Koko's Kitten

i just read Koko's Kitten, about a gorilla who has a pet kitten.  i am now unsettled on many levels.

*spoiler alert*

when Koko asks (in sign language) for a kitten for Christmas, her keeper gets her a sturdy toy cat.  Koko flips. 
"'That red,' she signed. 
Koko often uses the word red to express anger.  Koko was very upset.  She started running back and forth, banging on her walls.  She was doing display charges past me.  They were angry, angry charges."

hello!  this keeper is in major danger!  don't we all know how crazy monkeys are, chimps eating the feet and faces of people who raised them!  

***

Koko's kitten, All Ball, gets hit by a car and dies instantly.  the keeper tells Koko. 
"Koko did not respond.  I thought she didn't understand, so I left the trailer.
Ten minutes later, I heard Koko cry.  It was her distress call--a loud, long series of high-pitched hoots. 
I cried, too."

i sort of cried too (not really). 

***

Koko is pretty amazing, communicating on a very high level about growing older on her birthday, patience when All Ball bites her or won't play her games, bereavement. 

what is the difference between intelligence, emotion, and a soul? 

this always scares the CRAP out of me because of a junior novel i stumbled upon called Eva about a girl in the future who gets hit by a car and they transplant her mind and nervous system into a monkey's body and the monkey instincts call to her and at the end of the book she's a chimp matriarch in the jungle in heat.  i do not like that kind of thing. 


[here is an example of the bad communication/talking past each other jared + i have been experiencing this Martin Luther King Day.]

me: monkeys scare the crap out of me! 
jared:  they are primates.