Too Bad The Elephant is Dead

Bow has been enjoying the toy elephant that my mother brought him during her Thanksgiving visit. He chews on it quietly for hours. Little by little it has been dismembered, losing first its tusks, then the trunk, followed by an ear, a part of a leg, and most recently the entire head.

During the past week, Bow would hand me the elephant and suggest with body language that I chase him, holding the elephant in my hand and trying to tag Bow. At first he didn't have a name for it, but then sometime last week he came up with this request: "תפילי אותי" It sounded as if he wanted me to make him fall, from the root נפל.

"You want me to make you fall?" I asked.

He handed me the elephant and repeated the request. Then I understood that he was interpreting the root of the word as פיל, meaning "elephant", and he was actually saying something more like: "Elephant me!" At that time the elephant still had its head, or most of it, and so I started to chase Bow around the pen, touching him with the elephant's broken trunk edge.

Yesterday, when the head came off completely, revealing that the elephant is hollow on the inside, at one point Bow took my hand and spelled: "חבל שהפיל מת" That means "Too bad that the elephant died."

I looked at him. Did he feel no responsibility in this matter? "Well, Bow, why did you kill it?" I asked.

He looked sad. "Bow is bad," he spelled. He managed to look saddened, but unrepentant.

What Bow and I do to earn

The new John Wheatcroft novel, The Portrait of a Lover, is now published and available on Amazon. Who published it? Inverted-A Press. And who is Inverted-A Press? Here's a picture of the staff.

It's not every book that is chimpanzee tested, but here at Inverted-A , we can guarantee it! At least, prior to publication every book has to pass Bow's quality assurance test!

We are hoping to sell a few books in time for Christmas, to pay for our daily bread -- or rather bananas, apples and grapes. No, we don't have federal funding. No, we are not a non-profit. We are not in on any of the usual rackets, and we hope to make some money without taking it away by force from anybody else.

Am I serious about my research with Bow? Yes. Am I serious about my commitment to him? Yes. But do I think that Bow and I have a higher priority than anybody else? No. We don't rate a special tax status, and we don't come before other people. That said, we could certainly use some money.

If you would like to make a contribution to Project Bow this year, you might consider visiting our estore and making a purchase or two. It could be a book you buy for yourself, or one you are buying for a friend. We have books about primatology and about philosophy; we have children's books and literary fiction.

If you buy a book I wrote, then we gain most. If you buy a book I published but did not write, we profit a little less. If you choose a book that we are merely selling, we still get something out of the deal.

Someday, I plan to write a history of Project Bow and what I learned from it. That day has not yet come. In the meanwhile, if you want to get to know us better, you can read between the lines of the books we like to read.

The Gift of a Glove

My mother is spending a week with us, so we can celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday together. Bow and my mother have a special relationship, one that has grown over the years. When I first started Project Bow, my mother was not thrilled about it, but as Bow has  matured, while he's alienated a lot of people, surprisingly he has won my mother over.

My mother spoke to us over the phone before her visit this year, and she told Bow she was going to bring him a present when she came. Sure, enough, on the first day of the visit, my mother announced that she had a gift for Bow. At first, Bow did not seem interested, but after a while he took my hand and spelled out, rather primly, that he would like to see the present after all.

My mother brought out a little plastic elephant, and eventually, I passed it along to Bow. He accepted the gift, put it aside, and then proceeded to interact with my mother. In time, he played with the elephant, although the playing mostly consisted of mouthing it. Every once in a while the elephant lost part of its anatomy: the tip of its tail, then each of its tusks, then some part of a foot.

Did Bow enjoy the present? Yes, but he seemed to enjoy more the fact that my mother had given it to him. That was on Tuesday.

The next day at breakfast, my mother had two other gifts for Bow. One was a small piece of chocolate. (She had shared the same kind of chocolate with me and Sword the night before, after Bow went to bed.) The second gift was a small metallic packet of peanuts that she got on the airplane on the way here. Bow had trouble opening the packet, but he appreciated the peanuts very much. He actually went out of his way to say "Thank you, Grandma."

This morning, Thanksgiving Day, my mother came into the pens for breakfast carrying a small cardboard box, and Bow kept looking at it all during breakfast. Finally, after the meal was over, he motioned that he had something to say, then took my hand and spelled: "Why doesn't Grandma give Bow the present?"

My mother had no idea what he was talking about. "What present?" Then we realized that Bow probably thought the package she had carried in with her this morning was a present for him. My mother hastened to explain: "No, Bow this isn't a present. These are just some things I need to help me prepare the turkey."

Bow was reluctant to accept this explanation, but he eventually let the subject go.

All morning long, my mother worked on the Thanksgiving Feast in the kitchen, and Bow was very impatient. (My main culinary contribution of the day was the boiled eggs I prepared in advance to help tide us over.)

When my mother announced that the meal was ready and I started carrying the food in, Bow emitted lots of excited food cries. Nobody appreciates food as much as Bow.

After the meal, when Sword had already left to do her own thing, my mother and I stayed and talked about how tender the turkey had been this year, and my mother, picking up the oven mitt that was lying on the table, said: "This is a really good oven mitt. I would buy one for myself, but I seldom cook anymore."  (It was an oven mitt she had given me a few years back, an 'Ove' Glove. ) And then we talked about a lot of other things, family memories, previous meals, while Bow chewed his cud happily.

After about an hour of this, Bow motioned for me to come in with him, because he had something to say. He took my hand and spelled: "Give Grandma a present."

This surprised me. "You think I should give Grandma a present?"

"Yes."

"What should I give her?"

He spelled in Hebrew:   ".תני לה דוקא כפפה"

The word davka is one that is hard to translate. Bow had said: "Give her davka a glove." Now roughly translated, that means: "It's exactly a glove that you should give her!" or "Of all the things you should give her, a glove is the one." Or "In fact, it's a glove you should give her." There's no such word as davka in English, but that's what it means.

My mother and I exchanged glances. "I think he means the oven mitt, " I said. I pointed at the mitt and asked: "Is this the glove I should give her?"

"Yes," Bow spelled.

I went over to the other side and presented my mother with the glove. "Bow would like you to have this as a present."

"Thank you, Bow," my mother said. "That's so thoughtful of you!"

Bow's Isolationism

Yesterday was a busy day. Because I have been experiencing a persistent cough that seems to be more to do with the unusual humidity of this fall weather than with the cold I have long since overcome, I decided to start the morning off with a foray into the world of culinary delights from the mysterious East. Bow and I prepared Ginger Garlic Eggs together and enjoyed the results. Here's the video:

The rest of the day, until about three o'clock, I worked on revising The Portrait of a Lover to meet the author's specifications which he'd made in the notes on the proof. Bow was pretty happy all this time, and he allowed me to work with minimal distraction. 

I did, of course, have to attend to his needs every time he used the potty, and this occasioned interruptions at about thirty minute intervals. But all in all, this was an idyllic situation of two family members coexisting in the same space and each doing their own thing.

As long as he has me all to himself, and he feels I have paid enough attention to him, Bow can be quite pleasant. But when someone else steps into the picture, group dynamics come into effect, and Bow wants to make sure that everybody has a relationship with him, but no two people can relate to each other without placing Bow at the center of the universe. This can have an isolating effect, not just on me, but on Bow himself.

Lawrence was not able to stay on Monday for more than two hours, because he had a project that he was working on and had to finish. So yesterday, on Tuesday, Lawrence came in for an additional two hours, starting at three o'clock. Bow loves Lawrence, and he was happy to see him. He regards Lawrence's time here as only for him, and he gets very upset if I talk to Lawrence beyond a perfunctory hello.

I was in a big hurry, because I was going to pick Sword up from school so that we could go shopping for school clothes at Wal*Mart. (Normally, Sword rides the bus home.) I was on my way out, when Lawrence intercepted me in the kitchen. "Bow says he wants a green apple," he told me. "If he can't have a green apple, he'd like a red apple. But he prefers green. Do you happen to have any green apples?"

"Yes, I do. " The red apples were on the dining room table in a big bowl, but the green apples were hidden  in the refrigerator. I reached into the fruit bin in the refrigerator and handed Lawrence a green apple for Bow. "Thanks," he said, and that was the extent of our conversation. I then rushed off to pick up Sword, since it was almost three-thirty.

When I got back from shopping with Sword, I noticed there was a green apple on the dining room table among all the red apples. So I stopped by the pens to ask Lawrence: "Didn't Bow want the green apple?"

Lawrence shook his head wryly. "He got in trouble. He didn't get the apple. When I got back to give him the apple, he had already dripped on the floor."

"Oh." Bow pees on the floor to express displeasure. We can't seem to wean him of that, no matter how old he gets. But we never give up, either. Dripping on the floor means getting punished.

"Did he tell you why?"

Lawrence smiled. "Oh, yeah. He acted all huffy after I punished him, and it was like I was the one who had done something wrong, so I sat it out while he threw a fit. But eventually he told me: 'Because you stopped to talk.'"

Bow doesn't want Lawrence to talk to me on Bow's time. Even if all we talked about was what kind of apple Bow wanted and how to get it to him, Bow was willing to risk not getting that apple in order to punish us for daring to talk to each other!

Lawrence added: "I told him that was not going to work. He doesn't get to decide that I can't talk to you. He's just going to have to get over that."

Lawrence is right, of course. But in many ways, Bow is winning that battle. When I have a deadline and a job to get done, it's very important for me to have things running smoothly with Bow. If nobody comes by, he and I manage just fine together. But if anyone, even Sword, just pops in to say something, things can get very ugly, and no matter how much Bow ends up losing out on as a result of misbehavior, my work suffers, too.

Guests sense this. They see how nervous I get when they talk to me and not Bow. So they don't come. If they do come, they don't stay long. I haven't figured out a way to combat this insidious policy of Bow's. I can't walk out on him. He can't walk out on me. And there's the devil to pay if anybody else drops in.

Bow's Typical Day

The days have been getting shorter. Especially in the pens, it always seems a little dark and gloomy, even with lots of lights on, and even on a day that is not all that cold outside.

We have been going through each day as it comes along, with nothing new or earth shattering to report. We have our usual happy contented moments and also the inevitable drama that Bow demands in order to feel that he is living a full life.

Today we finally received the corrected proof of John Wheatcroft's The Portrait of a Lover. It's a book that I am publishing under the Inverted-A imprint, and it is set for publication in December.

Bow gave the book a once over. Then we went outside. He teased the dogs. He got tired of teasing the dogs, but Teyman was not tired of growling at him, so he teased the dogs some more. Then we had hot chocolate.

It's nothing unusual, but in case you want to see, I made a short video of some of these experiences.

The Rest of the Snake Tale

Yesterday I posted prematurely, before all the facts were in. Normally, I don't do any writing on a Monday, because that is my day to be up and about when Lawrence sits with Bow. I have plenty of time to write and edit all during the week, so it would be a waste to spend the few hours I have away from the pens writing. But when Lawrence related the story of the black rat snake to me, and Bow was happy and content, lying around chewing his cud after lunch, I thought I had a few moments to jot down what had happened before Lawrence came back to relieve me after lunch. I was just re-reading my post one more time for typos, when Lawrence came back.

By this time, Teyman, our little rat terrier mix, was yapping away in the yard, and I suspected that she might have finally noticed the snake. Teyman is a hunter. I have seen her kill squirrels and unearth moles, and she is definitely a snake killer. The rat snake had been left unmolested on the other side of the fence, so it was possible that it had made his way into the yard, and now a fierce battle between dog and snake was raging.

I got ready to leave the pens, as Lawrence was back in charge, and Bow, hearing Teyman all excited in the yard, stirred himself from the corner of the pen where he had been lazing, took Lawrence's hand and spelled: "I want to go outside."

Lawrence decided to take this opportunity to pressure Bow into telling him how he had known about the snake. (Bow had refused to say before, but now he needed Lawrence's help to go outside, so Lawrence was using this leverage to get him to talk.) "Okay, Bow, you can go outside, but first, I want you to tell me how you knew there was a snake."

Bow, anxious to get out and see whether Teyman had caught anything, complied. "I saw," he spelled.

"You saw?" Lawrence asked, sounding kind of dubious. Could Bow see through a solid fence? But since no further explanation was forthcoming, he said: "Okay, Bow, let's go outside then."

Bow and Lawrence made their way to the outer pen, and I went through the garage to the backyard, to see what Teyman was up to. There was much excitement among the dogs, and Teyman did have something in her mouth.

"Did she catch the snake?" I asked.

"She caught a snake," Lawrence replied.

I moved in closer, and Teyman, proud of her kill, dropped it at my feet. But no sooner had she done so than Brownie, our chocolate Lab, picked it up again in his mouth, shaking it a few times for good measure, then throwing it up in the air and inviting me to play fetch with it.

The snake was not a big, black rat snake. It wasn't anything at all like the snake Lawrence had reported seeing on the other side of the fence. It was brown and striped and much smaller. Here is a picture.

The snake Teyman killed

Later in the day, Lawrence asked Bow: "Which snake did you see, Bow? The black snake or the brown?"

Bow answered: "Brown."

Now, we don't necessarily have to take Bow's word on it. He has been known to lie. But it does make sense that he saw a snake in the yard, and not on the side of a solid fence.

In real life, sometimes there is more than one snake. Especially during snake season!

What Bow Knows

Today, when I came back from shopping for groceries, Lawrence told me of something that happened while I was away. At one point, sometime between eleven and noon, Bow became very agitated. He kept gesturing toward the southern stretch of backyard fence, and he yelled at Lawrence, as if trying to vocally tell him that something was wrong. He did the same to the dogs. "It was kind of like he was telling the dogs to go out and do something about it, that there was someone or something beyond the fence."

The dogs did not seem aware of anything. They barked back at Bow, interpreting Bow's vocalizations as acts of aggression against them. Bow kept trying to get Lawrence's attention.

Finally, Lawrence asked Bow: "Do you want me to go out there and see who it is?"

Bow said "Yes."

Lawrence went out through the front door and explored the side yard to see what he could see. There didn't seem to be anyone out there, but on his way back he almost stumbled over a big, black rat snake that was lying in his path.

Bow hates snakes. He has always disliked snakes, ever since he was little. This is not something he learned from me, because I'm pretty tolerant toward snakes, compared to most people. But every time Bow sees a snake he gets very upset, and he once lifted an entire bench off the ground and threw it in the direction of a snake that was just outside his outer pens.

Lawrence didn't do anything to the rat snake, as we need the snake's help to get rid of rodents. Rat snakes are not poisonous. There was no reason to be upset that there was a snake near our house. Bow, however, seemed very upset.  But when Lawrence came back in, Bow was calm and happy. Maybe all he needed was for Lawrence to acknowledge that there was indeed a snake out there.

The question is: how did Bow know? The fence is very high, and it's made of wood, and it would be very hard to spot the snake through the tiny cracks between the wood slats. Snakes don't make much noise, so it seems unlikely that Bow heard the snake. And Bow's not telling. He doesn't want to talk about the snake anymore.

Did Bow know there was a snake out there? If he didn't know, what was he so agitated about? If he did know, how did he know? And why won't he tell us?