I AM DEEPLY INDEBTED to everyone at Algonquin, but especially to Memsy Price and Dana Stamey, who had the patience to work with me and not give up.
I also thank all the technicians and other staff at LEMSIP who, over the years, gave so much love. I have mentioned only a few of them by name, yet I could relate at least one story about every single one of them—some touching moment, some special deed, some comical event. But I admired them most of all for being a team able to pull together when things got tough. I saw this every time there was a medical emergency with one of the chimps. When I would hear the announcement over the PA system, I would immediately drop what I was doing and rush to the animal’s room. Even before I arrived on the scene, the technicians would have already paired off and formed teams; one pair would be administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation, another pair would have inserted an endotracheal tube into the animal’s windpipe, and yet another would have set up an IV line to administer adrenaline or some other stimulant into the blood stream, while the electrocardiograph bleeped out its wiggly trace in the background. I would stand on the sidelines, like a maestro ignored by the orchestra, hardly needing to lay a hand on the patient. The technicians didn’t always succeed, and sometimes, the animal died despite their valiant efforts. When they failed, the technicians at least had one another’s comfort and the knowledge that they had done all that was humanly possible to save the animal. But when they were successful, they experienced a high I doubt few other people ever reach in the normal course of their daily work.