Friends would agree, I'm sure, that I am a bit eccentric...how many women sit down and write histories of the condom, after all?? But, my book is not about rubber and latex, it's about human nature, about making connections. John Muir said that when we try to separate one thing in nature from another, we simply can't do it, as it is all one.
When my daughter and I visited a wonderful place called Monkey World yesterday, I kept thinking about that wonderful - and yes, many thought, eccentric - man, especially as those lovely, plaintive faces of macques, chimps, and Orangutans (meaning 'man of the jungle, I believe) looked back at me...most of them are "saves" from animal testing facilities around the world, but a few came from the wild, where there parents and their habitats are being slaughtered...for what? Farming plots that don't last because the soil is all wrong, out of horrendous cruelty (some call it sport!), and more, but the bottom line is the same: we are screwing up the planet for self gain, and at what a cost!!
And then, looking around at the people, looking around at the monkeys, with kids and adults sucking down coke in plastic bottles, smoking ciggies, shoving crisps in their mouths, I wondered who actually belonged in the cages! These magnificent creatures - the lucky ones, some would say - essentially are going away, in pain and terror, so that we can suck up their space...too many people, too little arrible land. So how come animals don't, as my mother used to say, poo on their own doorsteps the way people do?? Yet, we do and it's those animals, who are a part of us, who suffer.
Adopt a monkey through the link to Monkey World Link in the links page...
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