Joe and GH Reaching New Heights

All photos by Jane or Steuart Dewar, unless otherwise indicated.
Note: almost all photographs are thumbnails that you can click to bring up a larger version!

by Jane Dewar, 10Nov2003

Joe’s 7^th month anniversary at Gorilla Haven has come and gone and he continues to surprise us.  For more than a decade, Joe didn’t have any climbing structures and while he climbed immediately upon arrival at GH, he seemed to avoid the uppermost brachiating bars in the outside cages of his villa … until 2 weeks ago.  While Joe seemed happy and adventurous enough to climb on most all climbing structures of his villa, these highest bars were ignored, despite our attempts to encourage him up there, with pieces of browse and food.  Finally, Joe decided he’d go after a banana hanging on the top of the outside cage, and he climbed up and strolled upon the brachiating bars as though he’d been doing it all his life.  Now, when we feed Joe from from the roof, he climbs so he's literally just a few inches below our feet, and in better position to catch the goodies being tossed in, which is fun for everyone. Photo right courtesy of Kelly Maneyapanda.

The scale in Silverback Villa is in the squeeze cage, so opportunities to weigh Joe are frequent, since the smaller squeeze cage is one of Joe’s favorite places to hang out.  The accuracy of the scale, however, was always something we intended to verify, but since we were getting steady weights for Joe of around 350 lbs, re-calibrating the scale wasn’t a top priority.  Finally, with the weather lovely and Joe shut outside in his 2 outdoor cages, the scale was fixed, verified and lo and behold, Joe officially weighs 375 lbs!

When Joe was moved from Texas in March, his weight there was 365 lbs, so it makes more sense that now, with his added muscle mass from all his increased activity, he’d weigh more, rather than less, as we’d thought all this time.  Regardless of what the scales say, Joe looks great and everyone who sees him, including members of the Gorilla SSP (Species Survival Plan), who recently visited to do a follow-up inspection of the GH facilities now that Joe is here, agreed!
Photo left courtesy of Stephanie Scanlin.

Joe’s a unique gorilla in many ways, and he’s one of the neater, cautious and gentle gorillas I’ve seen.  Instead of using his strength to open treat boxes or enrichment devices, Joe will often be seen gingerly picking at something, and often giving up and walking away, when all he needed to do was use his strength and the treats would be his.  Most silverbacks I’ve seen, use their brute strength to their advantage, but it’s almost as if Joe is afraid of something, so he’s quite neat and tidy.  A good example of Joe’s gentleness happened when he was on the upper brachiating bars of his outside cages.  He spotted the video camera, which we’d installed close to the mesh (since we didn’t think he’d go up there) and gently touched his finger to the camera lens (probably wondering if it were something good to eat!).  Many other gorillas would have tried to tear it off to investigate it closer, but Joe was satisfied at just touching it once, then left it alone.  Needless to say, that camera will be moved, just to be on the safe side!
Photo right courtesy of Stephanie Scanlin.

Chisato Abe has been a great friend to gorillas in Japan and around the world for years, and visited GH about 3 years ago.  When she returned the end of October – on a trip just to meet Joe and spend time with the gorillas at Zoo Atlanta – she was thrilled to see how far we’d come.   She couldn’t believe how much room gorillas will have, once the habitat is complete and kept repeating the word “wow!” over and over again.  Although this was Chisato’s first time meeting Joe, she’s done a huge portrait of him for us, which is still in Japan, and now we must figure out how to get it to Atlanta!  She’s done a huge portrait of Willie B at Zoo Atlanta, shown below left with Dr. Maple's 5' 10" assistant Susan standing next to it, to give you an idea of its size. Chisato has also done a huge portrait of Caesar, a silverback for the Los Angeles Zoo (coincidentally, recently sent to Atlanta on a breeding loan), and we’re honored to have her world-famous art here at Gorilla Haven too.

Willie B

Joe

Caesar

Most of the designs of GH involve having back ups for back ups, or a redundancy of systems to ensure no failures occur, including breach of security for gorillas in residence here, as well as safety features for our staff.  Each villa/building has a generator and automatic transfer switch, in case of power failures, and recently they were tested (and worked!) when a thunderstorm left us without power for about an hour.  Besides having spare parts for the furnaces to keep Joe roasty-toasty this winter, we have a separate emergency heater unit available (with a back up generator, in case the power is also out if/when the furnace should go out).  This may seem like over-kill to some, but we don’t think we can do too much to ensure Joe’s welfare and safety.

In keeping with this redundancy of designs, when Joe is given access to a section of the habitat, he’ll be kept in by a series of hot wires, similar to the ones surrounding the 60 acre facility area – but in this case about 10 feet high and for Joe, encompassing about two acres of outdoor area near his villa.  But in addition to the main hotwire sectional fence, we’re installing a lower voltage fence as a warning to Joe (who we’re not sure has ever encountered hot wire, or if he remembers it or not), before he reaches the more powerful main hot wire fence.  All the windows of the Great Wall of Morganton have been sealed and the huge habitat gates are in, so that even if Joe were to manage to get thru both sets of hotwires within the habitat he still couldn’t get out. All that remains today is the completion of the hot-wire tree fences to ensure that Joe is not enticed to climb a tree that would be inappropriate for him (smaller, lower trees will be accessible should he wish to climb them).

Saturday November 8th, some old and new friends came to help us rake up the habitat to prepare it for fertilizing and seeding, as part of the many things we're doing before we allow Joe access to his own private section of the 8.5 acre habitat.  We had a raking party with several piles of burning leaves going at once, to take advantage of the perfect weather (it had just rained, but the ground was dry enough to burn safely) and perfect wind direction, so that Joe could watch everyone from SB villa, without getting smoke in his eyes.  We took people two by two to visit Joe, who enjoyed the company. Yet this group of wonderful people and friends have been helping us - some for years - without expecting anything in return, so seeing Joe was a small way of us to allow Joe to enjoy the new faces on the brief visits.  THANK YOU to all our faithful friends and volunteers. Photo above left courtesy of Mike Seres.

The 14 foot high "Great Wall of Morganton" has two large openings at the north and south, near Bonz Villa and the future Group Building, where large gates were set to be installed to allow large vehicles, tractors, etc, into the habitat once it's ready for gorillas.  Initially, we didn't think Joe wanted to go outside, and the Habitat Gates were on the lower priority list of things to do, after the steel work for the other villas.  But, since GH is devoted to the well-being of Joe (and all gorillas), when it was clear to everyone, Joe would probably love to go outside, we re-arranged the priorities and started work on the huge gates we'd jokingly been calling the "Jurassic Park" gates.  Six months later, these marvels of engineering were finally installed last week. Some finishing details are still needed, like sealing the area between the hinges and the wall itself, to prevent any gorilla from getting a hand or foot hold on to try to climb up and over the Great Wall itself (which also has a hot-wire on top, as another backup safety plan).  These Gates are the brainchild of our wonderful steel-worker, David Stites, and they're totally smooth on the inside (animal side), weighing more than a ton each, but which are so carefully pivoted that you can move them with your little finger. The gates feature a viewing panel of perforated metal and a built-in pedestrian door to make it easy to get into the habitat without having to open the gates themselves. Visible in the photo at  top left are the round viewing ports which display red whenever the locking pins are not fully extended, making it easy to tell from a distance whether or not the gates are properly locked. This reflects the important philosophy at Gorilla Haven of using safety-friendly designs that lessen the possibility of any mistakes. If you look carefully at the photo at bottom left, you can see Silverback Villa just to the right of the crane (although you won't be able to make out Joe watching us from the outside cages!).  If all goes well, we're hoping to let Joe outside before the end of the year and while we still have mild weather during the day.  A typical day in December at GH may begin around 38 degrees (F) but warm up into the lower 70's by afternoon, so we're hoping Joe can get outside onto grass again, sooner rather than later.