Project Nim Page #5

I felt that Nim had progressed a lot,

and we hadn't had the chance

to really analyse our data.

I just knew that we had reams of data.

This whole mass of data

that needed to be organised,

and that was going to be

a long and tedious process.

The fundamental question was,

"Can a chimpanzee create a sentence?"

I don't think I had

any definitive conclusions to that.

We had to wait and see.

It's kind of like

you're almost there

and you feel like

there's going to be a conclusion,

and it's like, "Okay,

"it's over. "

I thought that the surroundings

in which he was born

would provide

the most psychological support for Nim.

I felt the basic needs would be

taken care of.

So, once I got Bill Lemmon to agree

to take him back,

that was it.

I hope he'll be okay.

That's why I want to go with him.

I hope that I'll be able to

introduce him to his new life

but still have an old part of his life

with him, namely me.

And he can get used to it

and I can fade out and he'll be fine.

It won't just be an abrupt break

between old and new.

And we get Nim up early

one morning,

he gets a shot and he's out.

I chartered a plane

and hired a pilot.

Nim was given tranquillisers

to reduce the possibility of

his getting out of hand.

If he was tranquillised,

he'd be easier to control

and not do any damage to the plane,

which could be quite dangerous.

So that's how we get him

to Oklahoma.

It was just a nasty thing to do.

Very deceitful, I think.

The question is,

what was going to happen in Oklahoma?

And I didn't have any sense of that,

so, that was my concern.

"Holy sh*t"

was my first thought.

And I think his reaction was

"holy sh*t" too.

Like he knew we were...

He knew it was bad.

He'd never seen a chimp before,

and he was holding on tight.

You look around, you see cages

and you hear the sounds

of a lot of chimpanzees.

Would I have envisioned this,

when I started on this project,

that he ever would end up there? No.

It turned out to be

a surprisingly more primitive facility

than I remembered.

Because our cages were cages.

They weren't just a room

with a locked door,

they were cages.

I mean, it looked like a prison.

A really stark, ugly, dark, dank prison.

They had a chain

around their neck with a lock.

Should you get into a bad fight,

you could grab the chain

and keep them off of you.

It was like prison behaviour.

We had to put up an electric fence

around the island

because we had had several murders

and two suicides.

They'd just push them out

into the water,

and chimps can't swim.

Dr Lemmon ran the place.

I had an immediate horrible reaction.

He walked around with a cattle prod.

I remember trying to push Nim away,

because I knew what he was gonna do.

And Nim is screaming

and holding on to me very tightly,

and the only reason he let go

was because he got zapped

with the electric prod.

Come here a minute. Mac, come here.

Mac, come here.

Come here, come here.

The reasoning behind

the whole Mac-Nim interaction

was that Mac was not dangerous.

He was small, so he was

not an aggressive, dominant chimp,

so he was the perfect one

for Nim to start with.

Hey, Mac, uh-uh! Buh!

How did you expect

Nim to react

to his first meeting with another chimp?

I think what happened was that

Nim was very apprehensive about Mac

and he took his time

and then when he was ready,

he and Mac got it off.

I feel very good about this,

because I can leave now

knowing that Nim has a friend

and he's going to worry less about

his human companions

and have at least one other chimp

to turn to.

It was time to leave,

and that's when I took Nim

and put him in the cage.

Sure, I didn't want joyce doing it,

so I just said,

"Well, I better go do it. "

I didn't want Terrace doing it.

So, I just decided I was gonna do it.

You know, we coaxed him

down there and then,

because he trusted us...

I just led him in there

and took the lead

and tied it around

the far end of the cage

and said goodbye and walked out

and shut the door.

He was sort of hooting

and trying to come after me,

'cause he didn't really know

where he was.

But I just walked away.

And then when he wasn't looking,

he ran out,

out the door.

I did feel badly.

I felt in a certain basic sense

that was not the right thing to do

to somebody, you know, who had

been part of my life for so many years,

and that I was definitely doing

something that he somehow

would feel was unjust or wrong.

He had a little doll or something

that I think I left.

I strongly believe that

we made a commitment to him

and we failed.

We did a huge disservice to that soul,

and shame on us.

Assumed, I guess wrongly,

that Nim was going to come back

and he was going to be celebrated

in the sense that he was going to be

the great signing chimp.

No, exactly the opposite.

Exactly the opposite.

Nim, in the cage,

no special treatment, no yogurt,

no granola,

no... None of that.

It was pretty traumatic for the chimp.

They curl up

and lay down.

They lose interest in food. They just...

It was a bad start with Nim and I.

The chimp is very upset.

And he just looks at me

and he jumps and lunges at me

and bites through an artery

right in here.

I did use a small shock stick.

He had to grow up

and not be a single, spoiled child

any more.

So, you got to socialise,

work on his "chimpanzee"

and manners.

Everybody needs a job.

Meaning and purpose.

I had them out,

they would help me in the big kitchen

where we prepped our food

and did stuff, they'd sweep...

Nim was a compulsive hand washer,

he'd do dishes.

Vanessa liked to dust,

little Mac liked to clean cages

and wear my boots.

This was a special group of chimps.

They weren't ordinary chimps.

You know, they had the capacity

for higher consciousness.

Terrace came back a year later.

Herb arrived with

still photographers and cameras

and that sort of thing.

It was a shoot

and it was arranged as such.

There was no question

that he was very happy

that he could see me again.

There was no anger that,

"Why did you leave me here?"

It was just, "Hey, that's great.

I wanna see him again. "

You could see that he was like,

"Holy sh*t, I'm going back to New York!"

It was like that.

Like he was going to be rescued.

It was kind of sad.

I played with him,

we got into games of signing.

I remember I got him to sign "hug".

I got him to sign "Herb".

In fact, I could get almost any sign

out of him.

I didn't have to go through a drill.

So, it was a very entertaining,

comfortable afternoon.

No bad behaviour of any kind.

At the end of the day,

looks at his watch,

gives me Nim back,

and flies off.

And is gone.

Next morning he barely ate.

He just started to crater.

Herb never came back.

I thought,

"I'm going to become Nim's friend,

"and I'm going to hang with Nim

and we'll see what happens. "

I mean, there wasn't much I could do

for him in terms of the cage,

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