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Tough Guy Hondo by Barb Wolfe, DVM, PhD

Chimps are a disgusting, violent society,” advised my colleague as I contemplated the group of thirteen in front of me. This was early in my career and as the new veterinarian at the North Carolina Zoo in 1997, I didn’t know much about chimpanzee behavior. I stood watching the peaceable group in silent disagreement. A two-year-old wobbled by with a towel on her head. Two juveniles were donning socks for fun, while others poked at bits of food with sticks or bulldozed piles of straw around in circles with their lanky arms. I was marveling at my good fortune. I had a great job—and my first task of the day was to meet the chimp keepers and learn about these amusing animals in their care.

Punctuating that thought, a low howl began in the room, growing rapidly into a crescendo of hoots and screams. The keeper beside me said softly, “Just hold still.” I searched the group for the source of the noise. Hondo, the dominant male, was looking directly at me, bobbing up and down menacingly, while the rest of the group darted frantically about whooping the equivalent of a chimp-language emergency signal. Suddenly, Hondo bounded from the back of the enclosure, launched himself onto the mesh between us, and spat what felt like an ocean of water in my face. I didn’t hold still. I reeled involuntarily backward, stumbled on a pile of hoses, and ended up propped against a wall—soaked, horrified, embarrassed, and not entirely sure that I couldn’t catch Ebola virus from captive chimp spit.

It had never occurred to me that zoo animals would resent their vets. We are hardwired to love animals. We spend our whole lives plotting this career, scooping up clinic poop as kids, getting good grades even in the classes we hate, and volunteering our way through life long beyond the time when our childhood friends are having kids and buying houses. All to get to this glorious station: Zoo Vet. Then we find out that most animals can smell a vet coming before the truck rattles into the driveway, and will prepare their most unwelcoming demeanor. If they have limbs capable of hurling something, they will find something to hurl. If they can emit a nasty smell, they will be at their smelliest when you get there. And those with teeth and loud voices? Well, despite the thickest steel bars between you, being four feet from a lion that has just received a dart and is standing full height and roaring at you can truly necessitate a wardrobe change.

Hondo was no exception, and he greeted me the same way every time I paid the chimps a visit during those first few years. The way to cure him, the keepers said, was to ignore the assault. Just the way we tell our kids to deal with bullies. So year after year, every time a chimp had a runny nose or a cut on its finger, I would approach the enclosure calmly and try to examine the patient with composure while the keeper rewarded it with fruit juice or yogurt through the mesh. Out of the corner of my eye, I would see Hondo filling his mouth at the water spigot. Then, inevitably, the warning hoots of the troop would begin, the patient would dart fearfully away, and Hondo would appear, like a flying King Kong, to give me a dousing. I’d quietly stand up, dripping spit from my eyelashes, issue suggestions for treatment of the patient, and retreat without even the solace of a threatening glare at him.

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