Lola Ya Bonobo

Category: bonobos | Date: Mar 27 2008 | By: admin

Thank you everyone, for your kind words, they have made me teary all over again and I have sent them to Claudine. Brian and I are just witnesses, like you. We go to Lola once or twice a year to study bonobos and learn about them. It’s the staff who need your messages, Mama Yvonne and Henriette who nursed Malou through her terrible arrival and two operations, and Jean Claude and Amos, the guardians of group three who watched over her with the other juveniles.  I will translate your words into French and send them to the sanctuary. Also Claudine, who has an extra halo and pair of wings in my eyes every time something like this happens. I couldn’t do what she does, I just don’t have the strength.

All we know about Malou’s death is that she was very sick on Tuesday. Crispin, the vet, called Michel, a French vet in Germany frantically to see if Michel could help. But by the next morning Malou had died.

Brian spoke to Crispin yesterday who said the staff are all very sad. I know all of them have a thousand stories of Malou that would break your heart, but I’m going to share one of mine that is a precious memory and at the same time a confession.

Brian was totally in love with her. I don’t think it was quite reciprocated - Malou was a little flirt with all young men, Michel the French vet was also one of her favourites. But every  time Brian came up to the nursery she would run up to him, climb into his arms and start bouncing. And he would throw her in the air, as high as he could, and she would be squirming and laughing hysterically. When he caught her, she would still be laughing, and she would bounce up and down until he threw her again.

Being very possessive over her beaus, if I came anywhere near Brian in the nursery, Malou would slap me. Seriously hard. And if I still didn’t move away from him, she would jump on my head, grab fistfulls of my hair and then jump off, using my hair as bungee ropes.

You can imagine the things I said to her.  If you’d asked me last week whether I even liked her that much, I would have called her a little wretch and said no. But I cried all day yesterday when I heard she was gone. I’m still crying. And I’m sorry I didn’t realise how much I would miss her. Or that I loved her. And I would give anything I have, anything, if the next time I go to Lola, she would be there, to climb up my shoulders and thread her fingers through my hair, preparing to jump.

Here are some photos of her. The last ones anyone will take.

Malou when she was rescued from the Russian couple who were trying to smuggle her through Paris

arriving at the sanctuary. Covered in burns from where she probably stumbled into a fire or tipped a pot of boiling water. Malnourished, dehydrated and almost dead

Looking a lot like little Lomela when she first arrived.

with Claudine a year later. by now one of the most beautiful bonobos at Lola. the mamas call her ‘La Parisienne’ and sing songs about her trip to Paris.

with her little fingers in someone’s hair like usual

meditating in group 3.