Sharing the African forest with the gorilla is the chimpanzee. Many people say they cannot see any difference between these two apes, but if you look at the portrait of N’pongo and compare it with the portrait of the chimpanzee, I think you will be able to see what a great difference there is between them. Our chimpanzees are called Chumley and Lulu, and they are both great characters. I have known Chumley since he was a tiny baby, for I got him in West Africa when I was out there on an animal collecting expedition two or three years ago, and. when we returned to England, I kept him in the house for a long time and brought him up exactly as you would a human baby. His real name is Cholmondeley St. John.
Like N’pongo, the gorilla, Chumley very soon settled down in the house, and was soon carrying on as if he owned it. At mealtimes he would sit up at the table with us, on his own chair, with his own plate of food and mug of milk. As soon as he sat down to a meal he would take a hasty glance round the table to make sure that we had no tidbits on our plates that he didn’t have, and then he would settle down to his meal with little hooting noises of pleasure.
At that time I had a motorbike and sidecar, and Chumley loved to go for rides in it. He would sit in the sidecar, looking very aristocratic, and behaved very well, except that occasionally he would lean over the side and try to grab a cyclist when we passed one.
The cyclist, when he saw a chimpanzee leaning out of a sidecar and trying to grab his ankle, was generally so surprised that he would wobble about all over the road and usually end up in the ditch, and I would have to stop the motorbike and apologize. The first time I drove down to the garage to fill up with gasoline Chumley was fascinated, and watched carefully while I unscrewed the cap to the gas tank, and the garageman inserted the hose and pumped the gas into the tank. Chumley wanted to drink a little gas to see what it was like, but I could not allow that. About ten days later, we had to go to the garage again for more gas, and, to my surprise, Chumley, as soon as we got there, jumped out of the sidecar onto the saddle and started to try to unscrew the cap. He knew what we had come for, and he had remembered which part of the motorbike had to be unscrewed. I thought this was very clever of him.
One day, when we were driving in the country, we rounded a corner and came upon a large herd of cows that were being driven along the road from one meadow to another. Now, Chumley had seen cows before, but only in the distance, and suddenly to round a
Gorilla
corner like this and meet a whole herd of them was too much for him. He took one look at them, uttered a piercing shriek, leaped out of the sidecar onto my chest and wrapped his arms tightly round my neck. Now, it is extremely difficult to drive a motorbike successfully when you have a twenty-pound chimpanzee hanging round your neck and screaming in your ear. I had not expected Chumley to behave in this fashion, and I was so surprised that I drove the motorbike straight into the hedge. Luckily we were going very slowly because of the cows; otherwise we might both have been killed. We had to sit there in the hedge, while the cows passed us, Chumley clutching me tightly round the chest and hiding his face in my coat so that he would not see the fearsome monsters.
Chumley loved to play games, and, like N’pongo, he made up several of his own. He loved to be chased, for example, and he would do something to make you chase him if you were not feeling in the mood for a game. With my mother, for example, he would creep up on her when she was knitting, and then suddenly grab her ball of wool and rush across the room with it and swarm up the curtains, so that she could not reach him. If 1 was reading a book and taking no notice of him he would again creep up very softly, and then suddenly slam the book shut* He would then take to his heels and gallop round and round the sofa, giggling loudly as I chased him. Sometimes, when it was a rainy day and he could not go out in the garden to play in the apple trees, I would fill the wash basin full of warm water, and give him a piece of soap and a wash cloth, and he would perch himself on the edge of the basin, and with a very solemn expression, like a scientist performing a difficult experiment, he would lather the cloth and wash his hands. Sometimes he would sit there for an hour or so, first washing his hands, and then washing the cloth. Then, one day, I bought him a small plastic duck, and he thought this was wonderful He would first of all work up a good lather on the surface of the water, and then carefully float his duck in it. Then slowly, and with great care, he would push the duck down under the water to the bottom of the basin, and suddenly let it pop up to the surface of the water again. Then came the awful day when he chewed the duck by mistake and made a hole in it. So, when he put it on the surface of the water, the duck sank to the bottom, bubbling dismally. Chumley could not understand this, and spent half an hour trying to get his duck to float. In the end he decided that the duck was just being awkward, and so in his annoyance, to teach it a lesson, he put it on the floor and stamped on it. This, of course, squashed the duck flat, and we had to throw it away and buy him a new one.
Chimpanzees
When Chumley grew older and we put him in his cage in the zoo, we got Lulu as a wife for him. Lulu is a very quiet, sweet- natured chimpanzee, whereas Chumley has always been rowdy and boisterous. When they were first introduced to each other, although Chumley loved Lulu at first sight, he soon learned that she was too nice-natured to hurt him. And he started to tease her. If she found a special tidbit, Chumley would creep up on her and snatch it away; if Lulu found something to play with, Chumley would snatch that away too. It was not really because he wanted the plaything or the tidbit, but simply that he wanted to tease Lulu. Instead of teasing him back, or boxing his ears, Lulu would just sit there and scream. This went on for so long, with the teasing getting worse and worse, that we began to think we would have to move Lulu out of the cage and get another female chimpanzee, one of stronger character who would stand no nonsense from Chumley. But one day something happened that changed the whole thing. Every morning Chumley and Lulu had their fruit given to them in a great big metal bowl.
The first thing Chumley always did was to empty all the fruit out on to the ground, and then pick out ail the best bits for himself. While he was doing this Lulu would play with the bowl, sometimes sitting in it, sometimes wearing it like a hat. This particular morning Chumley finished picking out the best fruit, and seeing Lulu enjoying herself with the bowl, decided to tease her; he ran across the cage to take the bowl away from her. Lulu was just balancing the bowl on her head, and when she saw Chumley running toward her she got such a fright that she threw the bowl at him. Quite by chance it hit him on the head. Chumley was astonished, for he thought that Lulu had meant to hit him, and being a coward he didn’t like that.
He screamed loudly and rushed to the far end of the cage and sat down, rubbing his head. Lulu was also astonished, and she picked up the bowl and started across the cage toward Chumley, meaning to comfort him. But Chumley, seeing her coming with the bowl, thought she was going to give him another bash on the head, and he ran away from her, still screaming. Lulu sat down and thought about it, and she suddenly realized that if she stood up to Chumley he would not be so keen to tease her in the future. So now we have no more trouble. If Chumley tries to tease her, she picks up the nearest thing and hits him with it. Chumley has been taught some manners at last.
One of the most peculiar-looking and highly colored members of the monkey family is the mandrill. The one we have is called Frisky, because when he arrived he spent all his time skipping about the cage, and twirling round and round, as if he was dancing. Mandrills have an extraordinary coloring, with their blue and scarlet behinds, and their blue and red faces, with the strange tire-like ridges on the nose. In the wild state they are monkeys that live mainly on the ground (though they can climb trees if they want to) and they travel through the African forest in great herds. The fully grown males are very powerful creatures, and even a leopard will think twice about tackling one.