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The Citizen, 1997-07-09, Page 5Arthur Black Casey and Charlie are girls — and more Chances are if you ran into Phil and Roberta at a cocktail party or a barbecue, you wouldn't be particularly impressed. You'd think they were pretty average people and you'd be mostly right. They’re in their 40s; they run a graphic arts business from their comfortable two-storey house in upstate New York; they have a couple of youngsters, name of Casey and Charlie. Middle-class, middle-aged and middle of the road. Except for one thing - those two youngsters? Casey and Charlie? They’re girls. And that’s not all. They are also chimpanzees. The older chimp, Charlie, came into Roberta’s life three years ago when she heard Charlie's owner was going to sell her to a medical lab. Roberta gave her hubby Phil a nice candlelight and wine dinner that night. Over coffee she asked him how he’d feel about 'adoption'. Phil must have had a fair bit of wine. He said 'Why not?* Two years later they realized that Charlie was suffering from loneliness. They tracked down Charlie’s younger half-sister, Casey, at a private zoo in Missouri. Adopted her too. How big a commitment is it, playing mom and dad to a pair of chimps? Very big. Most International Scene Some facts about land trusts I’m sure that we have all read at some time about farm land that has been taken out of production to provide use for a sub-division, a shopping mall or some other form of urban sprawl. Many people have complained about this loss but it appears that America, which is many times the most pragmatic of nations, has decided to do something about it all. This effort has come in the form of land trusts, an expression that I had never heard before until I came upon a discussion of how to save farm land from falling victim to the developers' axe. Land trusts started in Vermont about 20 years ago and are financed partly by the state and partly by revenue from state charities. The trust will use the money to buy up some specific piece of land at less than the market value but will permit the fanner from which the land was bought to continue fanning the land and pass it on to his children. The rules are quite firm about what can be done and what can not be done to the land after the purchase is made. But, according to the farmers who have agreed to sell their land, this is not onerous enough to persuade them not to sell. While the trusts started in Vermont and New England still has the largest number, the concept has spread to all 50 states and comprises over 4 million acres. According to the Land Trust Alliance, the umbrella ,\ people don’t know it, but cute and cuddly baby chimps grow up to be willful and pretty much unpredictable adults. And very, very strong. At the age of only five, a chimpanzee can weigh more than 200 pounds. They have razor-sharp teeth and a vice-grip bite that can chomp right through a human arm. A single adult chimp has the body strength of five or six full-grown men. And when they hit adulthood, chimps don't move out and find an apartment of their own. Your average chimpanzee will live for 50 years. Even as infants, chimps are more than a handful. They need nearly constant exercise and full-time attention too. Phil and Roberta's house looks more like a jungle gym than something out of Canadian House and Garden. The living room is festooned with ropes and swings. The furniture is all industrial-strength and indestructible. And the humans haven't had a night off since they took in Charlie and Casey. "You can't just hire a babysitter and expect them to be able to cope," says Roberta. "Chimps are very demanding - and they don't take to strangers." Ironically, Phil and Roberta have been taking heat from animal rights groups, which give them a hard time for taking the animals out of their 'natural' surroundings. The animal fighters don't appreciate that Charlie and Casey have never lived in the wild and that without Phil and Roberta, both chimps would probably be languishing in By Raymond Canon organization for these groups, new trusts are being created throughout the country at the rate of one a week. There are presently more than 1,000 of them. To cite one example, a farmer in Vermont decided to sell his 350-acre spread to one of the state’s land trusts. He has four children who are the seventh generation to live on the dairy farm which is something of an endangered species in that part of Vermont. He operates one of the highest yielding milk operations in the state but, in spite of his success to date, he is worried about the volatility of milk prices. What was jam for him today might not be for the one of his children slated to take over the farm some day. It took him a number of years, however, to come to the decision to do business with the trusts, but it was an ideal farm for their purposes. The trust managers were also pleased that the farmer allowed access to hunters, fishermen and snowmobilers. This permission will continue under the trust. The Vermont trusts have no problem in finding farms. There are more than 100 that apply each year but, because of strict conditions and lack of money, the trust does not have the wherewithal to buy all the farms it would like. In Vermont this year, of the 100 farms that applied for consideration, only 37 reached the final cutoff and, of those, there was money for just 11. It should come as no surprise that there are some people who question the whole concept of the trusts. One of the criticisms is that the regulation that controls what can and cannot some stainless steel medical lab providing statistical fodder for scientific experiments. What's even more ironic is that Phil and Roberta agree, in a way. "These creatures are really out of time and place," says Roberta. “(Their ancestors) should really have been left in the jungle. I feel bad that they don't have a real home." Well, Casey and Charlie aren't faring badly, under the circumstances. Roberta and Phil give them more love and attention that most human youngsters get. And for what? Well now, that's where it gets interesting. Because Casey and Charlie clearly give back something very real in the relationship they have with their two humans. You watch the four of them together and you become aware of a sense of wonder passing back and forth between the two species. The chimps are fascinated by the humans, and vice versa. There is a tangible bond of love shimmering in those great, moist chimpanzee eyes. And to watch the chimps hug and kiss (and, well, check their parents for fleas) is to see true familial affection in action. And sometimes when you see Charlie pluck a ringing telephone off the wall and hold it to her ear, or pour a cup of tea as neatly as your Aunt Winnie, or see Casey yawn and smack her lips and pull the covers over her shoulders as she drifts off to sleep just like any pre-school child... Sometimes you lose track of just who is a chimp and who is homo sapiens. be done to the farm is too severe. For example, in the farm that I described above, when the children take over, any development plans do not even include a septic tank. This reduces the property value but, given that the trust only wants to keep the land in agricultural pursuits, this may not be so bad. Another criticism is Jhat the whole trust movement is elitist. It benefits the upper and middle class by the very strict standards which it imposes. Trust farms in any neighbourhood may well drive up the price of land and houses, which would take them out of the market for all but the most affluent of would-be buyers. In some cases, the family may not be able to live up to the conditions of the sale. In such cases, this would mean that the land would be little more than scenic open space. So far this has not proven to be the case and, in the situation studied to date, the farmer making a deal with the trust has every intention of staying on the land until it can be passed on to his children. In the meantime, they have some money in the bank, even if it is not as much as they would have realized if they had sold the farm on the open market. A Final Thought If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich — John Fitzgerald Kennedy THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 9,1997 PAGE 5. The Short of it How’s summer going? How's your summer going? Mine's moving along, not exactly swimmingly, but more like a 100-metre dash. One, unfortunately, that never seems to end. For a rather obsessive person, which I will grudgingly admit I am, it has become an exercise in frustration. In a world not meant for predictablity, planning and preparation just never seem to work. I'm on a treadmill at top speed and no matter what buttons I push, I can't seem to slow it for any notable length of time. With weddings and showers, people moving in, people moving out, soccer, baseball and work, work, work, my days, evenings and weekends are full. And if a quiet evening at home falls into my lap, you can bet something will happen to stir up excitement. For example, when a stormy evening results in the cancellation of the sporting events I was going to photograph, giving me the brief impression that I can curl up with a book, a tree falls on one of our cars. Obviously, I, and a good many others whom I know arc in the same spot, was grateful for a day off this past week. I travelled up to cottage country to discover sanctuary on the beach, where, of course, it rained for the first time in days. We spent the evening chasing a bat around the living room and the next morning setting pails around the place because of a leaking roof. However, the aesthetic perfection of my surroundings managed to help me gain some perspective once again. During a sunny break, my brother-in-law and I found ourselves sitting quietly on the deck. For a prolonged interval there was no conversation; the two of us just watched the soothing calm of the lake, the swooping gulls and the gentle progress of a sailboat. It was a long sigh, a relaxing breath in the middle of my race through summer. After a time, I remarked at how easy it was to stare for hours at what is essentially nothing happening. The lakescape, he replied, was his giant television set. Il dawned on me that there are a few things like that in this life, that beckon you to stop and stare, that mesmirize because of simplicity or majesty. How many times have I found respite in watching a child sleep? It is a picture of perfection, a study of all that's right with the world. It can capture and hold my attention, freeing me, for awhile, at least, from any troubling thoughts. How many times has my weary mind been given rest by the colours in a fire? Their hypnotic, mystical dance is as soothing as a lullaby. It draws you as a powerful work of art can do. An aquarium of fish, a tranquil scene of another species going on with the business of living, can provide a soothing interlude in a hectic day. So life was never meant to be exactly as we plan. So sometimes it's out of our control. Thankfully, though, there are so many gifts given us during our stay here, that we are invited often to pause and refresh our senses on them. And I think I’m going to spend the rest of this summer, albeit from my perspective on the treadmill, seeking out as many of them as I can.