Through a Window (35 page)

A British veterinarian, Kenneth Pack, who had been helping the Templars for years, was there with his blow pipe to sedate the chimpanzees so that they could be put in their travelling crates. When Charlie was hit he gazed calmly at the dart sticking from his arm, with its little tuft of red twine, then slowly pulled it out and examined it carefully. He removed the needle, then seemed to try to put it back. Finally, to my utter disbelief, he tried to inject himself. Of course he failed—there was no needle. He walked over to me and handed me the syringe. But when I made to take it from him he gently directed my hand, holding the syringe, to his arm.

The Templars had described how some of the confiscated youngsters they took in went through all the horrifying symptoms of drug withdrawal, sometimes for weeks after their arrival. As I watched Charlie, with his sad, young-old face, I was sickened. Here was an addict, trying to give himself a "fix."

And then there are the chimpanzees used in the entertainment industry, in circuses and movies. Of course it is possible to train chimpanzees by kindness, but the polished performances of chimpanzee stars, such as those in the various Tarzan films,
Project X, Bedtime for Bonzo,
and so on are, almost without exception, exacted by harsh cruelty. On the actual film sets there is rarely brutality—it would not be tolerated. But during pretraining sessions the non-human actors-to-be are routinely beaten into submission. Often the trainer uses a lead cosh around which he rolls a newspaper. When training continues on the set, in the presence of the human actors, the rolled-up newspaper is a symbol that ensures instant obedience.

A good many captive infant chimpanzees end up as pets, particularly in Africa. Most belong to expatriates who rescue them, hunched and miserable, often close to death, from the marketplace or the roadside. Their mothers have been shot, cut up and sold for meat. There is little flesh on infants, and the hunters, if they are lucky, can get more money by selling them as pets. And so the trade continues.

At first these youngsters are easy to look after in the home. Dressed in diapers they are like living dolls, docile, affectionate, cute. They may be pampered and well cared for and when sympathetic owners take the trouble to provide a nutritious diet, security and love, the infants will enjoy their lives, unnatural though they may be. But as they grow older they become harder to manage and, by the time they are four or five years of age, they have become a nuisance and a liability. They are strong and curious. They want to explore their environment. They climb the curtains, break anything lying around, raid the refrigerator, use keys to unlock cupboards. Increasingly they must be disciplined and they resent punishment. They throw violent tantrums and bite. And so they are banished from the home, often into tiny cages on the veranda. One chimp, Socrates, had been in such a prison for months when I met him. The story of the suffering he had known in his three short years was writ clearly in his face.

Whiskey was chained. I had seen photographs of him tied up at the back of a garage, but even so I was unprepared for the surge of pure anger that swept over me when I saw him. His concrete-floored, brick-walled cell was some five by six feet. There was a gaping hole in the ramshackle roof. The tiny open cubicle was next to an Asian-type lavatory, little more than a hole in the ground with the door half open. Whiskey's "home" had probably served the same purpose, once.

"He is like a son to me," said the smiling Arab. I stared at him, dumbfounded. Was it stupidity or insolence that prompted this man to introduce a "son" tied by a two-foot chain to a steel post at the back of a disused lavatory? I looked at Whiskey, met his
questioning gaze. "His chain is lengthened at night," said his "father." "Then he can move out into the garage." Yes, I thought, at night—when chimpanzees sleep. I went up to Whiskey and he put his arms around me, returning my embrace.

As I started to move away he began hurling himself about, jerking against the chain, banging the wall with his hands, his feet. He reached out towards me, then threw a banana skin—all that he could find in his prison. Usually he threw faeces, I had been told, but everything had been cleaned in readiness for my visit.

What happens to these unfortunate chimpanzees when they become really big and strong, at adolescence? Or when their owners leave the country? Some end up in a local zoo where, even when intentions are good, funds are usually limited. Moreover, the keepers have their own families to care for, and chimpanzee fare is only too acceptable to small hungry human children. When zoos will not take the young chimps they are often killed—for most countries now have laws prohibiting their legal export. Only too often there is no haven for them in the country that is their rightful home.

There are many chimpanzees owned as pets in the United States, too. There, "loving" owners often take steps to put off the day when they must part with them. Some chimpanzees have their teeth pulled out. One young female had both her thumbs amputated so that she couldn't (so her "mother" thought) climb and destroy the curtains. But in the end these simian members of the family usually have to go. And by that time it is hard for them to adjust to being chimpanzees. All their lives they have been taught to behave like humans. What becomes of them, pathetic outcasts that they are? It is by no means easy to place unwanted home-raised chimpanzees in American zoos, since they tend to be socially inept and poor breeders. Often they are sold to dealers. They end up in roadside zoos, displayed in tiny cages for the ignorant to tease. Or in medical research labs.

And what is the lot of these chimpanzees used by scientists because they are so physiologically like humans? How are they treated by those who use their living bodies to try to learn more about human disease, drug addiction and mental illness? Certainly not as honoured guests in the labs. Indeed, most of them are maintained in conditions similar to those which convicts endured in bygone eras. Yet these chimpanzees are not only innocent of crime, but actually helping to alleviate human suffering. Even in the best of the labs, where breeding groups have relatively large outdoor enclosures, those chimpanzees being used in experimental procedures are housed in relatively small cages with only small outdoor enclosures. And in some of the labs that I have visited, the chimpanzees are kept in conditions that can only be described, at best, as showing absolutely no understanding of the needs of the inmates, and at worst, as shockingly cruel.

The first laboratory I ever visited was just outside America's capital, in Rockville, Maryland. I had seen a videotape taken during an illicit entry, but even so I was not prepared for the nightmare world into which I was ushered by smiling, white-coated men. As I followed, the door to the outside closed, and all light from the sky was shut off. We moved through dimly lit underground corridors, and I was shown room after room lined with small, bare cages, stacked one above the other, in which monkeys circled endlessly round and round, round and round. Then there was a room where young chimpanzees, two or three years old, were crammed, two together, into tiny cages measuring, I was told, twenty-two inches by twenty-two inches, and two feet high. They could hardly move. Not yet part of any experiment, they had already been confined there for more than three months. Those cages were enclosed in metal boxes that looked like microwave ovens—"isolettes"—so that each prisoner could see out only through a small panel of glass. And what could they see? The bare wall opposite. And what was in the cage to provide occupation, comfort, stimulation? Nothing. Nothing except their own faeces and, from time to time, some food.

True, there were two chimps to a cage—at least they had each other for comfort. But not for long. Once infected—with hepatitis, AIDS or some other virulent disease—they would be separated and, like the others I saw that day, placed in cages by themselves. I watched one of these older chimpanzees, a juvenile female, as she rocked from side to side, sealed off from the outside world inside her metal isolation chamber. She was in semidarkness. All she could hear was the incessant roar of air rushing through vents into her cell. When she was lifted out by one of the technicians, she sat in his arms like a rag doll, listless, apathetic. I shall be haunted forever by her eyes, and by the eyes of the other chimpanzees I saw that day. They were dull, blank, utterly without hope. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a person who, stressed beyond endurance, has given up, succumbed utterly to the crippling helplessness of despair? I once saw a little African boy whose whole family had been killed during the fighting in Burundi. He too looked out at the world unseeing, from dull, blank eyes.

Unless long-promised changes do eventually take place, there the chimpanzees will remain for the next three or four years. During that time, they will become permanently disturbed, emotionally and psychologically.

Those cages did not comply with animal welfare regulations. But even if they had, it would have made little difference. I have been saddened to find how many scientists and lab personnel see nothing wrong with the legally required minimum cage size in the United States. Hundreds of chimpanzees are confined, each one alone, in prisons measuring five feet by five feet, and seven feet high. These highly social, highly intelligent beings, whose emotions are so similar to our own, may be locked into these metal-barred boxes for life. For over fifty years.

Imagine being shut up in such a cell, with bars all around; bars
on every side, bars above, bars below. And with nothing to do. Nothing to while away the monotony of the long, long days. No physical contact, ever, with another of your kind. Friendly physical contact is so terribly important for chimpanzees. Those long, relaxed sessions of social grooming matter to them, so much.

I can never forget the first time that I gazed into the eyes of a fully adult male imprisoned in one of these standard lab cages. An old motor tyre suspended from the bars above was the only object, other than himself, inside his prison. There were nine other male chimpanzees in the bleak underground room. There were no windows. Nothing to see except the other prisoners. The walls were uniform white, the doors were steel. The sounds of the chimpanzees echoed and reverberated as they greeted our arrival—myself and a veterinarian. The noise, as they hooted, and shook and beat on the bars of their prisons, was almost unbearable.

It was when they quietened that I looked into Jojo's eyes. I saw no hatred—that would have been easier to bear. Only puzzlement, gratitude that I had stopped to speak to him, to break the unbearable boredom of the day. I thought then of the chimpanzees of Gombe, free to roam the forests, free to play and groom and make nests in the springy branches. Jojo reached out a gentle finger and touched my cheek where the tears slid down into my laboratory mask.

Another nightmare visit was in Austria, just outside Vienna. To get there we drove through beautiful rolling countryside. The sun shone. In the lab the chimpanzees were locked below ground. This was a brand new building for AIDS research and anyone going into the chimpanzees quarters was required to wear heavy protective clothing. It was like struggling into an astronaut suit. If I failed to attach the nozzle of my breathing tube to the air vent in each of the rooms where I was to go, I was told, then I would suffocate. As I pulled the helmet down over my head, and felt hands zipping it closed from behind, I knew a moment of panic. My guide disappeared into a chemical shower that would sterilize his suit. I waited for the prescribed number of minutes then, peering through my glass visor, I lumbered awkwardly in his wake.

The heavy door clicked shut. In each of the three small chambers into which I was led there were two chimpanzees, each one imprisoned alone in a five-foot-square cage. There were sheets of some sort of plexiglass, or plastic, hung between the cages, through which the inmates could, I suppose, peer at each other. Most of them, I remember, just looked at us as we entered their rooms. One chimp seemed excited or afraid—I could not tell which. She came to the bars to be reassured by a clumsy, heavily gauntleted hand. As we left, they sank back into apathy—at least, no sounds followed us as the doors closed.

Throughout that brief tour around those dim, underground chambers I felt that I moved in a fantasy world, utterly remote from reality. I tried to imagine a hospital for AIDS patients—human patients—where all the doctors and nurses moved about grotesquely outfitted in space suits, where all the visitors had to strip and struggle into the same protective outfits. How terrified those chimpanzees must have been when first they saw these monstrous figures, heard the sepulchral voices distorted by the helmets. Now they are used to it. For them, the outside world, the real world with trees and sky and the comfort of normal, friendly contact with other living beings, is gone for ever.

How can the people working in these chimpanzee prisons tolerate the conditions there? Are they without feeling, without compassion? Are they utterly lacking in understanding? Are they sadistic, delighting in their power and control over such large and potentially dangerous creatures? For the most part, I think, the attitudes of the staff are forced upon them by the scientific system. Newly employed personnel are usually upset by what they see. Some quit, unable to endure the suffering
around them, and feeling powerless to help. And many of those who stay on gradually come to accept the cruelty, believing (or forcing themselves to believe) that it is an inevitable part of the struggle to reduce human suffering. Some of them even become hard and callous in the process, "all pity choked with custom of fell deed."

Fortunately for the chimps, there are a number of compassionate people who never come to terms with the laboratory conditions, but stay because they feel that they can then try to make things better for the chimps. One such is Dr. James Mahoney, who cares deeply about the 250 or so chimpanzees in his charge. It was Jim who introduced me to Jojo. And as I crouched on the floor that day, fighting my tears, Jim, who had moved off to talk to the other chimps, came back and saw my sadness. He bent down and put his arms around me. "Don't do that, Jane," he said. "I have to face this every morning of my life."