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.
Today is Bow's birthday. He is fifteen years old. But we had the party for him yesterday.
As usual, we sang the birthday song, blew out the candles, had cake and ice cream and opened presents. The video, once edited down, takes only a minute to watch, but the party took quite a bit longer.
Highlights for Bow were the cake and ice cream.
He also enjoyed seeing so many of his friends there all at the same time.
There was Sword and Charla, as well as a friend of Sword's, Brian.
There was Lawrence's daughter Lori, and Lawrence himself. Bow is not very materialistic, so besides the food and the companionship, he showed a lot less interest in his present, a new hammock seat with bright colored cushions.
Before the guests left, Bow asked to go to the outer pen, where he showed everyone, including our dogs, how high he could swing.
Bow often receives mail addressed to him. Usually, it is a catalog for expensive food that Harry & David think that Bow might like to order. But Bow never orders anything. He just looks at the pictures in the catalog, stopping for a moment to contemplate each, but never expressing a preference for any.
Our rural mailbox totally fell apart this year. First there had been those bullet wounds it suffered years ago. Then a beautiful wild rose bush grew all around it. Then somebody -- not anyone I know -- must have sprayed the rose bush with weed killer, because it withered away quite unexpectedly at a time when all the other wild rose bushes were blooming and thriving. Then, after that, ants started swarming inside the poor mailbox. I can't help but think this last event was related to the dying rose bush. After that, the lid of the mailbox fell off and someone ran over it and flattened it. Unperturbed, I still managed to put the lid back on there in a precarious sort of way. But finally when we returned from St. Louis I decided to replace the old mailbox with a new one. Lawrence put it up on the wooden post for me. And the first piece of mail we received in the brand new mailbox was addressed to Bow Katz.
It was a card by the look of it. I gave the unopened envelope to Bow.
Inside was a card with the head of a white polar bear sticking out of a hole in the front of the card. Bow was very cautious in how he proceeded. First he turned to card over to see what was on the back.
Then he opened it. Big surprise. The bear began to dance to tune of "Jingle Bell Rock". Bow took this all in his stride, as if dancing bears inside cards were an every day event for him. He was happy with the card and not at all spooked by it.
It is helpful to have a review like this from someone who has actually read the book with children who are at the age of the intended audience. I have had some unfair reviews in the past from animal rights activists who had not even read the book, but assumed that Bow was still a baby, and I would not be able to cope with him past that point. (Bow will be fifteen in February.) The book itself is not so much about cross-fostering as it is a the story of a new baby in the family and how an older child reacts. So if you are looking for a Christmas present for a young child with a new baby sibling, this book would be a good choice.
But the nice surprises did not end there. We received a package from an old friend who used to spend Thanksgivings with us. She could not make it to this year's Thanksgiving celebration, but she sent us a box full of baklava and a card about the memories.
This is such a nice time of year to be home with your family, to hear from old friends and to share memories of years gone by.
A picture of Sword and Bow with our friend who sent the baklava.
Bow has a very good friend that he sees once a week. She comes and brings him his bananas. And sometimes she brings him magazines to read, too. It's from her that he receives those issues of the Missouri Conservationist. Yesterday, she brought Bow a very special treat: Pickle Ice.
Bow trying to figure out how to eat Pickle Ice
Now, I had never seen Pickle Ice before, and neither had Bow. But he was very curious. At dinner, he asked for the Pickle Ice first. But he didn't call it Pickle Ice. He called it מתנה. "Present". Because Bow knew that the Pickle Ice was a special gift from his friend.
Eating Pickle Ice is not easy. It is a tube of frozen pickle juice that you are supposed to squeeze to get it to slide little by little into your mouth. But if the tube isn't quite frozen enough, this can pose difficulties.
I helped Bow get the hang of squeezing the tube, and for a while that worked pretty well. He liked the salty pickle juice. But then he took the task over himself, and some of it spilled on the floor.
Unperturbed, he managed to eat some of the more frozen chunks. Then left me to clean the rest up. But all in all, Bow really enjoyed his Pickle Ice!
It has been a very nice spring so far. I was so intent on filming the baby birds that I almost did not notice the flowers opening in the rose bush that held their nest. These are wild roses, and if I had not allowed them to grow here, I would probably have never gotten to see baby robins hatch.
By the lagoon, the peonies are blossoming.
It is the accidental grass fire that killed the poison ivy that was strangling them that allowed the peonies to do so well this year.
Donald Trump seems to be like that grass fire -- destroying the GOP so that liberty can flower again from the scorched earth. Yesterday Cruz supporters left the shattered Republican Party in droves, and they are coming into the Libertarian Party to rally behind Austin Petersen, When Bernie Sanders does not win the Democrat nomination, his supporters will do the same. And so something that seemed impossible might yet happen. Austin Petersen could take over the government and make it leave us all alone to do what we want to do.
Bow and I are feeling hopeful. It's the small things that make life so wonderful, like good friends and Pickle Ice.
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