Can you describe the happy period when Nim first got to the house in New York?
Nim was with the LaFarges for 18 months, and most of that was a pretty happy time. I think it was incredibly exciting to have this baby chimp around. He loved to be held, he drank from a bottle. By the time he was 2 months, he could cling to walls and get up and down the banister. There was a giant waterbed in the living room that Nim loved to bounce up and down upon. He was very beguiling. They dressed him in OshKosh and little T-shirts, and taught him how to sit at the table and use utensils. I think he really enjoyed being part of the family. After funding ran out and Terrace declared the project a failure, Nim was taken from his loving home in New York, and bounced around various grim research facilities before he wound up at Cleveland Amory’s sanctuary, in Texas. Tell me about what it was like for Nim to be put back in a cage with other chimps after he’d only ever known humans. It was terrifying. One graduate student described the response that all the [research] chimps had [upon
