A couple of friends and I went to explore the “zoo” today. We had heard much about this zoo, but were unsure what to expect. We drove an hour outside the city and approached a sign for the Liberian Biomedical Institute. This was the “zoo”–a medical institute that housed chimps for experiments.

We drove up to the gate and were told to contact the “white man,” and he would decide if we could enter. We found a house, and a European guy came down the stairs. He said the Institute was not open to the public, but since we were already there he would show us around.

There was a huge cage with lots of chimps. As the white man told us their stories (one came from a Chinese restaurant in Buenos Aires…) a large chimp picked up a pile of dirt and grass and chucked it at us through the fence at the speed of a major league baseball pitcher. We all scattered behind bushes.

The white man was extremely kind and he appears to treat the chimps very humanely. Just by hearing him talk you can tell he thought of them as friends. In fact most of them are being released in an uninhabited island because the institute is running out of money.

The parallels to Russell Banks’ “The Darling” were uncanny. But I’ll leave it at that.

Yes, this chimp is on a cell phone.