The Nature of the Beast (according to Susan McCarthy)

When You Come Between a Woman and Her Rock

I was shocked to hear that one of the two alligators at the Academy of Sciences had bitten the other alligator so badly that he would lose a toe.

Actually, I wasn't shocked. No one was shocked. Alligators are bitey. And it even looks as if Claude, the wounded party, will get to keep the toe. But I did want to know the details. Fortunately the San Francisco Chronicle sent justly-famous science editor David Perlman to get the full story.

The California Academy of Sciences (in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco) which includes the Steinhart Aquarium, has a fancy new building. An alligator pond on the ground floor houses Bonnie and Claude. Bonnie is a standard American alligator, blackish, toothy, and seven feet long (Alligator mississippiensis). She's what biologists call the “wild type.” Claude, however, is an albino, one of those genetically variant animals zoos love to exhibit. They're from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, which supplies albino and wild type gators to the trade.

An albino alligator is the reptile version of a white tiger. Although the recent news that the iguanas of the Galápagos include a previously unrecognized species, the “pink iguana” (no final scientific name yet), makes me think that zoos will soon clamor for the glamor of pink. Pink lizards might be a bigger draw than white gators. 

In the pond where Bonnie and Claude live,  there is a delightful heated rock. They love to bask on it, and there should be room for two. But the other day Bonnie was relaxing there when Claude swam up. Trying to get on the rock, he bumped Bonnie. She bit him on what the aquarium curator, no doubt seeking to provide accessible knowledge to the public, calls the “right pinkie toe.” He didn't want to dazzle us with intimidating talk of a "distal phalanx," I guess. But we, the gator-data-consuming public, don't need to be talked down to, and we demand more precise information. Which right pinkie toe? The bite was on a front foot, a forefoot. That makes it a foretoe. Right pinkie foretoe. Already we know more. Wait, he's a water creature, let's use nautical terminology. Starboard pinkie foretoe!

At the aquarium they hauled Claude out with a crane, and wheeled him down to the basement for X-rays, antibiotics, and a three-week stay in medical custody. He is a star, who will receive the highest level of care. No doubt they will give him the standard medical forms to fill out. This should give him a chance to decide whether to list Bonnie as the individual to be notified in case of an emergency.

Albino animals often have impairments in vision. They're white because they lack the pigment melanin in their skin. They also lack pigment in their eyes, and as a result they have bad eyesight. Claude is said to be nearly blind. This explains a lot. He could not see Bonnie, and could not see that she was giving him A Look. (I feel sure of this.) Poor blind fool missed that warning sign and his starboard pinkie foretoe paid the price.

A Bird for Each Shoulder

Sometimes people get sentimental about the nobility of animals. But it depends on the animal. Perhaps you saw the story of Yosuke, a pet African Grey parrot in Japan. One day he got out. As parrots do, he flew around for a few days and a few miles before landing and seeking human help. (“Free! I'm free! I can go anywhere I want! I fly, I soar! -- Hey, where am I? Where is everybody? Where's lunch? Oh no! Lost! I'm lost!)

The police picked up the bird, and an officer tried to chat, but the parrot wouldn't speak. He was deposited at a vet clinic, and after a while he opened up. “I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” he confided. He gave his address. The vet told the police, who found that yes, there was a Nakamura family at that address who had lost their bird. They said they'd been drilling Yosuke for two years on how to ID himself. (Smart. I never even thought of teaching my cockatiel, “I'm Ms. Beak-of-Steel McCarthy.”)

Mr. Nakamura contrasts with the last talking bird I read about in the news, a blue-and-gold macaw at a wildlife sanctuary in Warwickshire. Barney, formerly a lorry-driver's pet, is a classically foul-mouthed parrot who is no longer allowed to meet the public after telling “the local mayoress to f*** off.” He cursed some children. He cursed the vicar. Like Yosuke, he doesn't trust law enforcement, and told two police officers, “You can f*** off too, w******!”

Those asterisks were in the original. I am a simple natural history buff and can only guess what they stand for.

Two African Greys at the sanctuary have picked up these effective phrases from Barney. The Daily Mail reported that sanctuary owner Geoff Grewcock says the three birds sit around swearing. “It sounds like a builder's yard, with all the abuse flying about.” A fourth bird, Sunny, shrieks “Shut up!” when the cursing starts, but they ignore him.

According to the Sun, Grewcock hopes to clean up Barney's conversation by making him listen to documentaries and “posh Radio 4.” As a simple American, I can't even guess what that means Barney will be saying next.

The contrast between nasty rowdy Barney and articulate well-informed Mr. Yosuke Nakamura reminds me of a dog encounter I witnessed. On Market Street in San Francisco, a woman with a white cane was led along the sidewalk by a guide dog, a golden lab. They were near the curb when a pickup truck pulled up at a red light. Two dogs in the back of the truck glanced down, saw a dog below, and instantly began barking loudly. (“Hey! A******! Get away from our truck! Back off, flea-bus!”)

The startled guide dog, suddenly assaulted by hostile sound from above, shrank in terror. The woman with the cane knelt and put her arms around him as the dogs in the truck kept yelling. The driver of the truck looked back, saw what her dogs were doing, and started frantically banging on the back window, yelling at them to stop. Her dogs, encouraged that she was joining the ruckus, barked even harder. (They could have used a bird like Barney to ride shotgun.) Finally the light changed and the truck drove away.

The hard-working guide dog, who had devoted his life to service, stood on the sidewalk trembling. The idlers in the truck, loudmouth jerks who threatened others for the fun of it, zoomed off into the West, probably congratulating each other on effective pack-work and flinging beer bottles into the gutters.

It was a moral scene suitable for a Hogarth engraving. (Okay, I know, like I spend so much time looking at engravings. It would be perfect for Goofus and Gallant.)

What Shall I Do with These Opposable Thumbs?

A few years ago, Terri Nelson and I went to the San Francisco Zoo, and came upon the Nocturnal Gallery. This is closed now, but it was a little building with glass-fronted cages with small primates. It was dark inside, with double doors so people entering  wouldn't let in daylight. There were dim red lights. If you waited long enough, your eyes would adjust and you could dimly see small nocturnal animals hustling along tree branches, sorting leaf litter, and grooming each other. Most people didn't take the time, and went out again. We were alone with tiny primates.

Terri and I were spellbound. Bushbabies! Then we saw the mouse lemurs, infinitesimal primates you could hold in the palm of your hand, if it were allowed. We felt compelled to peer at them in case there was a still smaller baby mouse lemur clinging to its mother.

Then we spotted the aye-ayes, and were stunned with delight. Aye-ayes are rare and endangered, five and a half pounds of nocturnal weirdness from Madagascar. Few zoos have them. Aye-ayes eat grubs that burrow in decayed wood, so they fill the ecological niche of a woodpecker. (A big woodpecker. Given their size and rarity, let's say an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.) They have opposable thumbs and skinny witchy fingers, especially their middle fingers, which are ridiculously long, Edward Scissorhands long. In the Malagasy night, they tap on trees, listening with big bat ears for hollow sounds, and for a grub squirming. Then they bite a hole in the wood and pull the nutritious and no doubt tasty grub out with that long middle finger.*

In the dimness of the nocturnal house we could see the aye-ayes parading along horizontal branches, making daring leaps from one branch to branch, and pausing so we could drink in the spectacle of their crazy staring eyes, their disheveled fur, and those bizarre hands. They popped in and out of a wooden nestbox.

We had been looking silently for a long time, bewitched, when we saw a quick flash in the enclosure. It was a red bar of light that appeared for a second and then was gone. It came again. “Did you see that?” “Yes -- what was it?” We stared. Nothing. Then, again, from a different spot. We couldn't figure it out. Were there lights in the enclosure with the aye-ayes? Some kind of motion detectors? It flashed from a different spot. Then, gone.

It flashed twice, in the same spot. We peered and suddenly saw an aye-aye sitting on a branch. Facing us. Brandishing a large wrench.

“Do you see that?!” one of us asked in disbelief, and the other one hissed, “Yes.”

When the wrench was tilted toward a red light, it reflected a red bar of light from the handle. The flashes from different places must have come as the aye-aye paraded around with the wrench. The aye-aye manipulated the wrench thoughtfully, then jumped up and disappeared into the nestbox. When it came out, it had no wrench.

We tried to figure it out. When one of the cages was being repaired, someone had left a wrench lying around. The aye-ayes had stolen it. They were hiding it in the nestbox. Clearly they planned a break-out. “They plan to use it to unbolt something and escape,” I hazarded. Terri showed a better understanding of basic primate thinking. “They plan to hit the zookeeper on the head with it and escape,” she said.

*There are no woodpeckers in Madagascar. Feel free to use this remark the next time conversation falters.