lpag - aenaeus

The monkeys were shipped from a research facility. One of the Tamarins was down. And when we say down it’s like a big iron bell ringing – that word "down," because it’s very rare that they get back up again. There’s a gripping claw in my stomach. There’s a limited amount of time that you have to work with and everything is now in crisis mode.

When we took him out of the carrier he came in, he didn’t move, he just stayed in a ball of pain. And he was urinating blood.

He didn’t have a name. He just had a number tattooed on his body which many of them have. They have a green number, not unlike the terrible colored number that the Auschwitz survivors have on their forearms. Sometimes they’re tattooed across their stomachs, and in the case of a pregnant female, as the belly gets larger and larger, so does this green number. It’s a clear indication that where they have come from they are considered a number, a commodity and not a living thing. Sometimes they have a necklace that looks like the pull chain on a bulb. It has a numbered red disk hanging from it. One marmoset came wearing a disk numbered 242. I keep it on my desk so I remember 241, all the ones that aren’t here at the Sanctuary. We got number 242. That meant there were 241 of her kind that aren’t here and we don’t know where they are.

And we don’t know all of the others, the thousands, where they are either. It keeps me remembering that we only have a small portion of this enormous population that’s considered something to be used like you would a test tube or a syringe or an inanimate object. It’s clearly not the animal’s needs being addressed in these environments.

And that’s the shift that we’re needing to make now. Not thinking how they can be used but what we can do to accommodate them so they can survive. In the industrial world we look at everything from the perspective of how we can use it. Even other human beings — how can we use them, how can we manipulate them, how can we get more for less, how can we get ahead in this deal?

The laboratory is a throwaway world for monkeys. When they are no longer of use they’re discarded, euthanized. And in this case passed on to us, at the end of his usefulness. It’s almost as if this little tamarin had been scraped up from the floor of his cage with a spatula; he wasn’t even moving.

I took him in my hands. It is so tragic when they come in a ball of pain. Clearly he wouldn't even have a chance to be cared for, to claim even a portion of his birthright. He had made here it all the way from this research lab after many many months of negotiations to get him out and paperwork required by the State and the cost of the shipping. We even had to send the shipping crates to the lab because they didn’t want to build anything. They didn’t want to pay for anything; they just wanted him out of there. He was of no use to them anymore.

It’s an exciting day: they’re coming. Now we get a chance to do the work that leads to healing. He can’t even accept it; he can’t eat; he can’t stand. Immediately I named him – ANEAS, the traveler from far away.

I took him outside and his black luminous eyes blinked at the natural light as if it was too much. I showed him the sky and the green things that are alive here and the blooming things and the dog that came up to greet us. I brought him up to the house and one by one I introduced him to my family. Quickly, so he could take as much in as possible in the few hours he had left.

My daughter said: "Oh Mama, he hurts, he’s in a knot." We sat down on the couch together and both began giving him a massage. We just sat there and talked and sang and tried to uncurl him out of his agony. After about a half an hour his body began to uncurl in our hands. He was the most beautiful being you can imagine. He was completely black like a seal with coal black fur and a white mask around his mouth with round cheeks. He had the look of a bear, but he was such a wee thing, fitting into a cupped hand.

I tried to feed him mashed bananas. He had a hard time eating. Once they’re down, food is not of interest. We got some fluid in him. We kept him close to our bodies because he was so cold, carried him next to our hearts. Every few hours I tried to hydrate him. He was having a hard time; he was having spasms of pain in his gut. It was exhausting for him.

And then he passed with a shudder on my body. The necropsy revealed he died from liver flukes which had calcified over years because he had never received the simple, necessary treatment.

Galatea, Aneas' niece