Knowing Jeannie by Gloria Grow

In 1981, the pharmaceutical company Merck Sharpe & Dohme sent Ch-562—Jean— to the Buckshire Corporation research facility. Seven years later Buckshire sent her to the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine in Primates. There Jeannie was subjected to years of research, including being inoculated with HIV and given continual vaginal washes and cervical biopsies. She had often been treated for self-inflicted wounds—a sign of severe stress. Following a 1995 experiment, Jeannie had a “nervous breakdown” No longer of use to research, for the next two years she had been left alone, heavily medicated, in her slightly less than 5' × 5' × 7' cage. The drugs had done little to prevent her from screaming continually, ripping her fingernails off, thrashing out of control, or huddling against the floor in the back of her cage. That is where I met her, sitting in a dark corner, looking more terrified than anyone else I had ever seen. Jeannie looked up at me with beautiful almond-shaped eyes that seemed to be pleading, “Will you help me?”

On a cold February day in 1997, in the middle of a New York winter rivaling Canada’s, I visited LEMSIP for the first time. I’ll never forget that initial visit: the echoing screams, clanging metal, pungent smells, and the faces of chimpanzees behind endless rows of bars broke my heart. I met chimps who had been captured in the wilds of Africa and thrown into that hellhole of a lab, youngsters and teenagers who had been born and raised in the barren lab, and older chimps who had known no reality but lab life. I had agreed to make a home for five LEMSIP chimpanzees; little did I know I was destined to take fifteen! While I did not meet Tom, Yoko, or Pepper on my first visit, I did meet the rest of the soon-to-be Fauna family of chimpanzees—Sue Ellen, Billy Jo, Pablo, Donna Rae, Annie, and the youngsters Rachel, Jethro, Regis, Binky, Chance, Petra, and Jeannie.

The youngsters were supposed to go to Florida’s Lion Country Safari because they were the “clean chimps,” the ones not yet infected, who still had the youthful appeal desired by those who planned to exhibit them. However, they were already troubled youngsters who had been born and raised in the lab without the benefit of adult chimpanzees to teach them the “ways of life” and, even at their young ages, had been used repeatedly in research and were showing signs of emotional stress.

From that first day, my life, and the lives of these chimpanzees, has never been the same. I feel profound love and respect toward every one of them and receive the same from them. It’s easy to fall in love with chimpanzees; they steal our hearts and give us theirs. When those who have been so abused forgive us, they humble us. I have wonderful and inspiring relationships with all the chimpanzees who live at Fauna and others I have spent time with over the years. So how did Jeannie come to live so deeply in my heart? I think that will be clear as I share more about what it was like the first time we met.

Escorted around the lab with two other people, I was unprepared for what I saw. We were told not to react or cry and not to mention the size of the cages. What I saw left me speechless and immobile. It was surreal and unbelievable, too cruel to be true. There was not one right thing about the way the chimpanzees were living. No one should ever have to live that way.

The buildings were long windowless trailers—white, sterile, and efficient. There were doors at either end with two rows of cages that were suspended off the ground to make cleaning easier. The chimps ate, slept, urinated, defecated, and were knocked down (shot with anesthesia-laced darts) in those small cages. Many babies were born in the cages, grew up in them, and were destined to die in them. The cages were their entire world, with only a rubber tire hanging in the middle from which to view the endless boredom of their days.

Covered in a Tyvek suit from head to toe, I approached the chimps. It was hard to feel like a real person behind such protective gear. I could see the terror and alarm in their faces. I saw a figure on the right—tall, slim, muscular, and hairless—that looked like a naked man in a cage. He was a chimpanzee, although he looked like a tragic crossbreed, human and yet so chimp-like. I was in shock, recognizing him as kin but reduced to something nature never intended. “Oh my God, what happened to you?” I asked. My question was answered with his screams, an honest answer to that question about his desperate condition. His name was Melilot, and his life in research had left him looking like this. Born in the wild, Melilot had been caught in Sierra Leone and lived alone in his tiny cell for more than thirty years. Separated from all physical contact, Melilot had no one to touch him, groom him, or hug him when he was scared or alone. He was completely pale because he had been deprived of sunlight. Melilot had pulled out every single hair on his body, one by one, day after day, year after year until all that was left was his primal naked body, his man self. Of even greater disgust to me was that this dear soul had been given the nickname “Melilot Smells a Lot.”

The intensity of the chimpanzees’ screaming and banging was unbearable. Suddenly, all hell broke loose. I wanted to run. The cages were shaking and rocking. Many chimpanzees were spitting large mouthfuls of water. As the other people in my visitor’s group walked away, I walked in, ignoring the chimps’ fear and anger. I stood motionless at the door, feeling that to do so was better for them and for me. When I realized that we were the cause of this chaotic reaction, I backed up. I felt sad and embarrassed to be a human, part of a species that threatened and controlled these powerful beings. In the cage closest to me, a chimpanzee was spinning and banging herself against its steel bars, sending piercing sounds that reverberated throughout the building, shaking her cage and all the others in the long row. She was defecating. Saliva was spewing out of her mouth. Her eyes were rolling back in her head as she continued to spin. I felt like I was in hell—which was most certainly what she felt, too. That was how I met Jeannie: alone in her living hell.