John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

Municipal zoo population of twenty-two animals in free-ranging enclosure.

1:12 p.m. Dominant male, Rufus, approaches estrous female Nini with stiff-legged display, canines bared. Nini presents genitals in submissive posture. Rufus mounts, copulatory thrusts.

1:14 Subadult male, Dobbs, approaches estrous female Cocoa, sniffs genital area. Attempts to mount. Dominant male Rufus dismounts from Nini, rushes at Dobbs with attack display. Dobbs crouches in submissive posture, Rufus makes brief mounting display on Dobbs, then mounts Cocoa. Pelvic thrusts.

1:18 Subadult male Dobbs approaches estrous female Sheena, genital sniffing. Sheena presents, Dobbs mounts. Copulatory behavior till Rufus rushes over from Cocoa, toppling Dobbs from Sheena's back and driving him away with bites to the neck and shoulder. Sheena remains frozen in submissive posture, back arched and genitals presented. Dobbs climbs to top of tire apparatus, screaming, and sits with year-old males. Rufus returns, stiff-legged, and mounts Sheena. Violent copulatory thrusting, watching Dobbs all the while.

Esau climbs a tree that hangs out over the rushing water very close to camp. Half the tree's roots are exposed, river current pulling it farther from the bank each day. The branches stretch far out over the middle of the river. Esau climbs out on the farthest and thinnest of these for a thick cluster of grapes that hangs on its end. He feeds suspended over the churning white water, a fall would sweep him over jagged rocks and a ten-foot drop-off just downstream. The branch groans under his weight, sags, supported mainly by the climbing grapevines that tie it in with higher, sturdier branches.

Warden and Lisa watch from a spot on the bank several yards upriver. Warden catches his breath silently each time the ape shifts its grip. He thinks of how difficult it was to find the subject, of the uncertainty of finding others in the area. He thinks about the limits of their grant provisions, of their time, thinks of all the data they've already collected. To intervene would be directly contrary to their purpose and methodology, but still — the ape hangs by one arm over the torrent, pulling handfuls of grapes loose.

This was an opportunity to be more than a footnote in some other professor's research, a chance for Warden to be listed in the tables of contents with all the great field pioneers, with Yerkes and Schaller and DeVore and C. R. Carpenter. Weren't scientists always interfering with marginal species, helping to preserve them so they might be studied? What could be more marginal than Schiffman's ape, its only known specimen currently hanging on the brink of extinction? It wouldn't really be interfering, it would be — preservation, yes, preservation in the interests of science, it would be -

A vine pops and the branch sinks down a notch.

"Esaul" calls Lisa, up and waving her arms, "Esau watch out!"

The ape immediately swings back up the branch and takes off away from them, soaring from tree to tree. Warden gives Lisa a stern look.

"I'm sorry, honey," she says. "The river's so high, that branch, it scared me. I was afraid for him."

Warden sighs wearily.

"I couldn't help it."

Warden gives her a little pat on the cheek, smiles forgivingly. "I understand, baby."

June z8 — Subject, Esau, descended to the ground for the first time in our presence today, to drink from the river. He drinks by dipping his hand in the water and then sucking from the thick hairs on the back of it. Subject, Esau, remained on ground after that and L. and I were careful to keep a good distance away. He is becoming habituated, and apparently Schiffman's ape does a good deal of his traveling and feeding on the ground. Contrary to my first impression, he does exhibit knuckle-walking when not in an agitated state. Esau has not yet crossed the river to the temple side, indicating that the original sighting by the film crew was either a stroke of luck or of a different member of the species.

Darkness.

"Careful, honey, the tent pole."

"Don't worry about the tent pole. Are you wet enough?"

"I don't know. It hurt a little the last time."

"Do you think he's watching?"

"Jesus, Lisa, we're inside the tent, it's pitch-black outside, what could he see?"

"He can hear."

"I'll try to be quiet."

"Honey, I'm so sticky. This heat — "

"You'll get used to it. It doesn't bother me that you're sticky."

"Oh God."

"What now?"

"I can't remember if I took my pill."

"Take an extra tomorrow. That works with your kind, doesn't it?"

"I get it mixed up with the Atabrine and all the salt tablets."

"Take an extra tomorrow, it'll be fine."

"Careful."

"I think something's biting me."

"Oh Christ."

"Well it's not my fault. What's wrong, honey?"

"Forget it. Just forget it."

"Please, don't turn your b-"

"Forget it."

Darkness, and silence.

Summer vacation proved to be a watershed in their relationship. The application to have Lisa hired as a research assistant didn't come through — there was no pretense she could use to stay at the university, no way she could afford it alone. Lisa didn't seem as disappointed as Warden expected. He'd never realized she could hide her feelings so well. She said she thought she could survive three months at home, without him. One summer apart wouldn't change things between them if they were really good for each other. The day before exams started Warden asked her to marry him.

Lisa was stunned. She had never considered it. None of the people they knew were getting married, it seemed such a gesture of — of commitment for somebody to make to her. She had never thought in terms of marriage, the idea excited her. She said yes and for a period they were back to humping like rabbits whenever they met.

Her parents were ecstatic. "We'd given up on her," said her beaming dad to Warden at the reception. "We'd given her up to science." He nudged Warden and nodded to where Lisa and her mother were weeping and hugging. "I should have known nature would come through. Girls will be girls."

"They tell me you work with animals," said an uncle, a very red-faced and liquid uncle.

"Primates."

"What's that?"

"Monkeys."

"Oh."

"And man. Right now I'm running experiments on chimpanzees."

"I see. Now which are they? I know King Kong was a gorilla."

"Like in Tarzan. Cheetah was a chimpanzee."

"Hah! Right, old Cheetah. Me Tarzan, you Jane. So," he clapped Warden on the back, "you gonna carry our little girl off into the jungle?"

Behavioral Observation — Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Subject — Young male, Zipperdee

Experiment Zipperdee was placed in a large room barren except for a 08'x8' steel cage in the center of the floor. Inside the cage was a small box painted bright blue, with bright chrome handles on the closed lid. Opening the lid triggered a mechanism that shut the cage door, trapping the animal in the cramped quarters. The box was empty. The animal was left in the cage for fifteen minutes after trapping himself, then taken to a neutral room for five minutes while a box of a different color was installed. The experiment was then repeated, eight trials in all.

Results Zipperdee continued to trap himself by opening the lid to look in the box, despite his obvious dis like for being closely confined. Learning did take place — with each successive trial he took longer to approach the painted box, often trying to reach through the bars to lift the lid. But when this failed his curiosity always prevailed and he ended up entering the cage. Once trapped he shook the bars and made characteristic distress noises, and repeatedly turned to open the lid as if to be reassured there was still nothing within the box. As Zipperdee was known to retain complex maze and machine-operation procedures for as long as a week, this was surely not a failure of memory. The experiment was repeated with Tom-Tom, another young male, this time without changing the color of the box between trials. Again the subject trapped himself repeatedly.