Buddy

I’m reading a fascinating account of a red-necktie wearing gorilla who, in the 1930’s, came to live with a human being named Gertie Lintz. The book is called Buddy, and it’s written and illustrated by William Joyce. Here is my favorite passage so far:

Buddy ate so much that Gertie and Bill bought him his own refrigerator. He loved bananas, grapes, and strawberry pie. For breakfast, he could eat a whole box of cereal, doughnuts by the dozen, entire loaves of bread, and gallons of apple juice and still be hungry.

The 1997 movie of the same name passed under my radar, but perhaps that was because at the time I was touring Europe and Asia with the cooking group, The Wildly Fantastic Chef Sisters. Of course, both the book and the movie dramatically underplay the cruel realities of what was going on with Buddy, his upbringing, his eventual career in the circus, and such. Reading accounts of gorillas brought into so-called “civilization” make me realize what a fortunate gorilla I really am. No one has ever made me do anything I didn’t want to do. As Pinkipod wrote in a blog entry I discovered while vanity-cruising Technorati,

You can't tell a big gorilla to attend an anger management class. You can only force it to take a chill pill (Chloroform)...

In the interest of fair disclosure, no one has ever, ever successfully gotten me to take a chill pill. Trying to get me to take any sort of medication, class on anger management or anything else behavior-modifying would be more harrowing (for you) than attempting to give the kitty a pill.