Sally Boysen has worked with primates for 23 years at Ohio State University, looking after and rehabilitating chimps and monkeys, some of which had been badly treated in animal labs.
The administration of OSU recently decided to abolish Sally’s unit, without informing her in advance.
They locked her out of the unit, and rehoused the chimps, in Texas, in conditions which have already led to two deaths (Bobby and Kermit).
Astonishingly, they have also managed to mislay a Capuchin monkey.
The unit was removed, apparently, because it was occupying valuable land due for airport redevelopment.
This poem attempts to portray how Sally may have felt on news of the disaster.
As the light faded from your gentle eyes (and I was not there)
What thoughts passed through your mind, Bobby?
Were you anxious?
Did you look around you for a well known face?
For any form of reassurance and relief?
(and I was not there)
And what did you feel as you died?
Was it anger, grief,
That got you?
Or did they kill you when despair
Made you scream and try to break your cage
And threaten those gods, your human captors,
And in a rage,
Childishly reflecting yours, they pulled a gun and shot you?
What happened to Kermit, your simian brother
Did one of you die first, leaving a grieving other,
Or did you go together?
Did you both search again
For any friendly sight or sound,
Amid the dull indifference or acrid hostility?
You sought in vain,
For humanity,
Basking in its own inanity
Didn’t see your pain.
But let’s be realistic! Let’s not yield to histrionics -
This is a field where economics
Is the queen of science
(Together with her bastard sister, finance).
And what if they did “lose” a capuchin monkey?
Well, it’s easy enough -
A monkey’s like a car.
We’ve all done it:
You drive to the shopping mall,
And forget where on earth you’ve parked it.
And only a cynic would suggest
That drug company laboratories
Provide a good market
For used monkeys.
Though it never pays to underestimate
The power of real estate
To motivate authority,
And authority’s flunkeys,
And in the great debate
God favours the big spenders
(Exceeded in priority,
Naturally, only by the big lenders).
And in the chain of evolutionary grandeur,
What could be nobler
As an instance of God’s creation,
In this, our most Godly nation,
Than a head of university administration.
For they are practically God himself!
They after all control the wealth.
(Indeed they are almost to be compared
With that very highest form of life,
The senior academic wife).
And as top dog,
We humans have to be prepared
To act like dogs:
I mean, to know our places in the pack
And put survival first
The duty of the bitch is to her pup.
(And let’s pass over the bibilical text
about a dog returning to its vomit).
And if we thirst
For knowledge, there’s no lack
Of species to use up - if one dies out,
There’ll always be a next -
In satisfaction of it.
For it’s a law of nature
That human promises
Are totally expendable,
And human consciences
Are infinitely bendable.