[ 1997 | Latest notes | January to June 1999 ]

Tuesday, December 29, 1998

Bruno had a bad week.

He didn't come out of his night den on Christmas morning until almost ten. He ate a little, slowly, and went back and lay down in his nest. Dr. Frederick came in on the 26th, a Saturday, on her own time, and listened to him through the mesh. He put his chest up for her. He still does that.

She's changed his medicine again. She told Paula and me, in the hallway, that we should start getting ready. Not right away, maybe. But we should start.

Paula has been with Bruno since 1978. She took the news standing up straight with her arms folded, said "OK," and went into the kitchen and cut up his sweet potatoes very small, the way he likes them now.

He's been sitting by the window between his den and Asha's, watching Nuru. She's six months old and rides on her mother's back like a jockey, and every so often she looks over at him and he looks back. That's all. It's enough.

Wednesday, November 18, 1998

Jill is pregnant.

I'm going to write that again because I've waited a long time to. Jill is pregnant. About six weeks. Due in the middle of July.

We've been seeing a fertility doctor in Columbus since the spring. I haven't written about it here because it wasn't mine to write about. It's been a hard couple of years for her, harder than for me, and she's let me say this much now. We saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound this morning, a little flicker, very fast. The doctor said that's how it's supposed to be.

When we got home Jill said, "So do I get a pregnancy test off the floor with a syringe, or what?" She's been waiting a year to make that joke.

I told Paula. She hugged me, which she doesn't do, and said, "Well, don't let Asha give you any advice."

Tuesday, October 6, 1998

Nuru is almost four months old and has started riding on Asha's back instead of underneath. She hangs on to the hair with both hands, lies flat, and looks around at the world like she's in charge of it. Kiki follows them everywhere, hoping for a turn. Asha lets her groom the baby now, a little, as long as she's watching.

Bruno is losing weight. Not a lot, but you can see it in his face and his shoulders. Dr. Frederick has him on medicine for his heart, which we hide in a cup of grape juice or in half a banana. Heart disease is the most common thing that takes older male gorillas in zoos. Nobody's completely sure why yet. I read everything I can find about it, which isn't much.

The new exhibit is coming up out of the mud. You can see it from the Ape House roof: hills shaped out of dirt, the big concrete walls of the new building, a dry moat around the yard, and trees, real ones, brought in on trucks with their roots wrapped in burlap. They say it'll open next fall. I'd like Bruno to walk on grass. I'm not counting on it.

Wednesday, August 26, 1998

Nuru reached for a piece of hay today. She's eleven weeks old. She didn't get it, and wouldn't have known what to do with it, but she reached, and Asha let her.

Bruno lets her climb on his foot. Silverbacks in the wild are known to be gentle with the infants in their group, and patient. Bruno sits by the dayroom window in the afternoon with his legs out in front of him, and Asha sits near him with the baby, closer than she used to sit, and sometimes the baby gets put down on the floor for a minute and goes for the closest big warm thing, which is his foot. He doesn't move. He just looks down. Visitors don't notice. I always do.

We've had the biggest summer crowds anybody can remember. People bring the newspaper clipping with Nuru's picture and hold it up to the glass to compare.

Tuesday, July 21, 1998

She has a name. She's a girl, which we were finally able to see for sure last week, when Asha sat with her back to the mesh and the baby's legs were dangling.

The newspaper ran a contest. More than three thousand people sent in names. The keepers and the curator, Mr. Kucera, picked the last five, and the public voted at the zoo. The winner is Nuru. It means "light" in Swahili. A second grader from across town picked it, and she got to come in with her family and meet us, and see the baby through the glass. She cried. I'll admit, so did one keeper.

Some of the names that didn't win: Gorilla Gorilla, Sweetpea, Princess Banana, Hope, Bruno Junior (she's a girl), Junebug, and eleven different spellings of Kiki.

Wednesday, June 24, 1998

Twelve days old, and nursing. We were watching for that more than anything. We saw it the second day on the night video and Paula and I both let out a breath we'd been holding since the birth.

Asha holds the baby against her chest all the time, one arm around it. She walks on three limbs and holds the baby with the fourth. She doesn't put it down, not once. When she sleeps, she curls around it. She won't let anybody touch it yet, not even Kiki, who tries every five minutes and gets pushed away every five minutes, and is not discouraged.

Bruno is calm. He came over to the mesh the first morning and looked for a long time, and then made a low sound, a kind of rumbling, the sound they make when they're content. Then he went back to his hay. Lulu doesn't seem interested at all. Paula says she's seen it all before.

We still don't know if it's a boy or a girl. With gorillas, you might not know for weeks, unless the mother cooperates. We're calling it "the baby."

Saturday, June 13, 1998

The baby came.

Friday morning, about a quarter to two. I was on night watch, in the keepers' office with the video monitor and a pot of coffee. Asha had been restless since midnight, getting up and lying down, building her nest and tearing it apart and building it again. I called Paula at one, like we'd agreed, and she was there in twenty minutes with her hair still wet.

We didn't see much. The camera's black and white and Asha had her back to it. But a little before two she turned around in the hay, and she was holding something against her chest. She held it there and looked at it. She cleaned it. And then she put her arm around it and lay down and didn't move, and Paula, who has worked with gorillas for twenty years, grabbed my arm so hard I've got a bruise today.

I drove home at seven in the morning and woke Jill up and couldn't talk for a minute. She held my hand and said, "Your first one." She's right. I've been here four years. It's the first birth I've been part of.

Mother and baby are fine. That's the main thing.

Tuesday, May 26, 1998

The birth watch started last week. We put a video camera up in the corner of Asha's night den, wired to a monitor in the keepers' office, and somebody watches it all night, every night, until the baby comes. Keepers and some of our volunteers take shifts. I've got Thursdays and Fridays, ten to six.

It's mostly watching a gorilla sleep. She makes her nest, she lies down, she shifts around, she snores. Sometimes she gets up and gets a drink and lies back down. I drink coffee and fill out a sheet every fifteen minutes with what she's doing: "lying on side," "lying on back," "sitting up," "lying on side." At four in the morning you'd be surprised how exciting "sitting up" can be.

Asha is very big now. She's been sitting with her hands folded on top of her belly the last few days, the exact way Jill's sister did when she was pregnant. I told Jill that and she said, "Please don't tell my sister."

Wednesday, April 22, 1998

They broke ground on the new gorilla exhibit last week. There were speeches and gold shovels and the mayor. The keepers stood in the back in our uniforms and clapped.

Now there are bulldozers across the path, and the gorillas can see them through the window of the dayroom. Kiki is fascinated. She sits on the windowsill all morning watching the backhoe dig, and when it stops she bangs on the glass, which is very unfair after all the times I've asked people not to do that to her. Bruno doesn't care for the noise and spends more time in the back. Lulu, as usual, has no opinion.

The new exhibit will have an outdoor yard about ten times as big as the old cage, with grass and hills and real trees, and a new building with skylights and climbing structures and big windows. Paula says she'll believe it when she sees a gorilla standing on the grass.

Tuesday, March 10, 1998

Dr. Frederick heard something in Bruno's heart at his check last week. A murmur. She listened a long time, and then had me hold up the target for him again so she could listen again. He put his chest back up to the mesh. Good old man.

He's been breathing harder after he climbs, lately. He sits more. We all thought it was just age, and the cold, which gets in his joints in the winter. It still might be. But she's going to start him on some medicine, and we're going to watch him closer.

He's going to be thirty-six this year, as best anyone knows. Nobody wrote down his birthday in the jungle.

Wednesday, January 28, 1998

Winter at the zoo is quiet. Some days there are more keepers than visitors. The gorillas stay inside all season. The old outdoor cage is no place for them below fifty degrees.

Asha's starting to show, a little. You can see it when she sits. We're training her to come to the mesh and present her belly, so the vet can feel it, and someday maybe use an ultrasound. So far she'll put her side to the mesh for about three seconds before she decides the grape is more interesting than science.

This is the time of year we do the most enrichment, because they're bored. This week: paper grocery bags with a handful of raisins and peanuts in each, rolled shut. Cardboard boxes stuffed with hay and sunflower seeds. Pine cones with peanut butter smeared in the cracks. Old phone books. (Kiki likes to sit and turn the pages, very serious, like she's looking up a number.) And a long piece of PVC pipe with holes drilled in it, packed with oatmeal and honey, that you have to work at with a stick or a finger. Bruno figured it out in an hour, sat down with it in his lap, and wouldn't let anyone else near it for the rest of the day.

[ 1997 | Latest notes | January to June 1999 ]
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