Bonobo Handshake by Vanessa Woods

Author:Vanessa Woods
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-30T10:00:00+00:00

MAX IS IN THE TESTING ROOM. He is the perfect male model, his luxurious hair fans out in all directions. He shakes his locks when he sees me.

Yes, his eyes tell me, his eyebrows raised at a devilish slant. I am gorgeous.

I offer him a piece of apple the size of a pea. He daintily takes it from me and spends five minutes eating it. He shakes his hair again and gives me his own version of Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel: one shoulder slightly forward, lips puckered, cheeks sucked in, and eyes squinted just a little, as though a wind is blowing in his direction.

“Max,” I say, “have you ever wondered if there was more to life than being really really ridiculously good-looking?”

He takes a deep breath and exhales sharply. I am frustrating him with such a stupid question.

I present him with a photo of Tatango and a photo of Joey, a bonobo in Leipzig. Max stares at the photos thoughtfully, then touches Tatango. After a moment, he touches Joey.

“Touches Tata first,” I say for the camera. Brian makes a note.

Then I show Max a photo of two chimpanzees, one in Leipzig, one in Oleti. Max looks at the chimps and freaks out.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeek.”

It’s a high, rasping sound, the sound only Max can make, and only when he has just seen something disgusting.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeek.”

Max refuses to touch the photos, goes to the back of the room, and stares at me in outrage. He spent time next to chimps for several months before he came to Lola. Apparently his memories are not happy ones.

“Come on, Max, it’s just a photo. It’s not even a real chimp.” After twenty minutes of pleading and cajoling, it becomes clear that Max will no longer be participating. Since the tests are voluntary, we give up and let him out to the forest. As he walks past me to get to the door, he narrows his eyes at me. I have played a dirty trick on him and he doesn’t appreciate it.

Next is Isiro, who walks in and starts checking the locks. This is typical of her, and we have to factor an extra ten minutes into every test because she absolutely will not do anything until she has double-checked all the locks. It’s not that she wants to get out and run amok. Isiro is smart enough to break out every day if she wants to. She is just confirming we are doing our job properly. That we are following the health and safety protocol and not getting sloppy. She rattles each one and tries to pick a couple with a piece of straw. Only when she is satisfied that we have locked each and every padlock will she settle down to do the test.

She doesn’t react to the chimp photos as Max did, but she spends less time on them than on the bonobo photos. When she gets to Mikeno’s photo, she tries to pull it between the bars into the room with her. I wrestle it from her.

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