Photos by Steuart Dewar, Jane Dewar and
Kelly Maneyapanda (except as indicated)
Note: almost all photographs are
thumbnails that you can click to bring up a larger version!
by Jane Dewar, 02 April 2007
Yikes. I looked at the
last update and it was January 3rd, so I decided to take the time to
do an update about Gorilla Haven. I have another blog stewing in my mind, which
will come later… I have the working title, though: “Flipping the Bird, or Shut
the Duck up” and it will be all about ducks and eagles and swans. Tee hee
. More on that later...
After the holidays, work
continued lining out the group building, while waiting for the second steel
company to finish enough of the cagework to start installation in this massive
building. We’ve had staff illnesses, including our first legitimate workman’s
comp claim, but luckily David mended nicely and physical therapy helped get him
back to work after about 6 weeks. Our local steel maker continues to slowly
plod along with the steel for the remaining villas (Pitchou and Bonz), but it’s
at the point now, I just roll my eyes when they say they’ll have something done
by a certain day, since that never seems to happen. Still, we’re hoping they’ll
start to set up the outside cages at both villas in the next month or so. Keep
your fingers crossed!
Steuart’s Canadian cousins, Keith and Wendy, came down in March, leaving the cold and snow of Saskatchewan for the early spring blooms and mild temperatures at GH. Everyone should have cousins like these. They come to work. And I mean work hard! Keith trenched a data line into the facility, thereby finally putting our administration building on our local network along with high speed internet access – a task on our ‘to-do’ list forever, but which we could never seem to find staff or time to do it. Wendy did spring garden cleanup and cleaned our gatehouse better than I’d ever have done and it was great having them here.
Joe’s regurgitation isn’t gone and we’re monitoring him closely, since there seems to be a trend, where sometimes the number of piles of regurgitant we find, correlates to certain types of food, although initially there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to this. He’ll regurgitate after eating watermelon – which is mostly water, and he’ll regurgitate after eating browse or other foods. Known food items to cause gorillas in general to R&R, including milk items like yogurt, and fruits, are included in Joe’s diet, but in limited supplies. He’s still on medicines for acid reflux and we’ll re-visit the idea of doing another procedure to try to stretch the stricture in his esophagus, as the situation warrants it. Joe’s always been grumpy to me, but lately he’s grumpier to everyone, even his beloved caregivers, Kelly and Pete. We think it’s because he’s frustrated not getting his food in one big pile and he has to work for it (to slow him down, and hopefully help the food digest). Plus, Joe’s getting older. Aren't we all! The photo of Joe below left was taken by Keith and Wendy Stephens.
March
30, 2007 was the 4th anniversary of Joe’s arrival at Gorilla Haven.
We also boldly consider this his 44th birthday. Joe is the 3rd
oldest male gorilla in the USA (Timmy at Louisville is the oldest US male, and
Ozoum, or Ozzie, at Zoo Atlanta is the second oldest US male). Joe shares third
place with two silverbacks also born in 1963: a former neighbor when Joe was at
Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas named Lamydoc, and Frank, one of my
oldest and dearest (and most special) gorillas now in Louisville. If you
include all captive gorillas, male/female and around the world, Joe shares ninth
place with 8 other gorillas.
Click here to see the 49 oldest gorillas in the world (in captivity)
as of February 2007, as part of a story I wrote for a professional zoo
caregivers newsletter called the Gorilla Gazette (GH also publishes this
newsletter, and that took up 99% of my time since January, since I'm also the
publisher and format all the stories!). To celebrate Joe’s
special day, I brought him an orange and a small bouquet of browse (his
favorites – forsythia and willow). In classic Grumpy Joe fashion, he came in,
took both treats and went outside to enjoy them, without even a thank you! But
he’s entitled to be as grumpy as he wants to be.
Jo
e
can be incredibly sweet and charming too, as he was when he played host to a
special boy. Ty and his family visited in March as part of a Make A Wish dream
come true. Ty, has Niemann-Pick disease, but is an amazingly bright, cheerful
and sweet kid who just happens to love gorillas. That's Ty with shy Oliver
off in the distance on the left, and Ty as Joe approached for a closer look on
the right. When we were approached by the
Make A Wish Foundation, I was happy to arrange a special visit to GH, but also
to provide contacts to make the wish even more special with visits to Zoo
Atlanta and the Kangaroo Center, during the family’s stay in the Atlanta area.
When they arrived, Ty noticed the gorilla statues and other gorilla items in the
front of our cabin. As he entered the house, I had to laugh out loud, since the
poor kid was flabbergasted as he explored my home, which really is literally
floor to ceiling gorillas! Joe asked me to make a special gift bag for Ty, with
a GH t-shirt and other gorilla goodies, but the best gift was time with Joe …
and Oliver! As predicted Oliver was a little more circumspect about the
visitors, but he did finally come up and drink some water when Ty and I were in
the safety porch, so Ty got a good close up visit with Oliver. But I think Joe
was Ty’s favorite and I know Joe loved the family’s visit too.
I
have to share these two photos of Oliver when he was a toddler. The one on the
left was sent by our friends Jan and Tom Parkes, who knew him (and every other
gorilla on the planet, it seems) when he was a youngster at the Bronx Zoo in New
York. The right photo is courtesy of the Bronx Zoo. He's got the
same adorable face, just on a bigger head now!
Oliver, as I’ve mentioned before, is incredibly intelligent. Scary-smart, is how I put it. One example: He was trying to get apricots and raisins out of a treat log (a log with holes drilled in it, where fruits or honey/peanut butter, etc, are put and the gorilla has to work at getting the goodies out). I was sitting at the other end of the villa just watching. Oliver brought the log down to the ground, and sat down, carefully choosing a piece of straw, which he then bit off the end, and used it as a stick to try to pry the goodies out of the holes. But the straw didn’t work well. So I went outside and found a stick. I brought it in and gave it to Oliver, pointing to the log. Oliver took the stick and let it drop, totally ignoring it, as he continued to work with pieces of straw to get out the treats. Suddenly, I swear I saw a light bulb go on over his head. Oliver stopped, looked me straight in the eyes, then picked up the discarded stick and started to use that, and successfully got all the treats out.
Oliver gets a special
canned diet with added vitamins once a day. Sometimes
it’s fed to him as a "meatball" as in the photo on the left. Other times he's
spoon fed using a thick acrylic spoon. Recently, I was giving him this treat, as
he watched me carefully spoon up each serving, as I waited for him to eat the
previous spoonful. When he was ready for the next spoonful, Oliver would open
his mouth as wide as possible. I couldn’t help myself. I kept laughing at how
incredibly CUTE he looked. Oliver knew I wasn't laughing at him, but that he was
being adorable - much the way a kid will act up more if adults laugh at their
antics. Even though I know better, I let my guard down and as I gave him
the last spoonful, Oliver bit into the spoon and ran off with it. I just
laughed harder. Pete went in to get some apricots to trade for the spoon, and
Oliver assessed the trade from a distance, before agreeing to the transaction.
He casually approached us, spoon in hand, then ran up and threw the spoon under
the mesh (and out to where we were standing), and opened his mouth for the
apricots. He knew exactly what we wanted, but he also knew if he held out,
he’d get another treat. I need to be more vigilant in the future, since we don’t
want Oliver to think this trick is a way to get treats all the time!
Towards the end of
February we started to notice hair loss on the back of Oliver’s head...then
knees and then wrists. We knew
he’d had a history of dry skin and had seen him scratching a lot, so we
increased the villa’s humidity levels, added more vitamin E to his diet, and
even gave him safflower or flax oil to help. But soon we saw what was causing
the hair loss, and my heart sank. Oliver was pulling his own hair out. This
isn’t that uncommon in zoo gorillas and is usually believed to be the sign of
boredom or stress. Being inside a lot during the colder months of January and
February, plus now that he had acclimated to the routine of GH, I suspect Oliver
was bored. I also suspect Oliver is lonely. He’s never lived without other
gorillas with him or right nearby, before coming to GH, where he can only see
Joe from a distance. The two photos on the left show Oliver with a full
head of hair, taken at Christmas time. The photo on the right was taken on March
10th, and we estimate the hair plucking began the last part of February, based
on video and other photo comparisons.
Gorillas are individuals, just like humans. I’m more like Joe, in that I’m quite happy never to see my own kind and to live alone. Joe loves his human visitors, but his past experiences in zoos indicate he doesn’t much care for or pay attention to other gorillas. Oliver, is like a city kid, who needs the bright lights and constant chaos to keep him challenged. And I suspect GH is too mellow, despite our Herculean efforts to keep his environment enriched, varied and challenging, such as a rather unique project to allow Oliver to control things outside of his cage, also taken from the 2007 Gorilla Gazette.
What do we do?
Fortunately the weather is warming up and Oliver has access outside again. We
pulled our staff off the group building to quickly build a shade and climbing
structure for him outside, since it was
pretty boring and uninteresting the way it was initially. Working on the habitat
wasn't on our higher priority list, but we knew giving Oliver a fun place to go
out and sit under/on/near would help and it seems to be working, a little. These
photos show Oliver investigating the new structure before it had the top and
"bells and whistles" added. We'll add more photos of the completed structure
when time allows. We had also been letting Oliver out only when someone
could be there watching him. We decided this was no longer necessary and now he
can go out as early as 8 in the morning. He seems to enjoy the coolness of the
mornings and spends more time outside then, preferring the comfort of the villa
by noon and the afternoon (which is when we'd been allowing him outdoor access,
previously). As the longer days of summer arrive, he and Joe can have access
until darkness falls, if they like, so we hope shaking up the "routine" a little
will also keep Oliver from getting too bored.
We also met with our vets to discuss possible ways of treating the hair plucking as a obsessive compulsive disorder, much like in humans (possibly Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRI's) like Prozac might work, and have been successfully used in other gorillas). And we’re working with the Gorilla SSP to see about getting Oliver some gorilla company sooner rather than later. Or perhaps we'll look into another animal as a companion for him - like monkeys, a cat, bird, fish tank, etc, etc.
Joe’s like your average kid in school. He gets mostly C’s and B’s and gets along just fine. Oliver’s the kid in the accelerated classes, where the teachers can't find enough to keep him challenged. My little, beloved, adorable gorilla genius, Oliver. Hopefully we’ll figure out something soon, but we’re changing schedules around and trying different ideas and with some luck, maybe we can get Oliver some gorilla company too. On a visit with Oliver with a friend a while ago, I said we'd send him to a zoo if they'd give him his own family group. My friend, knowing how in love with Oliver I am, looked at me shocked, and said, "You'd let Oliver go? But you love him!" And I replied, "Exactly! I love him enough to let him go to a better place. Even though it will break my heart, knowing Oliver is happier someplace else is good enough for me." For now, I hope we can keep Oliver happy at Gorilla Haven and he couldn't have a better champion than me, to make sure he thrives. And Joe too, naturally!