the sky I looked into the shelters in the sides of the tower and saw humans displaying wrathfully at each other, or embracing each other, or giving smiles that were really grimaces of fear—a multitude of humans who seemed to contain just as much violence as we chimpanzees did.
Whenever the vibrating motion and noise of the sleeping compartment ceased, we would all wake and cry out nervously to each other in the sudden stillness to check that we still existed. I could distinguish Bonzo and Frederick and Tyrone among the different calls, and I thought at those times that you could hear the residueof troubled dreams in most of our voices but I don’t know, maybe it was just me… maybe it was just me who was fretting about whether humans were really the answer after all. So the world spun under us and we traveled west toward the Dream Factories.
We were unloaded, reloaded, unloaded again. For the first time since
Forest Lawn
we smelled leopard, rhinoceros, lion and musty python (those things sure do reek), and heard turacos sending out relays of warning. And I thought I understood at last—our rehabilitation was over. It came to me like an epiphany. This was surely the reason we’d been deprived of the touch of each other, of the comfort of mutual grooming, or those kisses of reassurance that meant so much to us. We’d been deprived of it so that we would cherish each other now we were finally considered ready to return to the forest! So that we—and I guessed this included the rehabilitated leopards and snakes—would do it
right
this time. The humans had helped us see the error of our foolish ways, and now it was up to us to make the most of our second chance!
But when the slats of my shelter were broken down, they merely revealed another of those landscapes like the docks at Kigoma, another transit camp for animals, which I was beginning to know all too well. Another shelter, Tyrone and I cast together once again, another reconnoiter around its eight corners, turning up nothing. I knew the drill by now: the insufficient straw, the diamond mesh. We could see a brick pillar, a stretch of wall, and a fraction of one of the leopards’ shelters. And then, suddenly, the dividing partition between us and the next shelter along was thrumming with the aftershock of a heavy impact, and there, bipedaling around his shelter, his hair bristling up like the Bride of Frankenstein’s, was Stroheim.
Always a pleasure … a little bit heavier than the last time, but that was to be expected. What was shocking about Stroheim was his head. He’d always had this rather noticeable central part between his two wings of hair, which were long and lay sideways. He used to look like a human schoolboy, furious at having been patted on his just-combed brow. Now this central part had become a barren desert. As I watched him display, I saw his familiar old gesture of dropping both hands onto his head and fiddling at the edges of the bald patch, plucking at the remaining hairs there. With full weight of shoulder, he crashed his slab-hands against the partition again, barking at me to show off his teeth, but still, though I feared him, I couldn’t quite bring myself ever to believe in Stroheim. He subsided, and hating myself for my gratitude to my godawful shelter, I turned away and began the long process of grooming poor shy little Tyrone down from his shock.
Stroheim’s hair-pulling business worried me. Was it anything to do with this new rehab center? There was a general air of low morale around the place, as if even the best efforts of the program could not prevent the animals turning in on themselves. Certainly our shelter was on the snug side, and the leopard opposite seemed completely sunk in despair. But there were humans who occasionally toured our shelters and at least they were diverting to look at as they observed us, doubtless assessing our recovery.
Always, for some reason, these humans were accompanied by children, who offered
Whenever the vibrating motion and noise of the sleeping compartment ceased, we would all wake and cry out nervously to each other in the sudden stillness to check that we still existed. I could distinguish Bonzo and Frederick and Tyrone among the different calls, and I thought at those times that you could hear the residueof troubled dreams in most of our voices but I don’t know, maybe it was just me… maybe it was just me who was fretting about whether humans were really the answer after all. So the world spun under us and we traveled west toward the Dream Factories.
We were unloaded, reloaded, unloaded again. For the first time since
Forest Lawn
we smelled leopard, rhinoceros, lion and musty python (those things sure do reek), and heard turacos sending out relays of warning. And I thought I understood at last—our rehabilitation was over. It came to me like an epiphany. This was surely the reason we’d been deprived of the touch of each other, of the comfort of mutual grooming, or those kisses of reassurance that meant so much to us. We’d been deprived of it so that we would cherish each other now we were finally considered ready to return to the forest! So that we—and I guessed this included the rehabilitated leopards and snakes—would do it
right
this time. The humans had helped us see the error of our foolish ways, and now it was up to us to make the most of our second chance!
But when the slats of my shelter were broken down, they merely revealed another of those landscapes like the docks at Kigoma, another transit camp for animals, which I was beginning to know all too well. Another shelter, Tyrone and I cast together once again, another reconnoiter around its eight corners, turning up nothing. I knew the drill by now: the insufficient straw, the diamond mesh. We could see a brick pillar, a stretch of wall, and a fraction of one of the leopards’ shelters. And then, suddenly, the dividing partition between us and the next shelter along was thrumming with the aftershock of a heavy impact, and there, bipedaling around his shelter, his hair bristling up like the Bride of Frankenstein’s, was Stroheim.
Always a pleasure … a little bit heavier than the last time, but that was to be expected. What was shocking about Stroheim was his head. He’d always had this rather noticeable central part between his two wings of hair, which were long and lay sideways. He used to look like a human schoolboy, furious at having been patted on his just-combed brow. Now this central part had become a barren desert. As I watched him display, I saw his familiar old gesture of dropping both hands onto his head and fiddling at the edges of the bald patch, plucking at the remaining hairs there. With full weight of shoulder, he crashed his slab-hands against the partition again, barking at me to show off his teeth, but still, though I feared him, I couldn’t quite bring myself ever to believe in Stroheim. He subsided, and hating myself for my gratitude to my godawful shelter, I turned away and began the long process of grooming poor shy little Tyrone down from his shock.
Stroheim’s hair-pulling business worried me. Was it anything to do with this new rehab center? There was a general air of low morale around the place, as if even the best efforts of the program could not prevent the animals turning in on themselves. Certainly our shelter was on the snug side, and the leopard opposite seemed completely sunk in despair. But there were humans who occasionally toured our shelters and at least they were diverting to look at as they observed us, doubtless assessing our recovery.
Always, for some reason, these humans were accompanied by children, who offered
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