Rescuing Ladybugs. Jennifer Skiff

       PORCUPINE, MONKEY, ELEPHANT, PTEROPOD

The Power of the Collective Voice

      Perth, Australia

      “Come and see dragons with me! I understand they’ve just eaten a Japanese tourist. Isn’t that wonderful?” Guy joked in his posh British accent. Guy was calling from Bali, Indonesia, and paused, presumably to take a drag from his ever-present cigarette. “If you come, I promise not to order suckling pig at any of the local establishments.”

      I first met my most eccentric friend when he was Guy David Greville. Then he became Lord Brook, and he was now Guy Warwick, the Earl of Warwick. Behind the façade of his often sarcastic, sometimes shocking, but always witty repartee, he was a highly intelligent, deeply caring man whose friendship I cherished. While our views on animal welfare oftentimes differed, he supported my advocacy and had, more than once, let me use stays in his Spanish villa as an auction item to raise money for charities.

      Guy was also one of Jon’s closest friends, and he wanted Jon and me to go on vacation with him and his partner, Natalie Bovill, to the island of Flores, Indonesia, where he was thinking of buying land. He was enticing me with the promise of seeing Komodo dragons.

      I’d been intrigued by the giant lizard since reading the book Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, about unique animals on the verge of extinction. Guy knew this, since we’d once seen a Komodo dragon together at a Balinese zoo, and indeed, I couldn’t resist the thought of seeing a “dragon” in the wild. Eight weeks later, in 2013, Jon and I met Guy and Natalie in Bali, where we boarded a small plane for the hour-long flight to Flores.

      The entry to the island couldn’t have been more spectacular. As we flew over hundreds of uninhabited lush, green, volcanic islands, where high cliffs dropped to white beaches that bled into turquoise water, a calm washed over me.

      Island of Flores, Indonesia

      A smiling man with light brown skin and dressed in a khaki-colored uniform introduced himself as our driver and proceeded to take us on a twenty-minute, hold-on-to-someone-to-stay-upright bumpy ride to Jayakarta Suites, a four-star hotel on the southwestern tip of the island.

      As we turned into the resort’s palm-lined drive, Guy exclaimed sarcastically, “Oh no! I’m afraid monkey is on the menu.” As we drove past a clump of metal cages, I looked back and noticed someone was chained to a tree.

      “Is that a monkey?” I asked.

      “Yes, and a menagerie of others are tucked away in the back garden,” Guy replied, then teased: “Apparently, I’ve chosen hotels badly. We’ve landed in the only one where they keep the meat on the premises.”

      A few minutes later, while the others walked into the hotel, I went in the opposite direction.

      I stopped near the monkey who was chained to the tree. Around his neck was a chain-link collar inside a clear plastic tube. His hand reached out to me and his mouth opened to speak, but he made no sound. He picked up a Kit Kat candy wrapper and showed it to me, pleading for another. I looked around for a caretaker. There was no one in sight.

      The sound of honking geese caught my attention: Four white birds with orange-colored bills stood in the corner of a five-by-five-foot enclosure, beckoning. As I approached, they became excited, waddling back and forth in their small space. Directly above them was another cage: In it was a porcupine and an empty clamshell. Neither cage contained food or water.

      Three feet away was another, larger enclosure, about sixteen square feet. The four sides were mesh wire, and the floor was concrete. In it, eleven monkeys on short chains were clipped to the wire walls in such a way that they couldn’t reach each other or the floor. They were all clinging to the wire mesh. The floor beneath them was immaculate, with no sign of feces. Like the other cages, there were no food or water feeders.

      As I scanned the scene, all seventeen animals fell silent, staring at me.

      “I’ll be right back,” I said.

      In the lobby, I passed Jon, Natalie, and Guy, already dressed in swimsuits and sarongs, on their way to the pool. I headed for the front desk and asked for the hotel’s manager. The young man didn’t speak English, and my Indonesian was limited to basic niceties. After a brief interchange that involved me mimicking a monkey, I understood that the manager, Mr. Agus Tabah Wardhana, was away for the day. I was given an appointment for the next day at 2:30 PM.

      I walked into the dining room and through the swinging doors of the kitchen, where I was again forced to play charades with a chef who spoke little English. Ten minutes later, I left carrying food for the animals: a bucket of rice that I understood was for the geese and another bucket of sliced fruit for the monkeys and porcupine.

      First, I stopped at the gray-colored monkey who was chained to a tree and handed him a slice of watermelon. He snatched it from my hand, took a bite, and responded by drawing his lips back into a huge, toothy smile.

      Nearby, the geese honked for my attention, pleading to be released. The presence of a nearby pond, and their inability to get to it, must have been torturous. I tossed the rice from the bucket into their enclosure through the wire.

      The sign on the porcupine’s cage read “Twinkle.” I took a slice of watermelon to a corner of the cage and pushed part of it through the wire.

      “Twinkle,” I called.

      The porcupine’s nose lifted but he didn’t leave his corner. I walked around and dropped a piece of the fruit through the wire in front of the quilled animal. He sniffed at and quickly took it, his milky-white eyes revealing his blindness. When he finished, he turned to me, asking for another piece. I obliged. For a nocturnal animal, his situation was dire. He had no water, no den, and nothing to shade him from the hot, blinding sun.

      The gray-colored monkeys were long-tailed macaques, named because their tails are longer than their bodies. In Indonesia, they’re also called crab-eating macaques because they swim and dive for crabs. I have interacted with macaques on many occasions in Bali; they are omnivores, and females dominate their social groups.

      They were fearful as I neared, quickly snatching the fruit I offered and devouring it while keeping their eyes on me.

      A man appeared, carrying a broom. He smiled at me and nodded, seemingly pleased at what I was doing. I assumed he must be the animals’ caretaker.

      “Where is the water?” I asked, knowing he probably didn’t understand English.

      I looked around. There wasn’t a hose; just an empty bucket outside the monkeys’ enclosure.

      “Water,” I asked, pointing into the bucket. He didn’t seem to understand. I picked an empty water bottle out of a trash can and pretended to drink. He smiled, walked away, and returned ten minutes later with an unopened bottle of water, which he handed to me, apparently thinking I was asking for myself. I unscrewed the cap, unlatched Twinkle’s enclosure, righted the clamshell, and filled it with water.

      Now the man smiled and nodded; he understood. He left again and returned with a bucket of water, putting it into the enclosure with the geese. I pointed to the monkeys, and he pointed at the water bottle I was still holding. Confused, I gave it to him. He proceeded to walk around the monkey enclosure and toss spurts of water in each animal’s face. The monkeys recoiled. Only one opened his mouth, catching a bit of the water thrown at him. The others went without.

      The next morning, after a restless night, I waited for the restaurant to open. I had a coffee and a glass of pineapple juice, then swept the buffet of fruit and bread and took it to the animals.

      This time, when I called Twinkle, he greeted me like a lost friend, running toward my voice.