Bobo · Friday March 3, 2006
A Sad Story from Phil Elverum:
“My great grandparents raised a mountain gorilla. (I’m pretty sure it was mountain. Maybe lowland. whatever.) My great uncle, their son, was in Cleveland and bought a car and the guy who sold it was like “if you buy this car I’ll also give you this baby gorilla”. This was in the 50’s, so apparently this was no big whoop back then. My great uncle was like “Sweet! My mom’s kids have all grown up and moved out. She would love this!” and then drove home to Anacortes Washington with a weird baby in a little cradle on the passenger seat, dressed in diapers and everything. He got home and gave it, him, to his mom, my great grandma, and they named him Bobo.
“He was famous in magazines and newspapers all over as “the gorilla that wears clothes”. There are all kinds of photos of him doing human stuff like pumping gas and scolding a dog. He played with the kids in the neighborhood, and as he got bigger he started wrecking the house. They had to bolt everything down and put chickenwire over the fragiles and build him a jungle gym in the greenhouse.
“Eventually he was too big and he had to move to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, which was sad. He was considered a member of the family. He clearly didn’t consider himself to be a gorilla. Also, zoos back then were pretty harsh. He had to live in a concrete room with a drain. Basically a car wash. My great grandma lived in there with him for the first couple of weeks. He never adjusted and was always sad and scanning the crowds (he was very popular) for his family members. When they showed up he was clearly happy.
“Here’s the sad part: When he lived in Anacortes my great grandpa would always cut an apple in half and hand half of it to Bobo over his back. They just shared apples in this way. When Bobo was in the carwash heartbroken he was eating an apple behind the glass and saw my great grandpa there and he did that same thing. He handed half an apple over his back towards the glass.
They never got him to mate. Bill Cosby made fun of him. He didn’t consider himself a gorilla. He died and was stuffed (standing, awkwardly) and was in the basement of a museum in Seattle for years, then moved to Anacortes for a while, then back to Seattle.”
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Philip Ashlock writes:
I remember seeing stuffed Bobo at the museum when i was about four years old, then in highschool Izak told me he was a relative, then in college I read the book Ishmael and couldn’t help but think of Bobo telling the whole story. Humans are weird.
posted Mar 9, 05:43 AM ~ #