The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A True Story of Resilience and Recovery [Hardcover]

Andrew Westoll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2011

In 1997 Gloria Grow started a sanctuary for chimps retired from biomedical research on her farm outside Montreal. For the indomitable Gloria, caring for thirteen great apes is like presiding over a maximum security prison, a Zen sanctuary, an old folks’ home, and a New York deli during the lunchtime rush all rolled into one. But she is first and foremost creating a refuge for her troubled charges, a place where they can recover and begin to trust humans again. 

Hoping to win some of this trust, the journalist Andrew Westoll spent months at Fauna Farm as a volunteer and vividly recounts his time in the chimp house and the histories of its residents. He arrives with dreams of striking up an immediate friendship with the legendary Tom, the wise face of the Great Ape Protection Act, but Tom seems all too content to ignore him. Gradually, though, old man Tommie and the rest of the “troop” begin to warm toward Westoll as he learns the routines of life at the farm and realizes just how far the chimps have come. Seemingly simple things like grooming, establishing friendships and alliances, and playing games with the garden hose are all poignant testament to the capacity of these animals to heal. 

Brimming with empathy and winning stories of Gloria and her charges, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is an absorbing, bighearted book that grapples with questions of just what we owe to the animals who are our nearest genetic relations.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1997 Gloria Grow started a sanctuary for chimps retired from biomedical research on her farm outside Montreal. For the indomitable Gloria, caring for thirteen great apes is like presiding over a maximum security prison, a Zen sanctuary, an old folks’ home, and a New York deli during the lunchtime rush all rolled into one. But she is first and foremost creating a refuge for her troubled charges, a place where they can recover and begin to trust humans again. 

Hoping to win some of this trust, the journalist Andrew Westoll spent months at Fauna Farm as a volunteer and vividly recounts his time in the chimp house and the histories of its residents. He arrives with dreams of striking up an immediate friendship with the legendary Tom, the wise face of the Great Ape Protection Act, but Tom seems all too content to ignore him. Gradually, though, old man Tommie and the rest of the “troop” begin to warm toward Westoll as he learns the routines of life at the farm and realizes just how far the chimps have come. Seemingly simple things like grooming, establishing friendships and alliances, and playing games with the garden hose are all poignant testament to the capacity of these animals to heal. 

Brimming with empathy and winning stories of Gloria and her charges, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is an absorbing, bighearted book that grapples with questions of just what we owe to the animals who are our nearest genetic relations.

Amazon Exclusive: Images from Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary
(Click on Images to Enlarge)

The makeshift outdoor kitchen during Operation Cucarachas	Toby relishes his private time in the chimphouse

Another bustling day in the Fauna chimphouse.	Spock mulls over what to eat for lunch

Review

“The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is a true story of endurance and resilience, compassion, dedication and love. I knew the prison-like conditions of the medical research facility from which Gloria Grow rescued these chimpanzees; when I visited them at their new sanctuary I was moved to tears. Finally they had reached a secure haven where, gradually, they could recover from their years of torment. Andrew Westoll is a born story teller: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, written with empathy and skill, tenderness and humour, involves us in a world few understand. And leaves us marvelling at the ways in which chimpanzees are so like us, deserve our help, and are entitled to our respect.”
—Jane Goodall Ph.D., DBE , Founder – the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace

“This book will make you think deeply about our relationship with great apes. It amazed me to discover the behaviors and feelings of the chimpanzees.”
—Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation

“This book is a wonder. Passionate, intelligent, moving and, above all, tremendously important, it illustrates the triumph of the wild spirit and offers surprising hope that the human animal might yet be redeemed. Think of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation and J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, and you’ll have some idea of what it is you hold in your hands. It has been a long time since any author has inspired me to such extremes of compassion and humility.”
—Barbara Gowdy, author of The White Bone

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 10, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547327803
• ISBN-13: 978-0547327808
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #114,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Apes & Monkeys
  • #45 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Animal Rights

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging and Rewarding, April 10, 2011

By 

jd103 (Yellowstone) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A True Story of Resilience and Recovery (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I've struggled a bit with how to write this review. This book by a writer who lived and assisted at the title sanctuary for a couple months turned out to not be what I expected, and although it's actually a much better book because of that fact, I can't help selfishly being a tiny bit disappointed because of it as well.

So let's make it clear from the start that this is not just a happy book overflowing with cheery stories about animals like many sanctuary books are, and as you might think from the subtitle. There are some moments like that, but this book is much more serious with as many heartbreaking moments as happy ones.

But a book which begins with the line, "Smell my phone" has plenty of humor as well. Some of this is provided by other animals at the sanctuary, but it's also found in attempts to outsmart the chimps. And there are inspiring stories such as one chimp who after observing a human treating another chimp's injury, takes over and provides future treatments himself.

The book describes the chimps' lives in labs as well as at the sanctuary, and tells the powerful story of how the sanctuary came to exist and how the chimps got there. It follows the author's experiences there and his process of trying to be accepted by the chimps, as well as the stories of the other people working there. We learn the individual stories of the chimps and how they've been affected by their pasts.

The book also includes some wonderful photographic portraits of the chimps. That's Pepper on the cover, who came to the sanctuary by luck, not by original intention--she was destined for many more years of experiments. When a man who worked at the lab where she was held visits the sanctuary, she races up to him and pushes her lips through the dividing cage until he kisses her. He's stunned and shaken by what he considers undeserved forgiveness. It doesn't turn out as well for all visitors though; another man is slapped by a chimp who had been in his lab.

As one of the book's epigraphs states, "Resilience is more than resistance, it's also learning to live" and that is what these chimps are still working on every day. Recovery by a primate much like ourselves from years of abuse called medical research does not come easy any more than it does for abused children. Although the chimps are obviously much better off now and have some choices in their lives they never had before, the years of isolation in tiny cages, injections, infections, knockout darts, and liver punches didn't magically leave their memories when they reached the sanctuary. The book is about their challenges and the challenges, rewards, and pain of those people devoting their lives to helping and loving them.

The United States is the last major country still doing invasive research on chimps, so the book is also a call for passage of the Great Ape Protection Act which is slowly gaining sponsors in Congress. Readers are encouraged to contact their congresspeople and to donate to chimp sanctuaries. A portion of the author's royalties will be given to Fauna Sanctuary.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the tears you may shed, May 12, 2011

By 

Deborah Verlen "Deborah" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A True Story of Resilience and Recovery (Hardcover)

Do yourself a favor and don't go into reading this book expecting it to be light hearted, good feeling stories about chimps in a sanctuary. Although there are those moments, this is instead a book that realistically looks at what mankind does to its closet relative in labs and how the chimps deal with recovery when moved to Gloria Grow's sanctuary Fauna. Author Andrew Westoll arrives as a volunteer and these recollections will make you laugh and cry and sometimes despair of the human race yet also uplift you with how good people can be too.

Fauna sits on a 240 acre hobby farm in the Canadian-French countryside. Grow and her partner veterinarian Richard Allan have devoted themselves to rescuing chimps from labs and zoos and other undesirable situations. This is not a story of happy, well adjusted chimps of fiction, but rather a stark telling of what man can do to an animal in the name of science, preservation or whatever and how that animal through resilience and recovery can learn trust and love.

Westoll begins work at the sanctuary and the chimps the day he arrives. Gloria tells him bluntly that it is full moon week and things are crazy. He needs to obey the "Rules." Gloria says "First: take your jacket off. The bigger you look, the more threatening you are. Second: you're tall, so I need you to crouch. Third: do not stand too close to me. They don't interpret it properly. They can't control it. It's threatening. Four: respect the red lines on the floor. They're there for a reason. Inside the red, believe me, they will try to get you."

And thus starts Andrew's journey of working to gain the trust and care of the people who work with the chimps and the chimps themselves. Back stories fill in details about each chimp--where they came from, what happened to them, how they came to the sanctuary. Whether you love animals or just have an interest in them--this is tough reading. I shed more than a few tears over passages like this--and these were the first seven chimps we meet:

"Inside the trailer were seven young chimpanzees. Until that morning they had been the property of New York University and had lived at a biomedical research facility.... As research subjects, these animals had endured years of pain and deprivation as living test tubes for the study of human diseases. They'd been torn from their mothers just days after birth. They'd been imprisoned in cages, sometimes in solitary confinement. They'd undergone blood draws, invasive surgeries, and viral experiments. Some had been knocked unconscious with dart guns almost every week."

To be honest, I almost quit reading at this point, taking the cowards way out and closing my eyes, ears and mind to any additional cruelty to follow. I'm glad I continued with the book. Yes, it was a difficult read, but it was also an inspiring one. When Westoll arrives, there are 13 chimps in the sanctuary all bearing the scars of their past lives. As he puts it "This is their retirement. This is their Shangri-la." Each chimp has a personality and they become very real and dear to reader.

Chimp rescue is not cuddly nor is it safe. Westoll, in his first safety briefing is given instructions to 'get off the property' or hide if the siren goes off -- either a chimp has escaped or a human has been attacked. When the sirens go off calls are automatically placed to 911, fire, police and others. He also meets Jekyll and Hyde, attack swans!

Like their human counterparts who have come from horrible backgrounds, the chimps are psychologically disturbed and work to overcome the pain and hurt of their pasts. As the author points out, Chimps in America are no more than two or three generations away from their wild ancestors in Africa. Where does someone go who adopted a cute baby chimp that turns into an uncontrollable adult--an adult that is seven to eight times as strong as a human and aggressive to boot. Often these out of control older chimps go to biomedical laboratories.

Westoll paints a fascinating picture of not only the chimps, but of the home they now live in. Chimps are afraid of water and Grow and Allan made a sanctuary for them that is surrounded by water so that if one does escape, they won't go too far. These are troubled, damaged animals, so the sanctuary has plenty of space for "alone" time for those that need to escape the confusion. Rooms are also staged to help socialize the chimps through play and other activities.

This book is a wonderful journey where you will get know a tenacious woman named Gloria Grow and understand her devotion to the chimps. Where you will see the author fall in love with these damaged chimps and become an advocate for their humane treatment and for putting laws into place to get them and other animals out of the cruel laboratories. You will meet Tom, a truly abused chimp who somehow has love left in him. Sue Ellen who "has a weakness for large, bearded men" and falls hard for the author. Little Pepper who like Sue Ellen finds Andrew fascinating. You'll meet through remembrances the fragile Rachel, Regis and Jethro. You'll meet Donna Rae, Yoko and a mutt named Mr. Puppy who runs the farm. And Bub who likes to challenge Andrew to foot races. Toby, Maya and Spock, a strange sort of love triangle. And Petra who endured physical and psychological torment in the laboratory.

You'll experience the disquieting feelings Gloria got the day five of the chimps escaped within the enclosure. In the six or so hours they were loose, they made a huge mess trying to clean the oven, mop the floor etc., but upon closer inspection it appeared they were trying to emulate their human counter parts by cleaning, eating and trying to mirror other activities they saw their human caretakers engage in.

You'll realize how something as innocuous as a catalogue, in this case the Earthwatch catalogue, changed Gloria and Richard's lives. At the time a friend gave Gloria the catalogue of scientific expeditions, Gloria was floundering and wondering what to do with her life. Through Earthwatch she found her way to a two week project at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute in Washington. When asked why she was there she said "I want to start a sanctuary." With those simple words, she set a course that helped rescue chimps and start Fauna.

Note: The book also contains additional links and information to organizations that help chimps as well as books and articles on them.

This review was based on an advanced reading copy I received from netGalley.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great & Timely Book, May 7, 2011

By 

Dawn Killen-Courtney (St. Louis Park,, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A True Story of Resilience and Recovery (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Andrew Westoll did a fabulous job on this book. It is a difficult subject to read about; what we put our nearest kin through for decades on end in research labs, yet he leads us into the subject with nuanced finesse. He starts writing about a whole huge moral and ethical mess by introducing us, as he himself was introduced, to the chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, thirteen individuals who had all done time -- most in biomedical research, a few in zoos. I came to see through Andrew's eyes the facets of the personalities (both human and chimp) because those are intertwined relatrionships there, between the chimps and the people who know they are doing their best for the chimps but can never make up for what other people have done to them. Repeatedly. Awful stuff, what they've lived through. And not just the invasive surgeries, not just the "knock downs" by dart to immobilize them for surgery, but just day after day year after year in the lab setting. We see the resulting psychosis unfold in incidents with Rachel, a chimp who was hand walked into the research lab by her original owner after she was no longer deemed suitable for a pet, and left there for decades. It is difficult to read, but I was able to (except for the material on Harry Harlow, but I already knew about him, and can't read it twice) because of the tone Westoll set, a loving, determined, and yes, even optimistic tone that allows us to hope that after a century of abuse in the name of science we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for chimps. As he winds the book down, many facets and aspects of the situation are brought forth; stories told from people who have worked with chimps in research, the importance of the legislation (GAPA, the Great Ape Protection Act)for what it means to the apes, and to us as a culture, to have the chance to rethink what we do to them, to be morally responsible, to leave our status as the only developed nation (except for Gabon in Africa) that still subjects chimps to invasive research and testing behind us. We can't change what we have done, but we can change what we will do, and how we view other species going forward. This is a thougtful book, a complex look at the results of choices we made as a culture that ultimately has not done us good in terms of the medical results of the torture we subjected innocent animals to, and has certainly lessened us ethically and spritually.