Zoo Story Page 21

“She’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful,” said Carie, sighing as she watched her. “And she knows it.”

  Her attachment to Enshalla was the only thing keeping Carie from quitting. She had lost almost all her faith in the zoo. Only a small part of her even considered the possibility that things would get better. Lex had plotted a certain course for the zoo’s future. She did not see him changing his mind.

  The old man with the thick white hair and the weathered face stood at the edge of the chimp exhibit and grinned. Herman, stationed at his perch, saw him and rocked his body and raised his arm in greeting.

  “That’s my son,” said Ed Schultz, turning to any of the visitors milling around him who would listen.

  Thirty-five years had passed since Ed and his family had brought Herman to Lowry Park, pausing to let him climb the light pole on the way inside. Ed, ninety-one now, was hanging on the best he could. His wife, Elizabeth, had died years before. Their kids, Roger and Sandy, were grown and lived elsewhere with children of their own. Ed was in and out of the hospital these days. His hearing wasn’t so good. His mind lost track of things. But he had never forgotten Herman, and clearly Herman had never forgotten him.

  Ed had long since retired, but he still lived in Tampa, and for years he had volunteered as a docent at Lowry Park, giving tours and helping out however he could. Ed’s favorite pastime was going to see Herman and telling stories about their life together. At his home, photos of Herman hung next to portraits of Roger and Sandy and the grandchildren. Ed had folders overflowing with pictures of Herman and would sift through them and hold them with trembling hands as he talked about the day young Herman joined them at the company picnic or the time when Herman went fishing with the children. For Ed, Herman was the bridge between the past and present. At the zoo, whenever Ed looked across the moat at his old friend, the years fell away, and suddenly he was back in Liberia, holding Herman for the first time. That day so long ago, when Ed had scooped the baby chimp out of the orange crate and into his arms, there had been no way for him to foresee all the implications of this action. What it would mean for both of them, all the ways it would shape them. How their lives would braid together across the decades.

  It was difficult to know exactly what Herman made of the relationship. The chimp still felt a deep connection to Ed; that much was obvious. Still, the keepers had noticed an edge of desperation to Herman’s displays, especially as Ed’s visits ended. Sometimes the keepers wished he wouldn’t stop by so often. Because every time Ed walked away, it seemed to leave the chimp shaken.

  Thirty-five years had passed since the Schultzes had brought Herman to Lowry Park. He must have known that his human family loved him, and yet that knowledge must have made his abandonment all the more bewildering. Was it possible that Herman had spent the rest of his life trying to figure it out? Maybe a small part of him still wondered, whenever Ed showed up, if this time he would finally get to go home.

  Early in that summer of 2006, the primate keepers were beyond excited. For the first time in years, their chimp group was about to get a new baby.

  The young female’s name was Sasha. She had been born at the Montgomery Zoo, but her birth mother had rejected her. Lee Ann had arranged for Sasha to be brought to Lowry Park. Knowing Rukiya’s strengths as a surrogate mother, Lee Ann and the other keepers were preparing to slowly introduce Sasha to Rukiya and the rest of the group, hoping the matriarch would adopt her, just as she had adopted Alex years before.

  Lee Ann, who loved baby chimps more than anything in the world, beamed whenever she got to hold Sasha. In those first weeks, while they prepared to introduce her to the group, Lee Ann and the other keepers allowed Sasha to explore their offices in her diaper. At night they took her home and bottle-fed her formula. She was light and soft and full of energy. She already loved the staff, especially the men. When she saw a human male, even one she’d never met, she would immediately raise her arms for him to pick her up, just as Herman had automatically raised his arms to Ed so many years before.

  By early June, the introductions were progressing. Sasha had not yet met Herman or Bamboo. The protocol called for the process to unfold slowly and carefully. So far, the baby had been introduced to both Rukiya and Twiggy. The keepers placed her in a small cage—a “howdy cage,” Lee Ann called it—beside the area of the night house that belonged to the females. This gave both the baby and the adults a chance to see and smell one another. It was their way of becoming acquainted, and if it went well, the next step would be to place Sasha in the same enclosure with Rukiya. There was no telling how young Alex would react once he met Sasha and realized he was no longer the baby of the group. It was also impossible to know how Herman and Bamboo would respond. Lee Ann believed Herman would accept Sasha, just as he had accepted Alex, and that his acceptance would guide the others. For the moment, Sasha had been kept away from the males; they might have smelled her scent lingering in the howdy cage, but they had not yet seen her.

  As far as Lee Ann could tell, Sasha’s arrival had not yet caused any ripples among the other chimps. Except for Alex’s obvious ambitions, the group appeared to be as stable as usual. Herman and Bamboo had tangled briefly not long ago. The fight seemed a little more intense than some of their previous squabbles. But afterward they seemed to make up, like always.

  Walking past the exhibit a few days later, Lee Ann noticed something odd. Rukiya was sitting behind Bamboo, grooming the hair on his back—a favor Lee Ann had never before seen Rukiya perform for the lowly male. Still, after the bullying the females inflicted on Bamboo, it was refreshing to see him and Rukiya getting along.

  That’s nice, Lee Ann told herself.

  The emergency call went over the keepers’ walkie-talkies just after noon on Thursday, June 8. The call was so feverish, the voice on the other end so urgent and strangled with emotion, that it was difficult to make out exactly what was being said, other than the word “primates.” The chimps were fighting. They would not stop. The keepers needed help.

  Lee Ann happened to be working in the primate area that day. She and the other keepers did not witness the start of the fight, but when they heard the commotion from the exhibit, they rushed out and saw Bamboo and Rukiya attacking Herman. Alex, standing nearby, was trying to defend Herman. The chimps were screaming and their arms were flailing, and Bamboo was chasing Herman and beating him with his fists. Lee Ann and the other keepers were trying to break it up. They coaxed Alex and Rukiya and the other females into the night house. They brought out hoses and sprayed Bamboo. But nothing stopped his aggression. Herman was clearly losing. Even as he defended himself, the keepers could see him fading. Soon Herman was on the ground, sitting cross-legged, slumped over, his head down. He was not moving, even as Bamboo pounded him.

  As a security guard ushered visitors away, Dr. Murphy arrived and went around to the high wall of mesh that covered the back of the exhibit. The vet could see that Bamboo was not just upset, but confused and frightened. He kept running up to Murphy and repeatedly making the fear grin, then returning to Herman’s fallen body to beat him again. Murphy tried to dart Bamboo, but couldn’t get a clear shot. He and one of the primate keepers waited until the chimp moved away, then hurried into the exhibit and dragged Herman into the night house to examine him.

  At the clinic, Murphy checked Herman for shock, got an IV running, cleaned him up. The chimp’s external injuries—a few puncture wounds on his lip, a torn-up finger and toe—did not appear catastrophic. His pupils and his breathing pattern made Murphy wonder if he had suffered neurological trauma. Maybe during the attack he had fallen. Maybe Bamboo had hit him hard enough to knock him out.

  As Murphy continued his examination, Lee Ann and Angela Belcher, the assistant curator in charge of primates, stood nearby and talked to Herman. But he would not wake up. He had slipped into a coma.

  Leaving the others to watch over the chimp, Murphy went to the zoo’s manatee hospital, where the keepers had brought a sedated Rukiya for a few stitches on her
nose. The vet was still working on her when a call came from the clinic not long before seven p.m. Herman had stopped breathing. Rushing back, Murphy found people taking turns performing CPR on Herman’s ninety-pound body. Murphy tried for a while, then Lee Ann took over. They kept at it for ten, fifteen minutes.

  Lee Ann didn’t want them to stop. She didn’t understand why this had happened. She couldn’t imagine the zoo or her life without Herman. Finally, though, she and the others had no choice but to step back.

  The king was dead.

  The next day, they allowed Ed Schultz to say good-bye. Lee Ann and Angela escorted him to the clinic and into a corner where Herman’s body was waiting. He had been turned onto his side, with one arm stretched across his chest. He had a sheet across the lower half of his body. He looked at peace.

  Already Ed felt lost. Tears in his eyes, he took the chimp’s hand and felt the leathery palm against his skin. He kissed his forehead, cold now, and spoke softly and called him son. He told him he missed him but that the two of them would soon be reunited on the other side. Again and again, he repeated the name he had given his friend the first day they met, all those lifetimes ago.

  Chapter 13

  Freedom

  Word of Herman’s violent overthrow quickly spread throughout the zoo and beyond the front gates. Normally, the death of a chimpanzee would not have merited the slightest notice in the outside world. But Herman was one of the most famous animals in Tampa Bay history, adored by generations of local residents who had grown up marveling at his displays, and his loss was all the more newsworthy because it had exploded out of nowhere.

  The evening of the attack, an anonymous caller tipped off the St. Petersburg Times even before the zoo had a chance to publicly announce that Herman was gone. For the next two days, the coup was splashed across the front page. Noting Herman’s prominence as “a beloved fixture” at the zoo, the newspaper pieced together an early account of the assault that was largely accurate, except for one significant detail: The newspaper reported that Rukiya had been injured after she “intervened” in the battle. The assumption tucked inside that verb—that Rukiya had tried to break up the fight—was easy enough to understand, given that primate males are often viewed as inherently violent and females as implicitly more gentle. In this case, however, the assumption was wrong. Lee Ann and the other keepers who witnessed the fight saw Rukiya not trying to stop the violence, but teaming up with Bamboo against Herman.

  The necropsy report was released several weeks later. Dr. Murphy found that Herman had died from acute head trauma and had also suffered from heart disease. The vet’s examination of Herman’s injuries also revealed a clue as to the extent of Rukiya’s involvement in the attack. Although Bamboo had beaten the alpha severely, it would have been difficult for him to have inflicted the bite on Herman’s lip. Bamboo, old and relatively feeble, had virtually no teeth left. It was one of the reasons he had trouble defending himself when the females bullied him.

  The most disturbing question about the attack—the mystery that confounded almost everyone—was why Bamboo had gone after Herman with such blind fury. In the years since Bamboo had arrived at Lowry Park, Herman had been his closest ally and defender. By all appearances, the two of them had developed a bond as close to friendship as chimps could get. In news interviews afterward, Dr. Murphy talked about how he had often seen the two males romping together in the dirt.

  “Everybody considered them buddies,” said the vet. “They were like two old gentlemen, rolling around on the ground, laughing and tickling each other.”

  For many, Herman’s passing seemed almost impossible to accept. Herman had been the embodiment of Lowry Park’s history, good and bad. He was the zoo’s witness, its elder ambassador. Even Lex was a newcomer compared to him. In the mid-1980s, when Lex had arrived, Herman was already fifteen years into his reign. How could he be gone?

  As with the deaths of so many legends, rumors circulated, both inside and outside the zoo. Some wondered if Bamboo had sensed that Herman’s powers were waning, that he was ailing or vulnerable in some way the staff had not yet detected. Other theories suggested that baby Sasha’s arrival had somehow altered the group’s power dynamics and spurred Bamboo to plot an assassination. Some implied that greed had led to Herman’s death. This line of argument was based on the well-documented fact that baby animals were good business for zoos and on the supposition that a hunger for more profits might have been the real motive for acquiring Sasha, thereby triggering the attack. Intriguing as it sounded, the theory seemed implausible to anyone who knew Lee Ann and how crazy she was about chimps. It was she, not the zoo’s front office, who had pushed for Sasha to be brought in. The infant chimp had needed a home and a mother, and Lee Ann thought Lowry Park could give her both. Her lifelong devotion to chimpanzees was well established. She was obsessed with protecting the species, especially the handful who lived at Lowry Park. The notion that she would have agreed to put Herman or the other chimps at risk, just to pull in a few more dollars, was ludicrous.

  A few people whispered that the true cause of Herman’s death was Lex and his ceaseless ambitions. If the staff had not been decimated by so many resignations and firings, if they hadn’t all been so consumed with the new exhibits and the next expansion, then maybe there would have been more staffers in the primate section on the morning of the attack. Maybe a keeper would have seen what was happening more quickly and sounded the alarm, and then they could have separated Bamboo and Herman before things got so out of hand.

  Lee Ann, still a true believer, did not give any credence to that particular theory. The curator certainly did not blame Lex for what had happened. The truth was, she did not know what to think about Herman’s death. She was so heartbroken that she could not summon enough calm to reflect on what had happened. For weeks, she had trouble mentioning the chimp’s name, even with friends.

  Outside the zoo, some wondered out loud if Bamboo should be punished. Hadn’t he murdered Herman? Lee Ann heard these questions and shook her head. The law was another human construct. Among animals, there was no such thing as murder, or even right and wrong. Herman was gone. Bamboo and the others remained. That was all.

  After Herman’s death, Ed Schultz didn’t go to the zoo much anymore. He couldn’t bring himself to look out into the chimp exhibit and not see his friend waiting for him.

  “I just can’t put myself together on that,” he said.

  Ed railed at the injustice of Herman’s overthrow. Even though he knew chimps should not be judged by human standards, Ed was appalled and believed that Bamboo had betrayed Herman. One day, Ed went into the zoo and made his displeasure known by standing in front of the chimp exhibit with his back turned toward Bamboo and the others. He refused to look at them.

  At home, Ed gave himself over to grief.

  “Half of my life with that little fella,” he said, fighting back another wave of tears. “Didn’t we ever love him.”

  Bamboo was suffering as well. In the days after the attack, he was seen searching for Herman in the exhibit and the night house. When his companion did not reappear, Bamboo lost much of his appetite. He and the other chimps seemed unsure what to do next. They were quiet and appeared confused. They were all waiting for Herman’s return.

  In the depths of that summer, the distress inside the zoo grew palpable. With all the turnover, the remaining keepers were working extra hours and were busy training new hires. More animals seemed to arrive every day; new directives from management appeared on staff bulletin boards. Safari Africa was preparing to expand. The Asia section, home to Enshalla and Eric, closed to the public while construction crews moved in to renovate the exhibits.

  The frustration that had been building quietly inside the staff bubbled over when Lowry Park’s supervisors embarked on a quest to identify the caller who had leaked the news of Herman’s death to the St. Petersburg Times. Several keepers, including Carie Peterson, were being summoned into offices for questioning. Word spread
that Lex and his team had assembled a list of suspects, made up primarily of those who had dared to complain about their work conditions and the care of the animals. There were rumors the zoo was checking phone and e-mail logs and even considering the use of polygraphs.

  For Carie, the leak investigation was the final indignity. She had no idea who’d tipped off the newspaper. But to her, the zoo’s hunt for the tipster smacked of an obsession with control. Had they expected to keep the death of their most beloved animal a secret?

  In mid-July, Carie finally quit. She’d found another job working with animals—this time at the Humane Society of Tampa Bay—but even as she started the new position, she could not stop thinking about Enshalla. At night, she was haunted by guilty dreams that took her back to the zoo and into the tiger night house. She would see Enshalla’s face turned toward her, wondering where she had gone.

  The departure of Carie, yet another veteran, opened a huge hole in the staff. Another keeper in the Asia department, a veteran who had repeatedly suggested improvements in animal care, was fired only a few days after Carie left. Recognizing that the Asia staff required more help, the zoo hired a new keeper, a man who had just graduated from a zookeeper program in Gainesville. He was learning the protocols but had a long way to go.

  The rest of that summer, Lowry Park tried to regain its footing. The staff needed to stabilize—and soon, because that September, the zoo would co-host the annual convention of the AZA. In just a few weeks, hundreds of zoo officials would descend on Tampa and tour Lowry Park, appraising every exhibit, mentally noting whether the zoo measured up. For Lex, it was another chance at the national spotlight. For the staff, it was just one more pressure. Already the keepers were scrambling to prepare for the distinguished guests.

  Then, on Tuesday, August 22, as closing time drew near, the staff heard three words crackling on their walkie-talkies.