Pongi

It is magical working the Ape House on a holiday, Thanksgiving and Christmas especially. Normally two keepers arrive at 6:00 a.m but today I am working alone. The routine will be cursory with minimal cleaning, double feeding and out the door to family and friends by 11:00 a.m. 

The walk across zoo grounds is cold on this Christmas morning. Fresh snow sparkles, unmarked by footsteps other than sometimes a rabbit’s distinctive print or a bird’s funny scribble moving off into the distance.  The air is crisp and clean, the sun just emerging. The snow crunches beneath my feet.  The zoo feels special as if it is mine, the grounds pristine and so very quiet.

Opening the kitchen door, the gorillas elicit their usual rolling rumbles, their smell hits me like a wave. It’s a good scent, deep and musky, an unwashed body smell – not the sickly sweet gaggy kind just the healthy clean kind….something we humans fight so hard of being accused of or exposing ourselves to.

The Ape House is relaxed as I move the gorillas for perfunctory cleaning of their cages and throw in bales of fresh hay. Tomorrow will be heavy cleaning day but for now there is a feeling of a holiday in the ape house, they know it and I do too.

Every morning they are separated into individual cages to allow us to hand-feed their fruits, drinks and special dietary needs.  This is also a time for them to relax with their food, no competition, no looking behind to see if someone else wants what they might have. They are happy today with the double-feeding, lots of contented rumblings going on. Toni, a female born and raised at Columbus is so excited she can barely contain herself, her vocalizations border of some sort of gorilla ecstasy, she is “talking” excitedly in sing-song high-pitched sounds. She is simply beside herself when she sees the double-dose of fruits and veggies.

Today I have cut up their greens super fine scattering throughout their cages. This will keep them busy for a long time, some are already methodically shifting wads of hay to peer underneath for goodies. It looks a bit like a game of peek-a-boo with food being the incentive. They receive popcorn, dried cereal and sunflower seeds on a daily basis but today extra portions are given. Our zoo Docents not only bring the keeper staff home-made cookies and fudge for the holidays, they also bring out-of- season fruits for the gorillas. So today I raid the fridge and make a huge bin of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and raisins, adding some peanuts and voila a holiday potpourri is spread throughout their cages as well. 

After cleaning, they are back together in a jiffy.  I hose down the side, front and back keepers aisles, do the dishes, wipe down the kitchen. My reward – sitting on the front aisle bench, observing gorillas. Shafts of light cast their way through the skylights into the cages, reminiscent of light coming through stained-glass windows in a cathedral, bits of hay dust dance in the light as the gorilla make nests, disturb bedding in search of food bits and just settling in.

They are relaxed, the building warm and cozy. The youngsters are busy playing, some having a game of chase - up and down ladders, into chutes in and out of different cages. While the adults are comfortably settled in, several have a cache of food in front of them they have mined from the detritus of hay…to eat at their leisure while lounging on thick hay beds. Females with infants keep a close eye on their offspring when the youngsters come running by in their routinely reckless manner. The infants are fascinated with the older kids, they want to play but their Mom’s are more circumspect, they know how rough the play can get.

There is laughter, every once in a while an adult elicits a friendly belch vocalization “haa-hummmphhh”reassuring everyone that all is good with the world. I watch closely as the gorillas interact. Who is pal’s with whom, who is irritating another? Near the bottom of the cage, close to where I am sitting, a female lies on her back, her right leg crossed over the bent knee of her other leg, right arm extended towards me, she shakes it a bit, while vocalizing to me and I crack up. She does it again, as if she knows I will get a kick out of it. She looks like some sort of languid aristocratic princess benignly surveying her palace and and its inhabitants – willing to mix with the masses for a brief time.

In another cage, Pongi is the undisputed matriarch of Mumbah’s cobbled together group of females, juveniles and babies. In this same group Lulu is raising her young daughter Kebi. Pongi currently does not have an infant of her own–her juvenile son is off with the other youngster no longer in constant need of his mother’s hands-on nurturing. Lulu does have a baby though and Pongi usually so composed and self-contained, not known for interacting with other females, sits directly across from Lulu.  Lu’s daughter is big enough to wander away from her mom but Lulu keeps her close as she eyes Pongi cautiously. Pongi begins to flail her arms up and down, up and down in sheer excitement at the proximity of a baby. She is just begging to touch that baby, her behavior at once desperate and comical. Lulu looks on with a deadpan face – as only a gorilla can – and keeps a firm grip on her kid. It’s evident to me that that won’t be happening, and Pongi much to her credit recognizes that as well, graciously acquiescing.

There are so many of these exceptional moments, witnessing the obvious as well as subtle social interactions that others will never have the opportunity to observe. When I leave the Ape House, done for the day, smelling of gorillas, looking forward to seeing my family, it is snowing again, the sun casting deep blue shadows on the mounds of uneven snow and on my earlier footprints.