Good Night Sweet Prince

SOSA  AND  ANGEL  JOURNAL

INTRODUCTION

Update: As a result of Apollo(Sosa) the chimpanzee's death, I will now be free to tell  Sosa's Story with the hopes that it will help all the other Sosas out there.  I will be updating the journal with information I was not able to add while he was alive.  Happy to report that Angel is now at a sanctuary in Florida and that Cody and Sable have also gone to a very good sanctuary.  This journal was posted on my website beginning in 2000 and continued through to Sosa's death in 2006.

As a sixteen year old I wanted to go live with the Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda.  Diane Fossey was my hero. Dr. Sandy Harcourt a renowned Primatologist who had worked with Diane Fossey in Rwanda, would be awakened by my calls at 5am or  6a.m( I forgot about the time difference).  He was always very nice and would give me suggestions on how I might get myself into their program in Rwanda.  I would call the operator in Rwanda and ask for the number of Kerisoke, Diane Fossey's camp set high in the Virunga Mountains.  Just talking to  the operator, someone who was actually living in Rwanda was very exciting.  Then the civil war broke out  and  I turned my attention to Borneo.  I would call Dr. Birute Galdikas the famed Orangutan expert who asked  how I got her number.  I found her to be very nice and supportive of my aspirations.  She told me that she was not much older than myself when she first went to Borneo to live with the Orangutans. However, not having the resources at sixteen to leave and live among the Great-Apes,  something my parents were not too thrilled about, I instead concentrated on my sports (my parents tricked me into that, to get my mind refocused) and I found myself going off to San Francisco to train with the US National Women's Epee coach.   However, as I grew older I knew that I was not cut out for living in Africa or Indo on a permanent basis and so resigned myself to a life without the Great-Apes.

Little did I know that my sports would bring me full circle, but instead of Gorillas or Orangutans, it was to be a couple of chimpanzees who would tug at my heart strings and perhaps to  set me on course again.  Through Sosa and Angel, I was to learn of the plight of the American Chimpanzees, all the hundreds of chimpanzees who are stored in small cages at Research Labs-the most infamous one is the Coulston Foundation in New Mexico.  No experiment is taboo as long as someone is willing to pay for it.  I can not shake the image of all those wonderful beings locked up and suffering.

The following is based on some my experiences with Sosa and Angel. I feel bad having to divulge what I have, but in the end I had to decide what was best for Angel with the " dead eyes" and Sosa.  Now (Date: 2003-2004), this trainer has three more babies from the Coulston Foundation.  Since I am no longer in a position to make sure Sosa is ok, I worry more about him, because he is a male chimpanzee whose days as a performer are rapidly drawing to a close and I know that this trainer's training methods are based on fear.  So I have been in touch with some organizations trying to find out if Sosa is ok and this account is for their info as well.