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.
Bow had a nice relaxing day today. He went outside and basked in the warmth of the sun, He ate plenty of good food. He met with his friend Charla who brings the bananas and had a nice long visit with her, both indoors and out. And he engaged in plenty of grooming,
In the middle of the day, when he was tired of being outside and was getting a little antsy, I had only to mention to Bow that we could work on clipping his nails, and he immediately settled down and became calm and focused.
Chimpanzees need plenty of tactile contact with others and the opportunity for social grooming. Sometimes people tell me this, because they think I don't know it, and that Bow is somehow deprived,.But yes, it's true. Bow needs contact and socializing and grooming. And he gets that, every day. Which is why he is so relaxed and calm and content.
When Bow asks to go out in the early morning, sometimes it is not to exercise, or display or listen to the sound of his own voice. It is not to swing on his swing, or lie on his bench, or to tease the dogs. Sometimes he just sits and listens to the sounds of nature.
It may not seem as if he is doing anything important, but not doing anything important may be just exactly the point. And doing that in nature, as opposed to in an urban environment, has been found to be helpful to ward off anxiety and depression.
How does that work, exactly? I don't think it is the sound of silence. On the contrary, the soft, repetitive sounds of bird calls and insect noises have been programmed into us to let us know when all is well. The ambient noise of a forest or savanna is different when disaster is about to strike, and a preternatural silence ensues. So long as everything is business as usual, we hear the soothing sounds of all the other animals going about their daily lives. This sound of ordinary busyness is very soothing.
But in a big city we hear alarming noises all the time. Cars honking, alarms going off, sirens and other loud engine noises that sound like explosions. Some of these sounds are actually designed to be alarming and to alert us to emergencies, but when you have so many people together in such a small space, there are constant emergencies, until life begins to feel like one great big emergency. There is no time to relax and listen to the crickets chirping.
Many of my interns have told me that one of the first things they noticed on my property was how utterly quiet it was. But it's not really quiet. It's just not loud. There are noises all the time, but they are peaceful noises. Like the kind the cicada makes.
I saw this amazing creature in my front yard last night. I did not know what it was, but I was impressed by the extreme gravity and purposefulness of the insect as it made its way from the sidewalk to my lawn.
I posted pictures on Facebook and was told it was a cicada shell. People often find the empty shells attached to trees. But this shell was still very much occupied.
Cicada season is about to begin and with it all those natural, repetitive sounds.
I would love for Bow to have full access to the wild land that is just outside the outer pen. But even under our current, less than perfect arrangement, he does get to enjoy nature in a way that very few modern human beings can do.
It's not quite paradise yet, perhaps, but it is nice.
It wasn't rainy in the morning, but the sky grew progressively darker. By the time I went for my after lunch walk, it was beginning to look stormy.
The hawks tried to finish up last minute hunting.
The sky over our ribbon of private road became a very dark shade of greyish blue.
Bow was not happy. He hated it when the rain started to come down and the thunder sounded. But, surprisingly, after a brief display at the weather gods, he asked to play with the iPhone. As long as he was making faces at the screen and taking selfies, the weather did not phase him.
After a while, Bow got very sleepy. It was dark in the pen, and he had his fill of sticking his tongue out at the camera, so he lay down on his blanket, with one foot on my leg, and started to fall asleep. Every once in a while the sound of distant thunder made him open his eyes, but he was not too worried.
It's definitely spring now. The daffodils are out in full force.
We have times when it gets very warm out, and then a little while later it rains and cools down. The backyard is getting a little greener, and the dogwood tree has buds on it, but no blossoms yet.
Bow spends a lot of time outdoors, and Leo stays close to him, even when they are not playing together.
This video is from yesterday. Every once in while Bow would vocalize to let the whole world know how big and strong he is. But most of the time he was very relaxed, and Leo stayed close on the discarded bench just outside the pen. Meanwhile Brownie entertained himself by retrieving rocks that he'd thrown himself and then chewing on them. (Did you notice how flexible Bow's upper lip is?)
If I did not have Bow, I would probably spend more time one-on-one with the dogs. But the dogs have each other, and they have Bow, too. Companionship is not always about actively engaging one another. Sometimes companionship is playing in parallel and just knowing someone else is there for you.
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