My Hero

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The below photo is, of course, Jane Goodall probably in the sixties. She lived alone in a hut in Africa studying chimpanzees. She is the first person on the planet to observe/discover that any animal other than humans use tools; a gigantic discovery and disconcerting to say the least to the very conservative christians.  We now know that all the other great apes are also tool discoverers and tool users.  That includes Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bonobos, Orangutans, and of course humans.  Yes, we are one of the great apes.  Probably not the best one because we are the number one problem for the rest of them in terms of endangered numbers.  These guys, chimps and gorillas are SO highly endangered that if things go on the way they are they will be GONE in the wild in 20 to 30 years.

Please recycle your electronics.  Cell phones, lap tops, etc. have a mineral in them called Coltrane which they mine in Africa where these apes live.  Their habitat is being destroyed and their areas to live diminishing because of this mining.  Not the only problem but one of the the big ones.

Jane is in her 80’s and still working tirelessly for the great apes. I saw a speaker at the zoo where I volunteer as an amateur expert on the Western Lowland Gorilla and the Chimpanzee and Jane is his boss.  He was UNBELIEVABLE.  His commitment to this effort was so complete and his guts were even more impressive. He lives in Africa working against extinction.  This guy is doing scary stuff.  AND he said sometimes he’s very scared. He said it’s worth it. I get that, if my life ever changed radically, I could see myself going and doing something that scared me to death, might be good. When I shook his hand and made eye contact all I said was “Wow,” and he locked eyes with me.

Look at Jane making contact with that baby Chimp!  She is the first person EVER to give animals NAMES while studying them. Before her it was xj2 and x78 and completely not allowable to designate them personally.  With Jane it was Flo, Fifi, Fin and Freud and many more adorable names. She shook up the scientific community like you can’t believe which I utterly love. Chimps can be very aggressive and everyone knows that the worst comes out in any mother animal when they feel their offspring is threatened.  I would estimate the baby in this photo is about 6 months old which means his mother was very nearby watching this and trusted Jane implicitly. Look at this photo and allow yourself to cry!

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They Are Wild!

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Shauna in His Pool
A keeper at a Florida zoo who was the senior “big cat” keeper and was known as the “cat whisperer” was mauled and killed by her favorite tiger a day or two ago.  This happens way too often.  She was in the friggin’ cage with him.  Wrong!
There are zoos that are “protected contact” and then zoos that are not.  Protected contact means that you only interact with a potentially “killer” animal through some kind of protection.  For example, at the Dallas zoo, the keepers are very intimate with the gorillas and chimps but always through heavy mesh fencing.  Because of that, there is no way the keepers could be harmed by the animals.  The Dallas zoo also adheres to protected contact with lions, tigers, mountain lions, etc.  We are a protected contact zoo.
Gorillas are not “killers,” they are very gentle by nature, but because of their size and strength they could crush a keeper with an affectionate hug.  Chimps on the other hand can be very aggressive and as cute as they can be, especially the babies, they are very dangerous. I am a huge believer in protected contact because our keepers at the Dallas zoo don’t get killed and never have and keepers at non-protected contact zoos have.
I get it.  I know what happens.  Keepers in non-protective become somehow immune to the fact that the animals they love and the animals they believe love them are wild animals.  They begin to believe that their bond with the animals is something very special and different.  They think the animals love them.  And they might be right!  But they are WILD!  They turn on a dime.
I think keepers who love their  animals might lose sight of this.  These animals hear or see something out of the corner of their eye and they attack whatever is in front of them.  I’ve seen chimps do this.  Thats what happened in the recent killing of the keeper.  Everything was fine until she turned her head and the tiger heard or saw something that was upsetting and attacked the first thing she saw, and someone she probably otherwise loved.
All I can say is “Siegfried and Roy.”

Pearls of Wisdom

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This is my first post from long ago writings by me.   It made me chuckle when I re-visited these writings from roughly 1983 when I was in my mid 20’s that I had the audacity to call them Pearls of Wisdom.

It was hard for me to record these exactly as they were written 30 some odd years ago, I so wanted to update and edit.  But, for authenticity, I didn’t.  Here, from a 20 something year old are some guidelines for life….

–Being attached to outcomes distorts your perception of what’s happening.  You tend to ignore your intuition or gut feelings because you are absorbed with wishful thinking.  You can have a preference in the outcome but you must be able to clearly see what is happening in the present time to be able to create an action plan to get to where you want to be.

–If you wait to see what is expected of you before you perform, the level of expected performance is set by something or someone outside yourself and vey well may be lower than your own.  If you go for it and don’t put limits on yourself, no one else will either.

–The more you use your brain the better it works and the more creative it becomes,  it is resonating at a higher level and “tunes in” to higher creativity.

–You can’t be happy in a relationship until your happy with yourself.  Two halve’s don’t make a whole; it makes for a fragmented relationship with unrealistic exceptions resulting in resent.  If you are hoping for self confidence as a result of a relationship, your process will be mirrored for you and you will attract into your orbit someone who is hoping to get self confidence from you.  Self confidence is not given and recieved.  It’s way more personal than that.  (Seems a little dramatic now but when I wrote this I capitalized this next part which I will do here in honor of that young girl.)

SELF CONFIDENCE IS CREATED WITHIN YOURSELF BY A PROCESS OF TRYING/STUMBLING/FALLING/MAKING CORRECTIONS/TRYING AGAIN/AND FINALLY SUCCEEDING IN ENDEAVORS LARGE AND SMALL AND ASSERTING  WHO YOU ARE AND COMING TO BAT FOR YOUR PERSONAL BOUNDRIES ALONG THEY WAY.

–I have never seen anything healthy come as a result of an outburst of anger.  It usually only causes pain, fear and confusion.   For the person who is supposedly expressing themselves, it leads to feelings of being out of control and wounded self esteem.

–The older you get, you more you look like who you are.  So people who like themselves have an easier time aging.

–Creativity lies where there are no facades.

–We are not going to enjoy the “more” we get later if we’re not enjoying  what we have now.  Happiness comes from within, not from stuff.

— Work HARD!!

 

 

 

 

Let Them Die

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Seventeen elephants who would have starved to death in Swaziland, Africa have been rescued and sent to three zoos. Five for Dallas, six for Sedgwick County zoo in Kansas and six for Omaha zoo.  Unless it’s an extreme circumstance, which this was, it’s illegal to take animals out of the wild and put them into captivity.  This has taken the three zoos 2 years to pull off and they’ve had fights and lawsuits with animal activist organizations because they wanted it to stay “natural”. (Translation: let them die…..no kidding.)  All zoo employees and volunteers have been prepped and coached for the likely event of demonstrations or even riots.  So far nothing, which is surprising.  Our elephants arrived Friday night after a long and arduous journey then ate heartily and drank lots of water (horrible drought in Africa) and slept well.  They are in quarantine for at least a month but the five are together.  Our existing elephants were stomping their feet and trumpeting because they could smell or sense new elephants.  The “introductions” of our four elephants with the five new ones will take months with lots of careful observation and consideration from their keepers.  Animal personalities and hierarchies matter a LOT, and you can’t force anything.

At the volunteer meeting on Saturday, our CEO, who’d had five hours of sleep in the previous five days because of some “big grey things” spoke and presented a slide show.  He said he was very nervous about the transport of these gigantic animals and wanted to stay in touch with staff accompanying the elephants on their journey.  He was tripping over his words and getting choked up.  He was so relieved that the elephants had successfully been transported and arrived safely at our zoo.  Our CEO said one male ate all his food, drank all his water and was asleep before some of the females even had the nerve to leave the crates they had been in on the plane.

The photographs he shared on a slide show were unnerving.  We have an elephant named Jenny and she is 10,000 pounds.  That’s five tons, am I right?  Imagine 17 elephants being loaded into (very comfortable and elephant friendly) crates, lifted with a crane and somehow moved into a 747 aircraft.  Imagine being the pilot of that plane taking off with that kind of weight.  Let’s be conservative here in this calculation.  Let’s say each elephant weighed a mere 6,000 pounds….that would be 102,000 pounds!  I can’t, for the life of me figure out how a plane takes off at all, much less with that kind of weight!

I’m thrilled to say the Dallas zoo now has 9 gorgeous African Elephants!

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Our Four Girls Who Will Soon be Nine!

Love and Pain

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I’ve been having trouble with my left shoulder and the pain got pretty bad. I’ve recently switched from tennis to pickle ball and in tennis I had a two handed back hand so naturally I continued to use that technique in pickle ball. The problem is the motion of a two handed back hand in pickle ball is much “tighter” than it is in tennis and it resulted in injury. I knew that is where the problem originated and I quickly learned a mean single-handed back hand but my shoulder still hurt and it has been hurting for a long time.

Finally, I went to a lovely Korean muscular therapist who explained that shoulders are very complex and injuries take a long time to heal. Her work was helping and she told me I should also consider doing acupuncture in addition to the work we were doing. So, I found a lovely Chinese woman with a PhD in Chinese medicine and acupuncture and saw her for the first time last week. It seemed to help a little so I went back today. Today seemed to help a LOT which is nice.

After my treatment as we were sitting at Julie’s desk scheduling my next appointment, I noticed a picture of her with a gorgeous golden retriever.

“Oh my god, your dog is beautiful!” I said.

“She was beautiful,” Julie replied, “and I adored her. I never had children so she was like my child.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“She got cancer, we tried everything, but we finally had to put her down,” she said as her eyes got red and watery.

“That is horrible,” I said, “I never had kids either and as an adult I have had to live through the death of three beloved dogs. Two of them golden’s.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Julie said.

She went on to describe the day she knew it was time to put Scarlett down. She talked about the vet coming to her house so Scarlett didn’t think they were going in the car to go to the park. She described how she got Scarlett up on her lap in a big bear hug and then allowed the vet to give her the shot. She described what it felt like to have Scarlett die in her arms. She said it was very peaceful but she and I were both sobbing. She grabbed a box of Kleenex….

“I’m so sorry to make you cry,” she said softly.

“It’s okay,” I said, “crying is okay.”

They say one of the most gut wrenching things in life is when a parent has to bury a child. The problem with being a dog parent is that you have to bury most of them.

Big Boy Troy

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When Troy, our 100 pound golden retriever was young, we would bring him new toys and then watch while he ripped them to threads and found the “squeaky mechanism” which a dog could choke on.  My husband Steve would then gently take it from him.

Now, when we give Troy a toy, he rips it to shreds, finds the squeaky mechanism and gently lays it in front of his daddy’s feet.  He thinks it’s what Steve wants.

Two weeks ago Steve put shredded cedar bark on a plant bed in the back yard where the dogs spend a lot of time.  The dogs were thrilled and immediately took to chewing on pieces of it.  Troy got horrible diarrhea and I began monitoring their time in the backyard to keep them away from it.

Tonight when Steve and I got back from dinner there was a small pile of cedar bark in the living room.  I’m a positive reinforcement kinda gal so I rarely reprimand my dogs.  Today, however, I took the pile, showed it to them and said “No! No you guys, this is not okay!!”  They both cowered.  A few minutes went by and I got busy taking off my make-up.  When I came out, Haley, our little girl golden was hiding in a closet but Troy brought a stash of cedar bark they must have had hidden somewhere in the house and laid it at my feet.

(We never told him he wasn’t a lap dog…..)

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Amazing

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Look at this Polar Bear Sculpture.  It is gigantic and it is completely made out of LEGO’S!!  The entire Lego Animal Sculpture exhibit is coming to the Dallas zoo this month.  So exciting.  If you are in Dallas, check it out.  If not, it is a traveling exhibit so check periodically with your city’s zoo!

Gorillas in the Rain

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It was pouring rain and the only people at the zoo were the animals, the animal keepers and one volunteer. Guess which one. I love the zoo in the rain because there are no humans and the gorillas are out in their habitat as long as there is no lightening or heavy wind.

A gorilla’s existence in captivity at a place like the Dallas zoo where they are treated with the immense love and respect they deserve, is relatively simple. They don’t have to worry about predators (in the wild, man is their only one, but he is a formidable one), they don’t have to forage for food or look for water, their habitat doesn’t change much and in inclement (a word I never heard until I moved to Dallas!) weather they go inside their temp controlled bedrooms, so they are always very comfortable.

When something different happens, such as a downpour, it’s very novel to them and they take full advantage. It’s party time!

I was alone in the cave, which is usually bustling with zoo guests, with only three layers of treated glass separating me from the four male gorillas who live together in a bachelor group. I was between one and five feet away from them.

All four of them were bipedal which you will see from time to time with gorillas but because of their huge upper bodies, which are tremendously densely muscular, they are usually knuckle walkers. For those of you who don’t know, bipedal means walking like we do, upright on two back legs. I got the distinct impression that because their feet were so muddy, they didn’t also want muddy knuckles. Later, I checked with a gorilla keeper and confirmed that was exactly right. They didn’t want muddy knuckles! It’s amazing what your intuition can teach you when you observe an animal for hours every week.

In the rain the gorillas were dancing, laughing (yes, gorillas laugh), sliding around in the mud, chasing each other and imitating the rain by banging on their heads with their hands, all in a bipedal position. It was astounding.

I watched the gorillas in awe for three hours frolicking in the rain. I would burst out laughing and in the next second be close to tears. I knew I was seeing something very few people will ever have the honor of seeing in their entire lives.

 

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Stay Calm and Chive On

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They must be chefs I thought as within a couple weeks I saw the phrase “Stay Calm and Chive On” on several t-shirts and bumper stickers. It’s the only thing I could think of to make sense of this phrase. I’m a cook. Here is a lovely definition of a chive:

Chives belong to the same family as onion, leeks and garlic.  They are a hardy, drought-tolerant perennial growing to about 10-12 inches tall. They grow in clumps from underground bulbs and produce round, hollow leaves that are much finer than onion.  In mid-summer, they produce round, pink flowers similar in appearance to clover.

One day, a week or so after pondering this, I was at the zoo in front of the gorillas describing behaviors and body language to the zoo guests. Many people at the zoo glom onto every word I say because they are so interested in gorillas.  On this day I noticed a young man and his girlfriend who were listening intermittently. She had long jet-black hair, a crop top, a nose ring, a belly button ring and a French manicure on fingernails as long as my fingers. He was laced with tattoos, several piercings while a knife swaddled in leather graced his belt loop. His t-shirt said “Stay Calm and Chive On.”

As I was explaining that chest beating really isn’t chest beating at all, but chest “cupping” which causes a popping sound when gorillas engage in that behavior, I thought, I’ve got to wrap this up for now so I can ask that guy what that means!

“Are you a chef?” I asked. “I see a lot of these t-shirts and wondered if it was some kind of Dallas chef promotion.” They both looked at me like I was missing a chip and glanced around self-consciously like young people do when they think an older person is going to embarrass them in front of other young people. She let out something between a gag and a giggle.

The young man looked around nervously. “It’s a website,” he said quietly once he realized no one else had heard my question. “A men’s website.”

“Oh, thanks,” I responded as they hightailed it away from me as soon as they could.

I could have googled it on my phone while I was still at the zoo but I didn’t care enough and I didn’t want to miss any awesome gorilla behaviors. When I got home to my Mac, up popped a website with hot cars, sizzling girls with big boobs in string bikini’s pole dancing, images of “wasted” guys and a wide variety of cool guns and knives.

Here is how the website introduces itself (This is copied directly from the website and pasted below.)

Chive On refers to the mutual understanding between Chivers on how to go about life, regardless of all the assholes, douchebags, posers, etc, who might fuck it up from time to time. it’s also stronger in the sense that it unites people who share similar opinions or tastes or those who just like to see crazy shit as it happens – it’s an underground social network, a family

Alrighty then…..

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Gorillas Anyone?

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Today I was at the zoo with my beloved Western Lowland Gorillas speaking to zoo guests about them. I have become an amateur expert on these gorgeous apes and almost nothing makes me happier than to be in their presence educating the public about their intelligence, behavior and endangered status. (94,000 Western Lowland Gorillas left in the world. 300 Mountain Gorillas left in the world! 300!!) Juba, a 420 pound boy knows my face and sometimes gives me little kisses from behind the three layers of glass that separate us.

The gorilla habitat is one acre and today at midmorning I could not see one gorilla from the Gorilla Research Station or from any other outdoor viewing deck. I keep track of where the apes are so I can escort the zoo visitors to where they can see them. But I could not see even one.  The Dallas zoo creates habitats for the highly intelligent animals to be allowed to get away from humans when they want or need to.  Today was very hot and humid and the boys surely were hiding out in the dry mote in shady spots out of view.

Suddenly, I looked from the Station to a viewing deck across the habitat and saw two zoo employees pointing into the habitat who were clearly very engaged. They must see gorillas over there, I thought, so I quickly took off in that direction.

Once I arrived, the guys were gazing over the deck into the habitat with such concentration that I figured one of the gorillas was playing in the water, which is a stunning sight. When I see it, I feel at peace with the world. I walked over close to the two men and looked over the handrail. The breeze was rustling through the trees, the squirrels were having a field day with the gorilla food as usual and the little waterfall was trickling at a somewhat odd pace into the shallow gorilla pool. There was not a gorilla in sight. What are these guys gazing at? I thought.

After a while I finally asked, “What are you guys looking at? I can’t see one gorilla!”

“We are looking at the waterfall,” one of them said.

“Oh,” I giggled, “I was thinking you loved gorillas, but you love waterfalls?”

“Well, we care about them,” he said, “we are the team in charge of the water features at the Dallas Zoo.”

Shauna in His Pool

Shauna in His Pool with Water Feature