[ 1998 | Latest notes ]

Wednesday, June 23, 1999

Nuru turned one on the 12th. We gave her a "cake": a block of frozen fruit and juice with a candle shape made out of a carrot stuck in the top. She didn't know what it was for. Kiki did, and ate most of it. Nuru sat in her mother's lap and licked the melted part off Asha's fingers.

She walks now, sort of, a few wobbly steps on all fours before she sits down hard. She tries everything. She chews on browse, she chews on hay, she chewed on my target stick through the mesh this morning and wouldn't let go. Asha watches her every second. A year ago Asha had never held a baby. Now she's the most patient mother I've ever seen, of any kind.

Jelani and Kiki have been together in the same room for a week now, full contact, no mesh. It went well. He chased her around the first day, showing off, and she let him, and then she ran right back at him, and he stopped, very surprised, and after that they've been fine. Kiki's the right one to start with. She isn't afraid of anything.

At home: Jill is thirty-six weeks. The crib is together, after two evenings and one bad word. The nursery is painted a yellow called "Buttercup." I've installed the car seat four times, to be sure. Jill says I'm treating this like a birth watch. I told her I've had practice.

Tuesday, June 1, 1999

Jelani's quarantine is over and introductions have started.

You don't just open a door and put a new male in with a group. It takes weeks, sometimes months. First they see each other through a window. Then through the mesh, where they can smell each other and touch fingers but can't get hurt. Then, one at a time, in the same room, with the keepers and the vet standing by with hoses and a plan for everything. You watch the body language. You go slow. If anything goes wrong you go back a step.

Day one at the mesh: Lulu came over, looked at Jelani for about a minute, and walked off to her window. That's Lulu's highest compliment. Kiki came over and stayed all day. Asha came over once, with Nuru on her back, gave him a long hard look, and took the baby to the far corner.

Jelani did what young males do. He stood up and beat his chest, which sounds like someone slapping a watermelon, and ran back and forth along the mesh, and tore up his hay, and threw a cabbage. That's normal. It's how he says, "I'm here, and I'm big." The females weren't impressed. That's also normal.

The worry, with a new male and an infant that isn't his, is real. I'll leave it at that. We're taking our time with Asha and Nuru. She'll be last.

Wednesday, April 28, 1999

Jelani's here.

He came in last Tuesday, in a big steel crate on a climate-controlled truck, after two days on the road. His keeper from the other zoo rode along and stayed three days to help him settle, and showed us how she does things, and told us everything: what he eats first, what he leaves, what scares him (umbrellas, for some reason), what he likes (being talked to while you clean). She cried in the parking lot when she left. She'd had him since he was born. I'd have done the same.

He's in quarantine for thirty days in the back building, which every new animal goes through, so we can be sure he isn't bringing in anything the others could catch. He's thirteen. His back is mostly black still, with the first gray coming in, low down. He's big and long-armed and nervous. He eats well. He beats his chest at the hose, at the light switch, at me.

I talk to him while I clean, like his keeper said to. I tell him about the troop, about Kiki and Lulu and Asha and the baby, and about Bruno, and about the new yard with the grass. I don't know what he understands. I know he sits down and listens.

Tuesday, March 23, 1999

The Species Survival Plan has made its recommendation. We're getting a young male. His name is Jelani, he's thirteen, and he's coming from a zoo down south where there are already two grown males, which is one too many. He's a good match for Kiki, genetically, and later for Asha. He'll come in April, after the paperwork, and go through quarantine, and then we'll introduce him to the females, slowly.

If it all goes well, he'll be the silverback of our troop when the new exhibit opens this fall. He's not a silverback yet. In a couple of years he will be.

I knew this was coming. A troop needs a male. The females need someone to settle their arguments, and the plan needs Kiki and Asha to have more babies someday. Mr. Kucera explained all of it at the staff meeting, and it all made sense. I still went out to my truck at lunch and sat there for a while. It's too soon. It's always going to feel too soon.

Paula said, "Bruno wasn't a silverback when he got here either. He was three. Somebody had to get used to him."

Wednesday, February 17, 1999

Thank you to everybody who wrote. I didn't expect so many. People sent e-mail from all over, from Texas and Oregon and England. A lot of you saw Bruno as kids. One man wrote that he proposed to his wife in front of Bruno's window in 1974. One lady sent a drawing her son made of Bruno when he was seven. The son is forty now.

At the zoo, people left flowers at the glass the first week. Carnations, mostly, from the grocery store. A card that said "Thank you, Bruno." A Reds cap. We left them a few days and then the education people took them and saved the cards.

The troop is quiet. Lulu barely ate the first few days. She'd sit at Bruno's spot by the window. She's eating now. Kiki has been clingy and follows Asha everywhere. Asha keeps Nuru extra close. The building feels bigger. I keep looking to the back corner to see if he's there.

Dr. Frederick says it was his heart, as we thought. She says he lived a good deal longer than most male gorillas in zoos get to, and that the exam will teach them things that help the next old male, somewhere else. I think he'd like that, if he thought about such things. Maybe he did. I don't pretend to know.

Friday, February 5, 1999

Bruno died yesterday morning.

I found him at six-thirty on my first walk-through. He was lying in his nest in his night den, on his side, with his hand under his head, the way he always slept. He looked comfortable. Dr. Frederick thinks it was in his sleep, sometime before dawn, and peaceful. That's what we hoped for.

We did something Paula wanted, and Mr. Kucera agreed to. Before the vets came for him, we opened the doors and let the others come in and see him. Some zoos do that, so the troop understands he's gone and doesn't spend weeks looking for him.

Kiki came first, and touched his arm, and backed away, and sat down by the door. Asha came in with Nuru on her chest and stayed near the wall. Lulu came in last. She sat down next to him and looked at his face for a long time. She touched his shoulder, and his face, and then she just sat there with him, for almost an hour. None of us said anything. Then she got up and went back to the dayroom on her own, and that was that.

He came here in 1965, at three years old. He was here thirty-four years.

I don't have anything else to write today.

Wednesday, January 20, 1999

Snow on the ground, and a good week for Bruno. He's been eating better. He came out to the dayroom every morning, sat in his spot by the window in the sun, and let Nuru play near him.

She's seven months old and crawling and pulling herself up on everything, including him. Today she grabbed two fistfuls of the hair on his arm and pulled. He looked down at her. He looked at Asha. Asha looked at him. Then he very slowly lifted his arm, with Nuru hanging off of it, about a foot off the floor, and put it back down. She did it again. He did it again. Five or six times. I've never seen him play. Paula, who's known him twenty years, says she hasn't either, not since he was young.

Jill is almost fifteen weeks along and the morning sickness is finally fading. She came to the zoo on Saturday to watch the gorillas with me, which she hasn't done in a while, and stood at the glass with her hand on her stomach. Bruno came over and sat down right in front of her and looked at her for a long time. I'm not going to say he knew. I'm just going to write down that he did it.

[ 1998 | Latest notes ]
[email protected]