bulbs were there in the ground still. Some leaves would shoot out each year, but there were no more irises blooming, and the peonies were greatly reduced.
Then two years ago there was that grass fire. It killed a lot of the mature poison ivy vines and tree-like bushes. I started to see a redoubling in iris greenery, but still the irises did not bloom last year, even though the peonies beside them were doing much better. But look at my irises this year, after the torrential rains!
There are two types of irises in the garden by the lagoon. There are the deep purple that is like a royal blue.
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And then there are the mauve to purple irises, which are right next to the peonies.
I think I took them for granted when I first moved here, seeing their beauty, but not realizing it would not always be there. This year, when they came our I was so excited that I even made a music video about them. It includes other flowers, of course, but the focus is on the irises and the peonies.
The peonies are so bright and fluffy and inviting that all sorts of insects come to visit them.
Every disaster has its upside. What was bad for the baby birds seems to have benefited the peonies. And the fire of two years ago was a disaster for the poison ivy by the lagoon, but it gave new hope to the irises. When people count the toll of deaths from any particular cause, do they also count the new life that never would have been, if not for it? By the same token, when they tell us that a new government program has saved lives, we must also ask, how many has it killed? You can't change any situation to benefit one part of our interconnected world without also harming another part.
When we hear that something is bad, it is always important to ask: for whom? And when we hear that an intervention is good, ask the same question. Whatever it is, it is not equally good for everyone.
The peony has finally bloomed. Yesterday, by the end of the day, it looked like this:
The black garden ants are no longer attracted to the flower and have moved on. I wrote a retrospective about the whole process, and you can read it here:
When I first noticed the black garden ants patrolling the peony flower head, I had not idea what they were doing there. My friend Susan had to point out to me that they were helping the flower to open and were enjoying its juices all the while. This is an example of mutualism. It is also an example of how temporary mutual benefit should work. I find this highly instructive, in view of other insect models we have been cited as something to pattern our lives on.
People take all sorts of examples from nature, and depending on their preferences, try to apply them to mankind. For instance, in another blog I am following, on Mother's Day there was a piece on self-sacrifice using a spider as an example:
Yes, there are spiders who offer up their own bodies as nourishment for the young. Some people see this as a heartwarming example of altruism, but personally, I find it a little grotesque. Altruism of this kind is not attractive to me. On the other hand, I like the temporary mutualism of the black garden ants and the peony. I especially appreciate how there are no hard feelings once the mutual benefit is over. The ants just move on. There are no recriminations: "You used us when you needed us, but now that you don't need us, you're sending us away empty-handed! We feel exploited!"
Instead, perceiving that there is no longer a benefit here for them, the ants move on. The ants have other sources of food. The peony is just one of them. They do not actually need the peony, nor does the peony in truth need them, but both sides benefited immensely from the relationship while it lasted, and all is good.
I think that ideally employment should be like that. People sometimes want extra money and benefit immensely from having a job. Other people sometimes need help getting a task accomplished, and they benefit from having people work for them. So long as both sides are happy, they should stay in the relationship. But employees should not regard the employer as their only source of sustenance, and employers should not think that they get to have people work for them forever. As soon as there is no longer mutual benefit in the relationship, each party should be able to move on.
The problem is not just that sometimes people think they should have a job, because they "need a job", which is a euphemism for saying that they want money and does not take into account the rights of employers to discontinue a position. The problem is also that employers sometimes think they "need" employees and try to make sure that employees do not have other ways of life available to them.
I think the whole business of penalizing people for living off-grid is an attempt to make sure everybody will always need to be employed in order to pay the bills. That is just as bad as employees thinking they are entitled to a job. "Slavery is a leash with a noose at both ends." Recognize the quote?
Forced dependence of anyone on anyone else is a nasty thing. The essence of the concentration camp is actually such a forced dependence. It goes beyond slavery, to something even worse: uselessness.
The maternal relationship is sometimes seen as the model for all other relationships, but people forget how temporary that relationship actually is. Dependence by young on a mother is designed to last only long enough to bootstrap the new entity while it acquires the skills it needs to make its way in life.
Which brings me to the kitten. I am a little worried about the kitten, because I have noticed that when I put the food dish down on the floor, the kitten does not immediately know where it is. It goes all around the dish in circles, until it finally finds where the food is and sets about eating hungrily. I hope this just means the kitten is inattentive, not blind. It will need to be much more efficient at locating food if it is to become an independent hunter.
If the kitten is not able to learn how to hunt, then it cannot live on its own. In that case, it will have to become owned or die. The case of individuals who can't provide for themselves and will always need help is a special one. To the extent that they are dependent, then they also cannot be free. Sometimes that cannot be helped, But we should not foster universal dependence of all people on all other people.
So what about Bow? There is no question that Bow is not independent right now. He is still an adolescent, so it's not that big a problem, but there is no reason to think that he will ever be independent, The important thing for Bow is to be with someone who finds him useful, so that paying for his keep will not get discontinued. Unlike other researchers, I do not consider the project over and done with, and I will not stop supporting Bow, no matter what. But for all the exotics who are currently being confiscated from owners who love them and therefore have a use for them, and are being shut up in government run facilities, the situation is much worse. Even in the so-called private sanctuaries, you have to wonder what will happen when their public funding runs out.
Not every concentration camp is intended to be an extermination camp. Sometimes people really do intend to treat others humanely, only it does not work out this way. I am currently researching what happened in an internment camp run by the Japanese in China during World War II. The Japanese did not intend to starve their prisoners, but as they started losing the war, they could not afford to give them much food. It's not the intentions that count. It's the results.
Here's what I'm really getting at: animal rights activists say that ownership of animals is evil because they liken it to slavery. While I will admit that slavery can be a very ugly thing, it is not the worst thing that can happen to someone. The worst thing is to be thrown into a sanctuary or a camp or a centralized facility where no one can find out what is really happening to you. That is my worst fear, not just for me and other humans I care about, but also for Bow.
It's been raining on and off, day and night, for the past few days. It rained on Mother's Day. Bow and I stayed amused during the rain with indoor activities. I brought him a slate and a miniature chalkboard into the pen to play with.
Bow and the slate
I don't persist in making Bow practice attempts at writing each and every day, as if it were training, but every once in a while, I let him try his hand again, to see if he has improved or if he has a longer attention span for this activity now than he had before. Sometimes I take in paper and a pen, or paints and an easel, and sometimes it is chalk and a chalkboard. Bow is familiar with all these different tools, and he does not need to be told what they are for.
Trying the left hand
Bow enjoys experimenting with the chalk, but there does not seem to be any clear intent to write or draw anything. He just likes the process.
Bow tried writing with his left hand, but when I mentioned to him that it might work better for him with the right hand, he switched.
Then, of course, there is also the possibility of drawing with chalk directlu on the concrete floor.
While he was exploring all of the possibilities, Bow noticed that you could write on both sides of the board and that there was actually a clean slate waiting for him on the other side, should he wish to use it. But he didn't choose to use it. Not this time, anyway.
Every day is like clean slate, a chance to do the same things in a different way, or to do something completely new. Just because we did not avail ourselves of all the opportunities yesterday does not mean that we might not today. It's like the bumblebee in the tulip tree, who can explore a flower that it left untouched the day before.
Peony about to bloom May 10, 2015
I went outside yesterday afternoon, and everything was soaking wet. The ants were no longer patrolling the peonies, which now look as if they are almost ready to bloom.
Sword with the first blooming peony of May 11, 2002
I looked through some old albums yesterday and noticed that the year Bow came to us, the first peony bloomed on May 12. By May 19, most of them were in full bloom.
Bow with the blooming peonies May 19, 2002
Will they bloom the same day this year?
This peony looks about ready to burst into bloom --May 10, 2015
My friend Pam Keyes is intimately acquainted with a rosebush that blooms each year exactly on Mother's Day. I wonder how it knows to do that! Will my peonies follow a fixed pattern? Or are they free to choose?
I have been persisting in giving Bow only my smallest finger to hold onto when he spells, and this is working well, although not necessarily from the perspective of actual proof. A side effect of his having only a very small part of me to hold onto is that Bow is gentler and more calm when he writes. Before, he had started to squeeze my hand a lot, when he was asking for something he really wanted and thought he might not get. Now Bow is calmer and seems more responsible in his pointing. It creates more of a clear differentiation between him and me, what he wants, and what I want.
Bow enjoying a salad that consists of peas in the pod, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and Texas toast croutons
He had gotten to the point, as a teenager, where he did not even want to say anything, anymore, unless he was sure he would get what he wanted, so that asking and receiving became one and the same thing. He would spell "give me an X" and then for good measure he would spell "Yes". As if by saying that, he would get me to say "yes." But now he has stopped doing that.
I don't know whether you have noticed in the videos, but both Bow and I are right handed, and when he spells on the glass, he takes my left hand in his right. Now that he only gets a very small part of that hand to work with, it is even more obvious that I cannot be the power behind the movement.
I baked some brownies for the high school choir concert bake sale, and Bow watched me at work in the kitchen. But when he asked to sample the brownies, he was very gentle and not at all frantic or impatient.
Bow loves chocolate, but whenever he gets to eat anything with chocolate in it, he eats very slowly and savors it.
That's pretty much all that is happening here right now. The Weigela blossoms are spent. They shed their petals all over the lagoon.
Only a few stray late bloomers remain.
Most of the flowers are bare now and trying to form fruit.
Beside the lagoon, the black garden ants are still hard at work on the peonies, which have not opened yet.
In the woods, the cypress spurge is forming tiny orange flowers which are very hard to see. I think this is the first time I have noticed them at all.
By the side of the walking trail, the mustard flowers are practically radiant.
It requires much patience and persistence to get results. We are persisting. We are persisting beyond what anyone expected. Normally, by the time a chimpanzee is thirteen, he is considered too old to be useful for ape language research, and normally, researchers who do not get recognition for one experiment move on to something else.
For years, I heard perseverance hailed as a virtue. Then I read the literature on autism, and they had "perseveration" down as something bad. Is it bad that we persist? Should we just give up? I don't see how we can, though, because how else would we communicate with each other?
What is the most typical pose for a bee on the Weigela?
Is it dead center in the middle of the flower with its wings spread out?
Is it more typical for them to be up in the air and about to land on a blossom?
Or is it with its rear end toward the camera and its head inside the flower?
Or is this a more typical view?
Whichever way we look at the bee, it presents a different side to us.
Or do they hang around like this?
Or is it more often found in midair, in a holding pattern, waiting for a landing?
The days of the Weigela blossoms are numbered, but while they yet bloom, the bees hovering around them abound. And not just bees. A wasp or two has been sighted.
They look much like bees, but their silhouette is not as plump.
Meanwhile, by the lagoon, the black ants are not even waiting for the peony blossoms to bloom.
And the backyard the tiny flower heads in the center of the dogwood blossom look about ready to open.
At the end of the day, bumble bees still buzz around the overripe redbud blossoms.
The smaller bees have all moved on the Weigela blossoms, but there are bumble bees that persist by the redbud, even as the sun is about to go down and the sky turns a rich blue.
Only after the sun finally set did the bumble bees disappear from the redbud.
Before I put Bow to bed tonight, I had washed his blanket, and it came out of the dryer very warm. "Look Bow, your blanket is clean and warm, and it smells good." He sniffed the blanket appreciatively, laid it down on the floor carefully, lay over it, spread his other blanket over his lap, and gestured to me that he was happy, so he wanted to groom my hand.
There's a lot that happens every day, but most of it is not important, except in a momentary sort of significance, like a bee hovering over a blossom before it can land,
There is an eight foot fence surrounding our back yard, That is mostly for privacy for Bow. It means that delivery people and others who mistakenly drive onto our property don't immediately have to spot Bow and start gaping at him, if he happens to be outside. But the privacy fence does not keep Bow from seeing things that are going on in the outer yard, if he wants. He can climb high and get a view of what is going on in the world beyond.
From the top of the bench rim, you can see the nearby tulip tree and the Weigela bush in the distance.
The tulip tree is getting ready to flower.
The old, dried out blossoms are still there, but this year's green flower heads are already visible and getting ready to open.
When I go to check on the Weigela blossoms, I know that Bow is watching me, and he sometimes vocalizes in my direction to let me know.
The Weigela blossoms have been open for a while now, and they are getting a little droopy. Their petals are falling one by one to the ground.
Still there are insects who find them attractive.
Sometimes I have trouble putting a name to the insect.
But sometimes they are just the familiar honey bee.
Back in the pen, Bow has a clear view of the flowering dogwood.
You can see the orientation of the pen toward these trees in the short video embedded below.
When I go for my afternoon walks, Bow also gets to be outside, if he wants to be. Our grass has not been mowed yet, and so I get glimpses of tiny little flowers shooting up that I might otherwise never have gotten to see.
The clover flowers are so delicate and fresh.
Dandelions, both young and old, are making a nice showing.
These little tiny yellow flowers are so pretty, whatever they are called!
To make the flowers grow, sometimes all you have to do is not mow the grass for a while. The same is true for trees. Much as I hope that the new fruit trees we planted in the orchard will make it, there is a very good chance that some of them will not. When you "plant a tree" you are doing a very unnatural thing. It's not at all what the tree huggers would have you believe. You are not planting, but transplanting. You are tearing out roots and making them grow someplace else. It's a shock for the tree. Some survive and some don't.
But if you just don't always mow the lawn, you will be amazed at what shoots up all on its own, without any work on your part. On the other side of the driveway from our majestic tulip tree, a baby tulip tree is growing.
Nobody planted it. It just volunteered. But already it is getting ready to blossom. This little tulip tree, if left undisturbed, is better than any tulip tree I might buy in a nursery to plant, because it already has strong roots here.
Of course, just because a plant is growing, that does not mean its survival is guaranteed. Predation takes place at every level of the trophic pyramid. This peony by the lagoon is getting ready to blossom, but will those black ants let it?
When I get back from my walk, Bow usually wants to go back inside, and he tells me so.
Bow needs my help to unlock the metal door, but he opens the glass door all by himself.
This is a snapshot I took this morning, while Bow and I were in the outer pen. After spending some time grooming me, he put his head down on my shoulder and rested. The weather outside is beautiful now, and I have not seen such splendid irises blooming next to the lagoon in years.
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