Brookswords: Koko's Kitten

All Fourth Graders in the L.A. public schools read a selection from "Koko's Kitten", a book about a gorilla that learned how to communicate using sign language. And many students are more than a little surprised to hear me recount how once I met Koko's Dad, long before he was a father.

Here's how it came about. When I was a little tyke, my favorite movie was the old, black & white King King. I can even remember the afternoon I first saw it, alone, on a program that tended to show old movie classics. One day they showed King Kong. I was not at all prepared for what I saw. I was too young to have heard anything about the movie, so it overwhelmed me--and the ending stunned me. I hadn't a clue that those airplanes were going to come out of the blue and shoot the magnificent Kong down. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. (Years later, the ending of Dr. Zhivago hit me similarly.)

In a way, I guess, to assure my post-Kong recovery, I became a nut about gorillas. I drew them all the time, entered a kid's art contest--and won--for a drawing I titled "King Kong Running At People". I asked my Dad, who was an editor at Associated Press, to bring me home anything and everything about gorillas. (In the pre-internet world, I was lucky that he could do for me what a Google news search does for everybody today.) I said I wanted to be a gorilla for Halloween, so my Dad brought home a gorilla costume. (It was actually, as even my First Grade eyes could tell, a kinda tacky knock off called "King Congo". But I pretended to love it, not wanting to hurt his feelings--I had actually been expecting a full gorilla suit.)

Then one day my Dad came home to say that he learned at work that the San Francisco Zoo was about to get two young gorillas. I had the gumption to ask if I could go in the cage and play with them after they arrived! Looking back, I'm surprised to this day that he took my request seriously. As it turned out, one of his friends was a fellow who was a photographer for both the AP and the zoo. This photographer talked to the zoo director and, incredibly enough, the director said yes!!

Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't be surprised that this wish was so swiftly granted; I was a quite gifted extortionist around that time. For example, before every birthday party I was invited to, I always talked my parents into buying me the same gift I was getting for a friend. Needless to say, my friends always received very good presents. Looking back, I'm surprised I wasn't extorting rent from neighborhood lemonade stands. (After becoming a parent and later as a teacher, I added bribery to my repertoire; Tony Soprano would be impressed by my resume.)

So, one bright Saturday morning, me, my Dad, my little sister, the man who bought the gorillas for the zoo, and the photographer who engineered this encounter entered the rear of the ape enclosure, behind the cages where the public viewed the apes. From inside a darkened cage, a full grown orangutan tried to grab my arm as we ventured toward the gorilla area. After we stepped into the gorilla cage--with a large crowd outside watching--the young gorillas, a boy and a girl named Bwana and Missy, came up to us. Interestingly, the two young gorillas were most interested in the two young people. The larger female, Missy, was very docile and affectionate. At one point she rested her head on my sister's shoulder.

The boy was another story. He was very excited and at one point playfully pushed me. But, since gorillas are 5 times stronger than humans, I went flying, and crashed into the opposite end of the cage. The crowed roared in laughter, which I didn't exactly appreciate. Bwana must have realized his mistake, because he didn't try playing with me like that again. Typical of his behavior that day, in the first picture he's hanging upside down from the top of the cage as I'm feeding him.

Bwana would eventually become a fully grown gorilla with a harem of three females, and one of the children he fathered was Koko. (Koko's Mom wasn't Missy, but another member of the harem named Jacqueline.) I would regularly visit the zoo until eventually moving to Colorado and then Reno. Whenever I'd visit I'd call out his name and when he looked back, I liked to think he remembered me. Certainly few--if any--children were let into his cage after that morning. In later years, he developed a familiar habit of resting his chin on his hands as he stared out at the crowds and was given a nickname--'the thinker'.