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[Jack Szwergold <jack AT royaljournal.com>]

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Trek ends for 'space chimps'

By Maya Bell
Miami Bureau

July 19, 2001

FORT PIERCE -- It¹s suppertime at the ol¹ rest home and the new residents
are giddy with joy. They whoop. They clap. They shiver the timbers of their
cages.

So far, the space chimps are enjoying their Florida retirement.

One by one, they reach for the tossed salad, fresh plums, pineapple slices
and an experiment -- "strawberry surprise" -- that primatologist Carole Noon
delivers to the pastel buildings in
Florida¹s newest chimp sanctuary.

Dana, one of the original 65 baby chimpanzees captured in Africa decades ago
for the nation¹s space program, isn¹t fooled by the surprise in her paper
cup. Inspecting the contents, she
picks broccoli out of the strawberries, sucks the florets dry, then spits
them out.

"They¹re not so keen on raw broccoli," Noon says, "so we tried cooked
broccoli this time."

For the first 21 inhabitants of the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care, the
experiments are far different from the ones for which they or their
ancestors were conscripted into the U.S. Air
Force. In essence, they¹re learning to be chimps all over again -- or for
the first time.

Slowly but surely, they¹ve started to groom, bond, play, squabble, and
reconcile. Their human caretakers at the isolated sanctuary nestled among
the orange groves of western St. Lucie
County aren¹t teaching them how. As Noon says, they¹re "just giving them a
room at the inn" and making "educated guesses about whom to introduce to
whom."

"They do all the rest," said Noon, who learned the tricks of her trade from
legendary primatologist Jane Goodall. "The amazing thing about chimps is
they can have the most horrible,
awful lives, yet once you give them a chance, they recover. I can¹t explain
it. All I know is they recover."

Indeed, their long journey to retirement, made during the past few months,
didn¹t seem to faze them a bit. And why should it? The tedious,
cross-country drive from a medical lab in New
Mexico was a jaunt in the park compared to what they¹ve been through.

7 were captured in Africa

Seven of the chimps, including Dana, now 39, were snatched from their
mothers in Africa, shipped across the ocean and pressed into rigorous Air
Force training. They whirled in
centrifuges, squeezed into compression chambers and tested the limits of
endurance in zero gravity.

They did their adopted country proud, going where no man had gone before. It
was only after two of the conscripts, both of whom are now dead, were shot
into space that Mercury
astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn followed.

The astronauts got ticker-tape parades. The astrochimps got new "hazardous
mission" assignments -- such as testing seat belts. They were strapped onto
deceleration sleds like crash-test
dummies and hurtled down railroad tracks. Their offspring, including the
other 14 newcomers at the center, were consigned to the same life.

No longer in need of their services, the Air Force began leasing its chimp
colony to medical labs in the 1970s. Then, in 1997, Air Force officials
decided to rid themselves of the colony
altogether. Declaring the chimps "surplus" inventory, they offered them up
for bid.

Air Force officials didn¹t care whether their charges went into retirement
or research, but wanted them in a facility. Noon didn¹t have one, so more
than a hundred of the chimps were
awarded to the Couston Foundation, a toxicology lab in New Mexico that uses
chimps in AIDS and hepatitis experiments.

A no-nonsense woman with intense blue eyes and bug-bitten arms, Noon was
appalled. She thinks captive chimps deserve better. Recruiting Goodall and
other noted primatologists to
serve on her board, Noon sued the Air Force for custody, all the while
raising almost $2 million to buy 150 treeless acres west of Fort Pierce and
build an island dotted with hills, jungle
gyms and two chimp houses.

After a yearlong court battle, Noon won custody of 21 of the Couston chimps,
seven of whom were in the Air Force¹s original colony. Now she delights in
keeping them occupied.

In the wild, chimps spend their days foraging and feeding. That means
captives are unemployed and bored. So Noon and her staff of five spend their
days stuffing raisins into holes drilled
into plastic bricks or mashing bananas over boards covered with artificial
turf -- just so the chimps can spend their time picking every last particle
out.

Chimp happiness is her pursuit

The "enrichments" will become more natural when the chimps move to the
island, but "trying to keep them happy will never end."

That¹s because she also knows this: They¹ll never be wild or free. They¹ll
never be reunited with their families or have their own children. The males
will get vasectomies.

"In my utopia, they¹d be allowed to breed and have babies and families, but
you can¹t do that on a small island, where each baby is another 50 years of
commitment," she said. "A
sanctuary¹s goal should be to go out of business solving problems created by
someone else. Not creating new ones."

Maya Bell can be reached at mbell AT sunsentinel.com or 305-810-5003.

-- 
Jack Szwergold | jack AT royaljournal.com
Royal Journal | http://www.royaljournal.com/