Latest notes | 1998

This was the page when I first put it up, in May 1997. I've fixed some spelling and left the rest. Oldest notes are at the bottom. -- D.M.

Who's who (spring 1997):
Bruno, silverback, about 35. Born in the wild in West Africa, came here in 1965 at about three years old.
Lulu, female, about 31. Also wild-born. Bruno's oldest companion.
Kiki, female, 9. Born here, Lulu and Bruno's daughter.
Asha, female, 15. Born at a zoo out East. Came to us in 1995.
Me, Dennis, keeper. Also: Paula, senior keeper, who knows everything.

Tuesday, December 23, 1997

Asha's pregnant.

We've been wondering for about a month. Her appetite changed and she's been napping more. Last week Paula drew up a little urine off the floor of Asha's night den with a syringe, first thing in the morning, before the hose. We used a regular drugstore pregnancy test, the same kind you'd buy for yourself. They work on gorillas. Our hormones are that close. Two lines.

Dr. Frederick, our vet, ran a second one at the hospital to be sure. Also two lines.

If the math is right she's due around the middle of June. Gorillas carry about eight and a half months, a little less than people. This is her first. She was raised by her own mother at the zoo where she was born, which is the best sign there is. Gorillas raised by people sometimes don't know what to do with a baby. Gorillas raised by gorillas usually do.

I told Jill when I got home, before I'd taken my boots off. She said "That's wonderful," and then she got quiet, and I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it too. We've been trying for two years. Not much luck. I've been around a lot of births at work. It's different when it's somebody else's.

Merry Christmas to Asha. Merry Christmas to everybody.

Wednesday, November 26, 1997

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. The zoo is closed, but the animals still eat, so somebody works, and this year it's me and Darren, our newest keeper. Gorillas don't know it's a holiday. They will get a holiday anyway. I'm bringing in a bag of sweet potatoes that Jill's mother baked for them, and a pumpkin each, and we'll hide it all in the hay in the dayroom.

Bruno will eat his pumpkin the way he eats everything, sitting with his back to the wall, slowly, looking at you the whole time. Kiki will roll hers around until it cracks. Lulu will take hers to the corner and break it open with one hand like it's nothing. Asha will eat the seeds out of hers and give the rest to Kiki. Every year. I could set my watch by them.

Thankful for: Jill. A job where I get to do this. Five gorillas, if Paula and I are right about Asha. We'll know soon.

Tuesday, October 14, 1997

A couple of people have written to ask what the Species Survival Plan is, since I mentioned it. Here's the short version, as best I understand it.

There are only so many gorillas in zoos in North America, a few hundred. If every zoo bred whoever it had, before long they'd all be cousins. So there's a plan, run through the zoo association, with a studbook that keeps track of every gorilla: who its parents were, where it lives, who it's related to. A committee looks at the whole population and makes recommendations: this female should breed with that male, this young male should move to that zoo, this female shouldn't breed right now. Animals that came from the wild, like Bruno, are valuable, because their genes aren't in the population much yet.

Last spring the plan recommended Bruno and Asha. Asha came off her birth control in July. (Yes, gorillas take the pill. The same one people take.) And Bruno and Asha have been spending a lot of time together lately, and that's all I'll say about that, this is a family page.

Lulu is not on the pill. She's had her babies. She raised two sons who went to other zoos when they were old enough, which is how it works, and Kiki. Paula says Lulu is retired. She looks it. She spends most afternoons in her favorite spot by the window, chewing on a stick, watching the people watch her.

Wednesday, August 27, 1997

Training update.

We don't go in with the gorillas. Nobody does here. Everything is done through the mesh in the back holding area, where they can choose to come over or not. That's how you do a health check on a four-hundred-pound animal: you ask. With training, and a lot of grapes.

It's called operant conditioning. I hold up a target, which is a stick with a tennis ball on the end, and the gorilla touches it. I blow a whistle the second she does it right, which tells her "that, exactly that," and then she gets a grape. We build up from there. Show me your hand, flat on the mesh. Your foot. Open your mouth. Turn around. Put your chest up to the mesh so Dr. Frederick can listen with a stethoscope. Kiki learns everything in a week and then gets bored. Asha is slower and never forgets anything. Lulu will do it if she feels like it.

Bruno will present his chest and his hands. That's it. Paula has worked with him twenty years and says that's two more things than he used to do. He comes over, puts that huge chest against the mesh, looks at me while the vet listens, and walks away before the grape. He doesn't need the grape. He does it as a favor.

Tuesday, July 22, 1997

Ninety-one degrees today. Gorillas come from the forest and they don't like heat any better than I do. The outdoor cage is concrete and bars and it gets hot as a griddle by noon, so they stay in the dayroom with the air handlers running, and the visitors at the glass complain that they're "just lying there." So is everyone else in Ohio.

We make them popsicles. Fruit juice frozen in a bucket overnight with grapes and chopped apple inside. You set a big block of that down and Kiki will lick it for an hour, with her whole face. Bruno sits on his and waits for it to melt.

The old building is from 1968. It was modern then. The zoo has been raising money for a new outdoor exhibit for the gorillas, with grass and trees and hills, and they say ground could be broken next year. Paula has heard "next year" for eleven years.

Wednesday, June 25, 1997

What a day looks like.

6:30, in. Walk through the building, count heads, look at everybody. Who's moving well, who isn't, who ate what last night, what's in the stool. You learn a lot from stool. That's the job nobody puts on the brochure.

7:00, the gorillas go into the holding area while we clean the dayroom. Hose it, scrub it, disinfect, rinse. Pick up the old browse and the hay. Then put it all back new: fresh hay, fresh browse (willow and mulberry branches this time of year, cut fresh), and the morning's food scattered all over the room so they have to look for it. Greens, celery, some carrots and sweet potato, a little fruit, and the biscuits that are made for primates. Gorillas in the wild spend most of their day finding food. If you hand it to them in a bowl they're done in ten minutes and bored for the rest of the day.

8:30, let them back into the dayroom. Then clean the holding area. Then the night dens.

The rest of the day is training, enrichment, notes, more food at noon and at four, watching, and answering questions at the glass.

4:30, everyone into the night dens, each with a pile of fresh hay. They make a nest every night. I like that about them. Every night they make the bed.

Tuesday, May 27, 1997

Memorial Day weekend. The busiest three days of the spring, and I worked all three. The Ape House is the last building on the loop, so by the time people get to us they're tired and hot and the kids are on a sugar high. I stand by the glass and answer questions. Here are the top five, with my answers:

1. "Is that a real gorilla?" Yes.
2. "Why is he so sad?" He isn't sad. That's just his face. He's resting.
3. "Is that King Kong?" No, that's Bruno, and he's nicer.
4. "Does he bite?" He could. He doesn't have to. He's very calm.
5. "Why don't they do anything?" They're doing what gorillas do in the afternoon, which is eat, nap and keep an eye on each other. Come back at feeding time.

Please don't bang on the glass. I say that about two hundred times a day. It doesn't hurt them, but it's rude, and Bruno will turn his back to you, and then you've ruined it for everybody.

Wednesday, May 14, 1997

My name is Dennis. I'm 33 years old and I've been a primate keeper at a zoo in Ohio since 1994. Mostly I take care of four western lowland gorillas. My wife, Jill, says I talk about them so much at dinner that I should write it down somewhere else. Her nephew showed me how to make a home page. So here it is.

I have a biology degree. I worked six years at a lab that raised mice for research before I got hired here. I wanted to work with animals since I was a kid watching the nature shows on Sunday nights. I'm not much of a writer, so this will be plain.

The troop is Bruno, the silverback, and three females: Lulu, Kiki and Asha. A silverback is a grown male. The silver is the hair on his back, which goes gray-white when he matures, around twelve or fifteen. Bruno's has gone almost all silver, and some on his head too, now. He's about 35, which is old for a gorilla in a zoo.

He has been at this zoo since 1965. He was here before the building I work in was built. People come and tell me they saw him on a school trip in 1970, and then bring their kids, and now some of them bring grandkids. He has seen a lot of people grow up through that glass.

I'll write when there's something to say. With gorillas, there usually is, if you watch long enough.

Latest notes | 1998
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