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.
The truth is that there is still a lot that I don't know about bees, even though there seems to be no shortage of them on my property. Some of the bees are honey bees, while many belong to other varieties. But even in the case of the honey bees, I don't know where they live or whether they are free or "owned". And I certainly don't know how they reproduce or manage to survive our harsh winters.
The idea of owning bees may seem kind of silly. They are insects. They fly around freely. There are no collars on them or identification tags. How could you possibly complain that a bee is trespassing on your property and ask for restitution from the owner? By the same token, how would you go about filing a claim if you thought a bee belonging to you was stolen? Do the bees know who owns them? Oxen and asses do know who owns them, according to Biblical scripture (Isaiah 1:3). But bees?
However, not only are there beekeepers and bee owners, there are also bee breeders and bee sellers. If for instance, 30% of a beekeeper's colony dies of the dreaded "colony collapse disorder", that does not mean that next season that beekeeper will have 30% fewer bees to begin with. Not at all. He can simply order new bees -- in a kit -- from his friendly local bee breeder, and next year he will have exactly the number of bees that he wants to have. No more, no fewer.
I actually did know about the bee kits, because a friend of mine orders them most years. Although recently she skipped a year, and that must have greatly reduced the bee population in her neighborhood.
If you read the most popular news items about bees, they never mention this. They don't talk about bee breeders, and how all of us are counting on them to supply beekeepers with extra bees, to make up for the bees they lose to the vagaries of nature.
They do talk about how we need bees as pollinators, so that even if we don't like honey and could not care less if there were no honey left to eat, we should care if we like peaches and nectarines and apples and pears. No bees, no fruit, they tell us. The earth will be a desolate place, and the only thing left to eat will be hamburgers and bean burritos.
Here's what they don't tell us: if we keep importing honey from abroad, our local beekeepers will stop ordering pre-packaged bees from the bee breeders, and then the local fruit growers will have to find some other way to pollinate. This will not result in no fruit. It may, however, result in much more expensive fruit. Because all the bees will be overseas, working for the local beekeepers who are making a living from selling honey to us.
Everything in life is interconnected, including ecology and economy. An animal has no chance of survival in this overpopulated world unless humans cultivate it, breed it and keep its kind going. That's why if you want bees, you go to bee breeders. No breeders, no bees.
The same thing is true for chimpanzees. If you want there to be chimpanzees on earth in the future, then you have to be nice to chimp owners and chimp breeders. Chimp breeders make a living from chimp owners. Do away with ownership of chimpanzees, and there will be no breeders. No breeders means no chimps. There is no other way for them to have any chance at all to survive as a species. So if you are a real conservationist, you have to fight for the right to own chimpanzees.
Happiness comes from the simple things. Like deciding to go outside on a foggy morning and lying on the bench in your own special way.
It is nice to have loyal friends like Leo and Brownie, and to be able to ignore them when you feel like it, and to engage them on your own terms when the spirit moves you.
Happiness, for a dog like Brownie, is being able to spend hours on end digging up rocks.
They say that the best things in life are free. Brownie agrees. He prefers playing with a rock he has dug up from the ground to doing almost anything else.
Of course, the rock isn't really free. We have to pay property taxes to the county and the state in order to be able to hold onto the land we own so we can keep digging up rocks. But Brownie does not know this.
I get a real jolt of joy every time I spot a butterfly and can observe it close up.
I enjoy the sunsets, with their special sights and sounds.
You would think that a sunset, at least, would be free, but even that is not strictly true. To have an unobstructed view of the horizon line and to be able to listen to the crickets and the cicadas and the birds without engine noises costs money. It's the money that it takes to live far, far away from other people.
These are flowers growing by the side of the road, just on the other side of the fence that delimits my property. Aren't they pretty? A couple of days ago the county mowers came and plowed them under. They are no more. But I enjoy the memory.
Limenitis Arthemis Astyanax.
Yesterday, I was finally able to film the red-spotted purple butterfly that can be found on my property. I have been seeing a lot of them everywhere, in the backyard or flying past the front porch or in the poison ivy that lines the lagoon, but up till now, none of them would sit still long enough for me to take a picture.
Limenitis Arthemis Astyanax. taking off
This one would not sit still very long, either. As I approached for a better look, it took off and then flew very close to my face, before disappearing into the pasture.
Limenitis Arthemis Astyanax.close to my face
Still, being able to get this close to the the red-spotted purple (aka Limentitis Arthemis Astyanax) makes me very happy.
I also enjoy observing those much tinier butterflies who turn from white to blue to white again.
I saw this little guy through my kitchen window as I was doing the dishes last night. Then when I went out to feed the kitten in the barn, he was still there.
That rabbit was so comfortable with my presence, that it stopped to scratch before taking evasive maneuvers. And guess what? The kitten was just around the corner of the house. It wondered what was taking me so long to get to the barn.
The best things in life are free, they say. Sure, they are free, after you finish paying for that freedom. Brownie, Leo and the kitten did not cost anything to acquire, but they cost a lot to keep. I often see these memes with a man, a woman and a child romping around on a beach. "The Best Things in Life Are Free" it says. "Oh, yeah?" I want to ask: "How much did that pretty wife (or sexy husband) set you back? How much money is that child costing you? How did you get to go to the beach?"
People have to save up before they can start a family. They need to put aside money for time to look at butterflies or talk with apes, too. Anytime you go after someone else's savings, you are attacking the simple things in life and making them definitely not free. If the price is too steep, all those things have to go.
Nothing that is worth having is free. It's a fact of life. But it should not cost you more than what it took to acquire and feed it. So the next time you go to the polls, vote for lower taxes, so that we don't have to pay for those free things over and over again, once we have gotten them. Real freedom is when you can stop paying for the right to keep what you already have.
It's another rainy day, like so many other before that we have had this summer. Bow cannot go outside to play, and he usually will not sit still to watch much TV, because even the slightest conflict between characters sets him off. But yesterday, we watched a part of a Muppet movie, and today Bow told me he wanted to "hear Kermit".
He is not as excited about Kermit the Frog as he is about Lady Gaga, but I think Bow is a definite fan of the little green guy.
What is the possible appeal of a muppet to a chimpanzee? Clearly, the muppet is not real. Bow knows that, so that even in relatively violent scenes in which Muppet bodies are flying, Bow does not get upset, but he is nevertheless amused enough to keep watching. On the other hand, he seems to understand that the Muppets stand for people, and he likes them for that reason. Also, he enjoys the music, which is calm and pleasant and not too challenging.
For anybody who thinks chimpanzees are incapable of abstraction, and that they look only to facial and other non-verbal cues when interpreting language, consider the Muppet connection. Bow understands Kermit, but Kermit has a really limited set of facial expressions. Muppets are just abstract enough to require imagination and linguistic capacity, but concrete enough for us all to get what it's about.
I believe that we are each responsible for what goes on in our own backyards and that we should stay out of other people's business. This includes taking care of our own animals, our own children and our own lawn chores, and staying on our own side of the fence, even if we disagree with how someone else is gardening, pruning, raising his own children or training his dog. It also means that we should come to the defense of our neighbors when they are under attack by outsiders -- even the government -- but we should not intervene in domestic disputes on the other side of the fence. This is the essence of being a good neighbor.
Somebody killed a lion in Zimbabwe -- and people who pretend to be animal lovers are up in arms and asking for his head. But when the government of the State of Ohio confiscated, killed and then dissolved the corpse of an American lion, there was no such outrage. Nobody is calling for the death of the head of the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
What is the difference? In the one case, it was a lion far away killed by a hunter. In the other case, it was a lion owned by an American and killed by the government. Why is it that the case of Leo the Lion has provoked no outrage? Is somebody orchestrating the public's feelings?
I remember a similar situation back in 1993, only it did not involve lions. It was about men, women and children. The government of the United States laid siege to the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, and in the name of saving children, burned the place to the ground with all the men, women and children inside it.
But most of the intelligent, intellectual and "enlightened" I knew at the time, who lived in Houston, Texas and went to Rice University, were enraged about the atrocities in Bosnia, which were far, far away, and they did not care at all what was happening in their own backyard, in Waco, Texas, which was only a three hour drive away. They could have saved the children at Mt. Carmel, whereas they could have done nothing about the people in Bosnia. I am not saying what was happening in Bosnia was good, but it wasn't our business. What happened in Waco was our business, because it was our government that was doing it, using agents hired with our money and weapons bought with our taxes -- and they were doing it in our name!
The principle in both cases is the same: We are responsible for what happens to American children and American lions and tigers and chimpanzees, when it is our government that is doing it. We are not responsible for what happens overseas.
Many animals are on the verge of extinction in Africa. There is nothing we can do about it. But we can stop making it hard for those private people who keep these animals and breed them and help them thrive here in the United States at their own expense and using their own means.
We can't save every child and every animal in the world. But what we can and should do is prevent our tax money from being used to keep American citizens from taking care of their own animals and their own children using their own funds. We should do this, because it is happening in our own backyard, and we have the means to stop it. And if we don't stop it, we are part of the problem.
While I was away on the trip to Bloomington, the grass in the backyard grew a little higher than is comfortable, and when I got back, I had a lot of things to get caught up on.
The backyard at its worst with Brownie
There were torrential rains for over a month, so I could not use the expedient of not watering the lawn to slow its growth. I was behind on lawn chores for a while, but I went at it for the past three days full force with garden shears and a reel mower, and now things are back to normal.
The backyard under control with Leo
You might say that I now have a manicured lawn, if by "manicured", you mean that it was all done by hand, as opposed to motorized machines. But if you mean that it is perfect, then manicured is probably not the word for it. Also, I did use store bought implements, so it was not really by hand.
The implements
One of the reasons I don't let the professional mowers in the backyard is that having strangers there would be upsetting to Bow. Another reason is that he hates engine sounds. He hates the vacuum cleaner, too.
I like these flowers that grow by themselves in the yard by the fence and the wall, so I did not mow them down
But truthfully speaking, if I have to do it myself, I would rather do it using hand powered tools, because I find it hard to control a motorized weed wacker and the average motorized push mower is hard for me to start. I have little girl hands, I'm not super muscular, and I can't handle anything with too much kick-back, This is also the reason I prefer low caliber guns to high. You have to know your physical limitations and pace yourself, if you are going to accomplish anything on your own.
I went out to mow every time that Bow asked to go outside, so he could see what I was doing, and I could see what he was doing. He wasn't always happy that I was out there mowing and not paying attention to him, but he was good. He did not misbehave.
The leaf Bow did not use. It was greener yesterday.
Yesterday morning, when I was almost finished with my work, Bow suddenly had to use the potty. It was number two, and he sat there waiting for me to come in and help him wipe. But I was almost done with my mowing and had just a little more to do, and I did not want to stop while I was in the swing of things. So I picked up a green leaf and passed it through the grid and said to Bow: "Bow, could you just use this leaf to wipe yourself? I can't come in just now."
He looked at the leaf with a very doubtful expression, because after all, he is a civilized chimpanzee, and he is used to facial tissue, not leaves. "Use the leaf to wipe yourself!" I urged.
Bow did not do as I asked. This, however, does not mean that he did not understand what I said. Sometimes, Bow just thinks he has a better idea. For some reason, in language comprehension tests, this aspect of language and communication is not accounted for.
Bow spotted a brown, dead leaf -- much smaller, but closer to him -- on the concrete floor and used that to wipe himself. Then he got off the potty and looked at his hand, to make sure it was clean. He is very fastidious.
Later when I came in to empty the potty and inspect everything, I saw that Bow had done a pretty good job with that tiny, dead leaf. Maybe green is not always more clean!
We are so used to modern amenities, that sometimes we forget what can be accomplished with much less. My daughter thinks I need a gym membership in order to stay fit. But I can assure you I exercised a lot of unused muscles in the three days I took to mow the backyard.
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 has been very hot out for the past few days. The sun casts heavy shadows, and everything seems slow.
Even the little butterflies on my long internal road look lazy.
They congregate there in small groups, and then they line up, as if getting ready for a race.
"On your mark, get set, go!" they seem to be saying. And then they all fly off at once.
But even though they all take off at the same time, there are always some that are faster and some that are slower. No two are the same.
No matter how similar they look, and how perfectly lined up they seem to have been, and how well synchronized their start is, they still each have their different pace and speed and destination.
No matter how superficially similar, no two chimpanzees are alike, either. And no single "solution" of the chimpanzee "problem" is going to perfectly cover every case.
Some are literate, and others are not.
Some are domesticated and some are wild. Some are imprisoned, and some are free. Some are gainfully employed, and others are asking for a handout.
Photo Credit: The Daily Mail, UK Chimpanzeessin Liberia, abandoned by their captors, beg for a handout
I've been thinking a lot about Liberia lately. Not just the chimpanzees in Liberia, but also the entire history of that country.
If you would like to read a news item about chimpanzees in Liberia abandoned by the New York Blood Center, here is the news source I have seen:
The short version of the story is this: In 1974 the New York Blood Center captured wild chimpanzees and infected them with diseases deadly to humans while keeping them on six little islands in Liberia. The chimpanzees, who had been self-supporting up to that point, became entirely dependent on their captors for food and all of life's necessities. In 2005 the New York Blood Center abandoned their research project, but they promised to care for the captive chimpanzees for life. Ten years later, the funds for the "lifetime care" have run out. Sixty-six adult chimpanzees and one baby are now begging for food. They have not learned how to become self-supporting again. They wait for humans to come to their island and feed them, greeting them with outstretched hands and hugging those who help them.
This is a very moving, very distressing story, and here are the lessons we can learn from this;
Bad things can and do happen to chimpanzees in Africa all the time. Sending chimps to Africa does not guarantee them a happy or "natural" life.
Banning medical research on chimpanzees in America will not prevent American organizations from conducting such research abroad.
When the funding for research on chimpanzees is cut, chimpanzees find it hard to make a living.
Sixty-six adult chimpanzees, who could easily attack and kill the few men who come to their island, instead hug them and are grateful for the food they bring. If chimpanzees were stupid wild animals who cannot control their violent impulses no matter the circumstances, how could this be happening?
I am not saying this in support of medical research on chimpanzees, but you have to realize that anytime any activity involving chimpanzees is banned, that is going to be hard on chimpanzees from an economic standpoint. If you ban medical research, medical research companies are going to dump their chimps. If you ban circuses, circuses are going to lay off their chimps. If you ban films in which chimpanzees are allowed to play chimpanzees, giving those choice roles to human actors and CGI constructs, then chimpanzee actors are going to be out of work. And if you ban the private ownership of chimpanzees, then nobody will feed the chimps that they don't own anymore.
People who want to cut off funding to chimpanzees in every possible endeavor in the United States are not "friends of chimpanzees", no matter how humanely they couch their propaganda. They are not trying to "liberate" chimpanzees. They want to get rid of them.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Liberia. Because those particular chimpanzees from the New York Blood Center are in Liberia, I have been reviewing the history of Liberia, and the motives of the Americans who sponsored the Liberia project seem to me to be parallel to the motives of those people who are currently campaigning for chimpanzees to be allowed to exist only in Africa.
From the Wikipedia:
The Founding of Liberia in the early 1800s was motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States as well as by U.S. foreign policy interests. In 1816, a group of white Americans founded the American Colonization Society to deal with the problem of the growing number of free Blacks in the United States by resettling them in Africa. The resulting state of Liberia would become the second (after Haiti) Black republic in the world at that time.[21]
Why was the growing number of free blacks in the United States in the early 1800s seen as a problem by the white men who founded the American Colonization Society? Wasn't it a good thing that more and more blacks in America were becoming free? There can be only one answer: the people interested in resettling free blacks in Africa were racist. Free blacks in America were those successful men and women who despite all the disadvantages they were under managed to assimilate into American society and become self-supporting -- some of them even wealthy. This normal process of upward mobility had been ongoing in the colonies even before the American Revolution.
Some of the men who joined the American Colonization Society were Northerners who resented free blacks, because they did as well as or better than free whites. Some of them were Southerners who resented the example free blacks set for their slaves. This was before the Civil War, and many of those people would end up on opposite sides of a very bitter struggle that could have been entirely prevented if the natural process of manumission had been allowed to take its course. Today, in the schools, we are being taught that if you are black, the only reason you are free is because of the Emancipation Proclamation. But many black Americans had free ancestors in the US long before the Civil War. They did not need anybody to set them free, because they had gained their freedom on their own.
So what does this have to do with chimpanzees? Today, in America, the people who work to prevent chimpanzees from earning a living come from two camps:
Those who hate chimpanzees and fear them as wild animals who kill humans indiscriminately and without regard to circumstance. They just want them far, far away.
Those who adore chimpanzees as wild savages, but think they should not be domesticated, educated or allowed to work.
The two camps may seem as different as the two groups that formed the American Colonization Society. But their motives are at base the same: they are for apartheid, and they want to destroy chimpanzees in America.
I am not writing this to complain about Liberia. Like Israel, Liberia was one of those 19th century experiments in founding new countries that have both positive and negative results. Nobody is suggesting that Liberia should be disbanded, any more than I am suggesting that all chimpanzees should live in the US. But I think by now everybody agrees that just because Liberia exists, that does not mean there should not be black Americans in America. Or that just because Israel exists, there should not be Jews in America.
I once knew a man from Liberia. I met him in college. We both liked poetry. But he liked the poetry of Marcus Aurelius, while I favored Kipling. So we each went our separate ways.
No two butterflies are the same. Remember that. It will stand you in good stead.
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