Those wild and wonderful Cook's
Friday, August 16, 2013
A Dream of A Sanctuary and Votes Needed!
What prompted me to rush to publish my blog was this: I saw an article by The Huffington Post come through over facebook. It's about a contest, where you vote for the best painting by a chimpanzee who is living in a sanctuary.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
I Was Completely Beside Myself
I think most new blogs start out with an explanation of why and how they began. I'll conform and begin there too. I read a book, and it woke me up to a wonderful--and not so wonderful part of my life. I'll let the letter explain for now, and follow up soon with some filling in. Please subscribe to hear about the rest of our story.
Note: the above image is my PawPaw Jim Cook.He is holding Uriah. Uriah has the dubious distinction of being the first chimpanzee born into a family household.
Dear Mrs Karen Joy Fowler,
I’ve waited my whole life to feel connected to a book. As an avid
reader, quite frankly, it’s always ticked me off that of the hundreds of
books I’ve read a year--I didn’t have that special connection to one.
As a young mother watching Oprah, I’d be so envious of those women who
appeared on the book club specials talking about how the book changed
their lives, or turned things around in some way. Personally I was
rooting for The Jane Austen Book Club. :)
Fast forward to two
days in July as I’m lying here sick with pneumonia: Not ideal, but leads
to some uninterrupted reading time for a busy mom of six. After a
friend notices a possible connection with my past, I plow into We Are
All Completely Beside Ourselves.
Fast forward to gut punches
and kidney jabs as the blows come one after another as an Author seems
to reach into my head: As a young girl, I have my own episodic memories.
I’m at least four-years-old. Unbeknownst to the adults a large
chimpanzee is pinching my behind as someone tries to photograph us. (us
being my siblings and Tanya the chimp.) Tanya is the darling of my
Granny, who is an Oklahoma transplant to a small Texas town. If my
recall is correct, Tanya is around ten years old and was raised as a
baby by my grandparents--a cross-fostered chimp from the University of
Oklahoma and Dr. William Lemon through the Institute Of Primate Studies.
Unlike my oldest sibling, cousins and uncles--I didn’t care
too much for Tanya. She was a hogger. If there were graduate students,
she stole the limelight, and they thought her brilliant. She hogged my
Granny’s time, who found it hard to find human children exceptional
after Tanya, her over two-hundred signs and glorious physical feats.
Later, Tanya was introduced to Meschach the male she was to breed with.
I’m told she signed that he was “dirty ape,” a sentiment everyone in
the family probably agreed with as his favorite activity was to throw
his poop at us.
Then came Uriah. I don’t remember his
birth--he has the distinction of being the first chimp born in the US in
captivity. My memories come to glaring life as another baby chimp
Israel--or Izzy as we called him--was sent to live with my grandmother
too. Since she’d been able to keep both Tanya and Uriah alive(who’d
been removed from his mother at this time. She sat him down, which is a
big no no.) they figured she could help Uriah and have two male chimps
be raised together with experienced human chimp parents. I’m sure this
made for convenient opportunities for more studies.
My first
memories of the boys were of them riding my Granny’s pants legs. I’d
never seen beings more vulnerable or cuter. I adored them. I wanted
nothing more than to play with them and got my opportunity as they grew
older. My cousins and I learned to live in a chimp world pretty quick!
Weekends and holidays were spent learning this chimp-eat-chimp world.
You either grabbed food, or one of the boys would get it first. You
hauled ass to the swings and planted yourself there or one of the boys
would dominate you before you could blink. You climbed trees faster, or
tried to--or they pushed you out of those trees with gleeful hoots and
hollers. My cousins and I learned to make pacts with one another.
Someone was the early warning system, and everyone stuck their feet
under the couch at once and put their arms under our bodies, as the boys
charged through, jumping on backs--their favorite game being pinching
and biting to see which human child would squeal and look up first.
Then Leah was born and my Granny got sick. I don’t remember the order
of things here. As a nine-year-old it was scary seeing my Granny
sick--this super-strong woman who resembled Rosie The Riveter getting
weaker and weaker. Tanya died almost a year to the date that my granny
did and everyone said it was from depression and grief. I believe it.
Things changed then. We barely came together for holidays, and if we
saw our cousins on the weekends it felt more like happenstance than
anything on purpose. My sisters and I continued to climb trees with the
boys and play horse-back riding with them, but they were getting
rougher. Soon they were installed into cages after some attacks on
family members. Their cages were as pleasant as cages could be. They had
both indoor and outdoor places, air conditioning and filled with
trampolines and toys for thier enjoyment. When no one was around, my
PawPaw let them out to run wild in the yard. We’d sometimes get to play
in their cages, and I’d thought them kind of fun.
Leah was
growing and being raised alone by PawPaw with early help from an aunt
and uncle. He spoiled her rotten. She was his baby and could do NO
wrong. I became a teen and life was hard for me. My mother moved us into
a house several blocks from my grandfather and life was strange. Home
life was horrible, but normalcy for me became a household full of
chimps. Leah dominated the house by then and everyone around her. My
sisters and I started getting dropped off the school bus at our PawPaws
house. He fed us and taught us how to play poker and backgammon, and for
me, he let me take over the care of the boys. I’d decided to major in
primatology, and before me were the two best thesis fantasy inducing
beings ever. I studied their behaviors during feeding time, trying my
best to look at them as apes and not family members in jail. Taught them
a few extra signs too. Read numerous books on primates learning
scientific things by scientists that used words and described things
that I’d never attributed to apes. Sometimes I laughed at their
work--ridiculous that apes only mimicked languages and didn’t understand
oral language--felt superior to others whose chimps didn’t learn as
fast as the boys and Leah did. I was on top of the world in that
environment. I was queen, and was given a pat on the head by PawPaw when
I bossily said I’d be their caregiver forever. I was qualified of
course in my mind. The boys got into some trouble though one day as they
attacked a great-granddaughter. They were sent to live in a sanctuary. I
was sad, but I still had Leah who was my sister and best friend in the
whole world.
Leah was different. She was sometimes girly and
compassionate. She could be distracted easily with cute things like
kittens and responded with the best love ever if you were crying. Leah
chewed my homework, and I got to tell one of the best “ ate my homework
stories,” ever, backed up with a polaroid picture to my ninth grade
English teacher. Besides a few good friends who knew--I’d never really
told any schools about my unusual upbringing. I was instantly the
favorite of the science teacher, sign language teacher and students who
thought I was cool and worthy of getting to know. Any science project I
did on the chimps got instant A’s.
Like all life stories, this
one has a middle that seems like the beginning of an end: My human
sisters and I are awakened in the middle of the night by my PawPaw’s
girlfriend’s daughter. She says we have to hurry, my PawPaw is having a
heart attack and the emergency medical team along with the girlfriend
are frightened of Leah, who was sleeping in the same room when it
happened.
The only thing I remember about the rest of that
night is shock as I saw my PawPaws body on his bed, and Leah howling in
the most unholy way--sounds I’ve never heard coming from a chimp. For
the first time ever, I was afraid of her.
I don’t remember the
rest, or even if I was helpful with Leah at all. I think possibly an
Uncle arrived to lock her in the cage for her own safety.
My
PawPaws funeral was three days later. I stayed behind with Leah. Not
because I was afraid of funerals, but was afraid for Leah. She was
despondent. She held onto my neck through the cage, and I don’t care
what anyone says--she cried. I didn’t know how to console my sister. She
would barely lift her head to look at me, just kept a grip on me as she
whimpered. We were one in our misery.
I think it was the
following day or maybe a few that she was taken. She was driven to a
sanctuary near Austin called Primarily Primates. I was in shock. Shock.
Shock. Shock. My sister, MINE was gone. The girl who bravely stood up to
a jerky boyfriend of my mothers, hitting him because he raised his
voice at me, my sister who ate granola cereal with me after school, who
spoon fed me chopped up ice just because she shared like that, and my
sister whose grip on my heart was absolutely complete. We weren’t human
and chimp, just beings sharing simple, honest body language to
communicate what the other needed--whether that was a hug, kiss and
sometimes knock out fights, it was always honest and loyal.
I
was pissed. I still am sometimes. I’m supposed to be okay that she’s in a
sanctuary. Okay that she’s in the company of other chimps. All I can
think of is that at HOME she’d be able to climb trees, have a puppy, and
make choices--even if those choices were what to eat or drink. I’m
about as happy she’s there as I would be if one of my sisters were in
foster care. Sure, you might be grateful if you knew your sister were
being fed and had a place to sleep, but it’s still foster care. It’s not
home, the place she learned to climb curtains, ride ponies and
strategically dodge acorns from a sling-shot. She’s not home.
My sister the ballsy badd-ass had to learn her place. She had to learn
she was a chimp, but a female chimp, and she no longer had choices.
My life became black and white after she left. I stopped reading
anything to do with chimpanzee studies. I quit school the following
year, I stopped singing, I stopped everything because the two beings--my
PawPaw and Leah--my lifelines were gone and I didn’t get a damn proper
good-bye.
When you live an early life in a half-fairytale--it
changes you. Where you once were special for having known that kind of
life, the bare floor when the rug is removed is harsher than if you’d
only had a bare floor to step on all along.
Reading your book
didn’t tear open old wounds, it just exposed the one’s already there
that are unhealed. And it did another thing too. It brought some peace.
It brought thoughts of an adult perspective of my childhood. Looking
back at forty, is much different than looking back at sixteen,
twenty-five and thirty.
I see now how lucky I was, how
privileged to get to know the bonds that beings can share even though
they aren’t supposed to. I am lucky.
Your book brought up
funny traits that to this day I share with chimps. At forty--I still
pick things up with my toes. Half a room can be cleaned without ever
bending down. I rock myself back and forth on a daily basis for
self-comfort. I’m still selfish and want to do things before anyone can
beat me to it. I trust loud and boisterous people, and am suspicious of
quiet and shy. And I love--I still love regardless of race, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, religion and even species.
Like you wrote
in your book, most people who experience this feel the need to write a
book, or tell someone about it. This is my way of telling someone. As I
read your book, I was completely beside myself, forgiving myself, loving
myself and my memories.
Leah is still alive. While I know
where she is, and have seen recent pictures of her--mostly I try not to
think of her. I think I can now, and maybe I can contribute in some
small way to the sanctuary that has cared for now over half her life. I
am ready to tell that animal experiments shouldn’t happen. I am ready to
tell that as much as we love animals, they can love us back too, and we
risk their emotional health just as much as our own when we try to
cross boundaries like this. I’m ready to say that while I love my
grandparents dearly, I wish I could spare the emotional pain of every
chimp who was fostered this way. I too fantasize of building a sanctuary
where humans are on the inside and chimps on the outside enjoying the
trees, birds and living life. If people could really see how close we
animals are, it would possibly give people a better understanding of the
earthly connection we all share, how close we really are and how much
we are alike.
Thank you
Traci Flores, sister to Leah who happens to be a chimp,Granddaughter of Jim and Wanda Cook
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