Remembering Lucy

"If [stories] don't have happy endings, they should have tragic endings." 

And that is exactly how the story of the chimpanzee, Lucy, ends; tragically. Lucy and her biological family were part of a circus. The two humans that adopted Lucy to live them as a human were Maurice K. Temerlin, and his wife, Jane W. Temerlin.She was raised as a human child in the family and soon she became neither human, nor chimp. She was lost.

As Lucy grew, she learned sign language and essentially became a human in all aspects except her physical appearance. She was quite capable of maneuvering around the house and helping herself to tea, food and reading materials. During her innocent stages of life, Janis Carter had begun working with Lucy and simple just being with her. When Lucy hit the age of 12, she was in her full strength and became destructive around the house. She would tear things from the shelf, rip apart her "parents" possessions and leave the house in utter chaos. This became so bad that the Temerlins created a cage for her and had to keep her locked up. Once they reached that point, they realized that they needed to find a different solution. They looked into all of their options and eventually decided to send her to a chimpanzee rehabilitation center in Gambia. Janis went with Lucy and stayed with her at the center for years.  At the center Lucy became hurt, angry and depressed. For years, Janis tried getting Lucy settled in at the center but the chimp still was stressed out and lost her appetite as well as her hair. When Janis saw that the center was clearly not working for Lucy or several of the other apes that were in the same boat as Lucy, Janis changed the tactic to getting them readapted. She took them out to a deserted island and released the apes, along with Lucy, on to the land. However they stayed around Janis and wouldn't fend for themselves. Out of desperation, Janis ordered a metal cage to be made and she put herself into the cage in hopes that the chimps would get bored with her and branch out on their own. After a while, that is what most of the chimps did, but Lucy stayed next to the cage with Janis and frequently signed for Janis to come out and be with Lucy. Distraught and out of options, Janis came out of the cage and began eating bugs and plants, wishing that her display of actions would be mirrored by Lucy. Exhausted, Janis fell asleep and Lucy curled up next to her. When Janis awoke, Lucy was sitting by her side holding a leaf out for Janis to consume. That was the point of Janis realizing that Lucy was ready to be left in the wild. Janis Carter left the island and visited back ever so often. On her last visit to the island, she found Lucy's skeleton with the hands and feet cut off and skin gone. We can assume that Lucy, being the most comfortable with humans, approached poachers unaware of the danger they posed and was skinned. Tragic isn't it?

We listened to this documentary in class and from the very beginning I kept thinking how horrible humans can be. What is it in us that makes us mess things up and not know how to fix it? The whole idea of keeping a wild animal as a pet just seems wrong in the first place. And then to abandon that animal when they are caught in the middle not knowing what they really are because of us? In Humanities, we have been learning about the genocide in Rwanda and how when the country was in need, the rest of the world turned their back to the chaos they had created. I am really seeing how horrible humans can be. How awful and rude and frankly self-centered the modern human is. And through all of this, I am actively viewing my life through a critical lens and seeing how I am just the same as those self-righteous "scientific" adults who have turned our world upside down through their "beneficial" experiments.

Bio

Hey internet world! My name is Marley Gabel and I am a Sophomore at Animas High School. Something that is interesting about me is that I don't like licorice. Or twizzlers, or redvines. I think they are icky and gross, kinda like cutting dead animals open.This is the first post to my biology blog. Throughout the year we will be updating the blog with information on labs, projects and class work.