Unspoken

Chapter One ;I am writing this under duress. ; My brother the lawyer says duress is the wrong word, because it implies threats or illegal coercion, and he hasn't exactly put a gun to my head and forced me to sit at the computer. He has, however, suggested that the act of recording the events of the last few months might help them form a cohesive whole and make sense. I'm not sure they can ever be understood in terms of human reason. ; I am certain of one thing-after reading this, my academic colleagues will have a riotous laugh at my expense and consign these pages to the recycle bin. Some will fly to their computers and fire off scathing rebuttals to Scientific American and Anthropology; others will send snide e-mails to researchers on the other side of the globe, complete with smirky emoticons and flocks of exclamation points. People I have spent years hoping to impress will spread vicious gossip about me for a few weeks, then wipe my work from their conversations with the same disdain with which they wipe their soiled shoes. ; Crackpot. Pretender. Glorified zookeeper-they'll call me those names plus a few unprintable variations. They'll accuse me of anthropomorphism, hypocrisy, and religious zealotry. They'll petition the university to deny me the PhD for which I've sacrificed every semblance of a normal life over the last several years. ; As I said, I'm writing under duress. ; Psychologists claim that the act of dressing events, feelings, and realizations in words can prove therapeutic-perhaps it will. I may be different by the time I complete this memoir . . . I know I am greatly changed from the woman I was a few months ago. ; All I can ask of you, skeptical reader, is a measure of trust. I would not lie about a story guaranteed to ruin my reputation. I'm a strong believer in objectivity, empirical facts, and pragmatic systems. I've been trained to record demonstrable data, not whim, fancies, or fleeting thoughts. I am, above all, a scientist. ; Those are only a few of the reasons why I've resisted the urge to record this story. I'm not sure I can put the experience into words . . . ; My brother Rob says I have found my starting point-words. Sema, the western lowland gorilla entrusted to my care eight years ago, was fascinated by words. Like Helen Keller, whose intellect caught fire when she connected the water flowing over her right palm with the sign Annie Sullivan was pressing onto her left, Sema fell in love with words the day I taught her to ask for more by bringing the fingertips of her hands together. Do you want more oatmeal? Ask for more. Do you want more juice? Sign more. Yes, the watermelon is delicious. And you can have more if you ask with the sign. ; Critics of animal language studies often claim that primates are merely engaged in mimicry when they speak with whatever means we've taught them, but I saw a spark of comprehension in Sema's button brown eyes that afternoon. She began signing more for every desire-more food, more drink, more hugs and kisses. ; At the beginning of my study, she was a five-month-old bundle of black fur, an uncoordinated but playful infant. By the time of our first language lesson, she had mastered a teetering version of a knuckle-walk, but she did not walk bipedally unless she could follow in my footsteps and grip the hem of my lab coat. Just like free-living gorilla infants who follow their mothers and hold tight to their rump hairs, Sema tottered behind me and grinned in self-congratulation. ; Even after the passing of eight years, she still enjoyed clinging to the back of my lab coat-though by then she did it not out of necessity but affection. ; And she coHunt, Angela Elwell is the author of 'Unspoken', published 2005 under ISBN 9780849944826 and ISBN 0849944821.