The Little Rock Zoo

.The Little Rock Zoo needs to step up and care for the animals better! Please read the several artciles here with deaths, sickness and a bald chimp!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Orangutan Janey Used to Live With Tom Jones

Janey likes to see what's inside. Sit quietly on the ledge and open your bag. Rifle around a bit like you've lost your keys, find them, take them out, change your mind and look again. Maybe take out some Chapstick and put it on. In a moment, Janey will come to see.

Janey used to live with the Vegas singer, Tom Jones. It's not unusual..or maybe it is. As the story goes she was with him for 20 years and landed in the San Diego zoo on some sort of immigration issue. That was 20 years ago, and might account for her interest in humans and our vanities.


In her eyes you find unexpected warmth, a maternal gentleness, a flicker of amusement. When one of her fellow orangutans gave birth, Janey acted as the middle of the night midwife. Her own birth was in the Borneo forest. Does Janey recall her mother's death as we file past the glass? Probably not, or perhaps only in shadowy dreams. A smell, a scream, falling, crushed leaves.

No comments:

Post a Comment