“It did the job. That trunk was about seven feet in diameter.”
“There’s an entire tree crew in our shop,” she explained. “The foreman starts by making a scale model out of clay. That’s then built up and out—full size—with heavy steel pipes to create the trunk itself, and a very lightweight steel—something that can be bent and shaped—to make the limbs. The form is finished with a sort of mesh skin that they stretch over the tree trunk and then spray with an epoxy resin.”
“Tricked me for sure,” Mike said.
I wanted to find out if we were on a fool’s errand or had some purpose here.
“So what are the biggest dangers for these magnificent creatures, back in the Congo?” I asked.
“Three things, primarily,” Hillary said. “They live in a part of the world that’s been savaged by civil wars, so gorillas have been caught in the cross fire for decades. Then there’s the destruction of their habitat, as people encroach on the places where they’ve lived—the heavily forested parts of the Congo.”
She paused to watch a couple of Ernie’s kids playing with each other—a primate hide-and-seek around the giant enclosure.
“The third reason for the decline in population is poaching, of course,” she said. “There are probably fewer than nine hundred mountain gorillas left—they’re really facing extinction, as well as all the other subspecies. So you combine humans, habitat, and throw in that they also get snared in traps that are intended for other animals, like antelope, bongos, and kobs. That’s one of the reasons we work so hard on breeding efforts in zoological parks like this one.”
The poaching interested me. I hadn’t thought gorillas were hunted like rhinos but I was obviously wrong. “Poached for what?”
Hillary looked at me, as though to gauge my reaction. “For their meat, Alex. For bushmeat.”
“Bushmeat?” I asked. “Who would eat that?”
“You’d be surprised. There are a lot of locals in the Congo—men who work in the tantalite mines or loggers, and they can’t find much else in the forest to keep them going.”
“So they shoot gorillas?”
“Yes. They get about six dollars for a piece of meat the size of Mercer’s hand.”
It didn’t sound like the kind of poaching that supported an international cartel. I looked at these intelligent primates, who seemed to be mimicking our behavior so closely, and swallowed hard in disgust at the thought of harming them.
Mike picked up the thread. “We know a lot of the animals have uses in traditional medicines,” he said. “Is the gorilla one of them?”
“Occasionally,” Hillary said.
“Like an ingredient in Asian healing recipes?” he asked, going to the same continent I was thinking about.
“No. The Asians don’t seem to be interested in gorillas, thankfully.”
There goes that connection, I thought.
“Who, then?” Mercer said.
“It’s pretty much a local tradition,” she said. “Many of the Congolese feed gorilla meat to young boys in the belief it will make them grow strong or give them courage.”
Somehow, I couldn’t see Paul Battaglia risking his life for bushmeat.
“No international angle to gorillas?” I asked.
Hillary Hawes shook her head. “But I can show you plenty of that, if you’re looking for risky business,” she said, winding us along the path and back toward her cart.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We haven’t discussed trafficking yet.”
“Wild animals?” Mike said. “Trafficked? You mean they’re smuggled out of Africa and shipped abroad?”
“We can try to stop the slaughter,” Hillary said, “but as long as there is a demand for products, the animals—and their most valuable parts—will be trafficked around the world. That’s where the big money is—and that’s what traffickers think is worth killing for.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Talk to us about trafficking,” I said.
Hillary sat behind the wheel of the cart and started to drive. “I’m a keeper, you understand. I care for the animals here. I’ll certainly tell you what I know, and Deirdre can also point you in the right direction.”
“What’s here?” Mike asked. “What’s in this zoo that’s endangered and trafficked?”
“Where do you want to start?” she said, trying to deal with Mike’s attitude as the sightseeing tour changed to a more intense form of conversation. “I don’t know where you want me to go.”
“Just drive,” he said. “Take us to see things you know about.”
“I can do that, but I meant information. What are you looking for?”
“Years ago,” I said, trying to stay loose and easy with Hillary, “there was a Supreme Court decision on pornography that resulted in a justice writing one of the most famous lines in that institution’s history. He couldn’t define the materials that fit the definition of hard-core pornography, but Justice Stewart famously said, ‘I know it when I see it.’”
“I guess I can guide you that far,” Hillary said, stepping on the accelerator. “Do you know about pangolins?”
“Did you say ‘penguins’?” Mercer asked.
“No, pangolins. They’re the most trafficked mammals in the world.”
“I’ve never heard of them,” I said.
“Most Americans haven’t, but they’re incredibly valuable,” Hillary said. “Think of them as small anteaters, covered with scales. Four species live in sub-Saharan Africa, and four in Asia.”
“What are they trafficked for?”
“Again, for their meat. But unlike gorillas, the pangolins are considered a delicacy, so they’re in much greater demand beyond Africa than bushmeat is,” she said. “And then there are the pangolin’s scales.”
“Literally, the scales that cover them?” I said.
“Yes. The scales are made of keratin,” she said, “which is the same substance as our fingernails. But the Asians think it cures a variety of ailments—so they roast the scales or boil them in oil, then serve them up. It’s traditional Chinese medicine.”
“Got it. All about Asia,” Mike said. I could see the imaginary wheels turning in his mind as he registered the Chinese association. “Where to now?”
“I’m getting wilder,” Hillary said. She juiced the cart and sped on the roadway—dodging school groups, parents, strollers, and tourists to get to the entrance to the monorail, which was literally called a Ride on the Wild Side.
She skipped past the waiting crowd of visitors—everyone from ticket takers to security seemed to know her—and took us to the front of the line.
“Best way to show you the most animals is this way—from above—over the Asian wildlife preserve. You’ll see everything, pick out what you want to know more about, and I’ll answer all your questions, if I can.”
One of the trains was pulling out of the station as we climbed the stairs to get to it.
“Don’t worry,” Hillary said. “We usually run three or four of these a day—nine cars per train—so there’ll be another one along in ten or twelve minutes. It’s only a twenty-minute ride. You’re lucky, because even though the park is open all winter, this ride shuts down at the end of this month.”