No. 65

Echo Guernsey

CN: animal under duress

On January 31st, 1961, a chimpanzee who was born in the wild, then purchased by the U.S. government’s Holloman Air Force Base, was launched into space aboard a suborbital rocket.

This is his story.

I. Jungle, 1957

Under July stars and gentle raindrops, in the highland jungle of a colonized
Cameroon, I emerge from my mother’s womb to touch down upon the Earth.
We, are the chimpanzees, who soon Jane Goodall will observe termite-fishing.
When she writes to Dr. Leakey of our dexterous tool use, he will respond:
“Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.”
Four months old, in November, I first behold my alleged cousin—man,

Great Ape who throws fire—who singes, burns, explodes a world
meant to be shared. Who scorches my mother with lead until she can
no longer carry me. Who pries my thin arms off the body of her,
which is destined for a restaurant menu someplace in Europe.
Me, I’m sold to Florida’s Miami Rare Bird Farm where we wild ones
are bred to become stars—of the silver screen, of NASA’s space program.

In this same November of my orphancy,
a dog born some years back on the streets of Moscow,
her life a frost-bitten plea for scraps through long Russian winters,
orbits the Earth in Sputnik 2.
She and I will both go to space, but only one of us will return.
Her name is Laika and she has brown eyes, just like me. 

For $457, my 19 pounds become US military property—
goodbye, rare flamingo birds! Pink feathers the same color
as the sunset I watch, flying west toward New Mexico.
Says the veterinarian at Holloman Air Force Base: “This dirty monkey
has parasites and fleas!” I scream. Occasionally, I bite. And they say:
“Bad monkey—don’t you know, what happens to the bad ones?”

Down a long corridor hangs a photograph, the caption: “Project Barbeque.”
Looking closer, I see—a pig, fast asleep,
strapped to a pod affixed to metal tracks that stretch across the desert.
When I shake the frame to wake him, my mother’s hoot echoes behind my eyes,
“No, no! Be a good ape!” So, I let the pig sleep. Rough hands strap me to a table,
listen to my heart and ask—“Think he'll survive space?” Then reply, “No.”

Astronaut training equals levers: yellow, white, red. Correct: banana pellet.
Wrong: electric jolt! “Bad monkey!” Humans,
why do you yearn for the moon?
Is it because she was once a part of our Earth?
But we both know you’ve never let yourself love this world—
what makes you believe you’ll be able to love the next?

Me—who you call No. 65—me and the other NASA Space Chimps,
we and all the mice, pigs, fruit flies,
black bears who you’ve accelerated to 300 meters/s,
shackled and forced to break sound barriers,
we who you’ve not bothered to recover
when our capsules crash back into the sea,

we prefer the moon where she hangs,
casting tender light upon Earth’s night,
as we sleep,
as we forage and dream,
dream still, even as you insist on denying us
our capacity for dreaming.

II. Space, 1961  

Okay! I’m 157 miles above!
Yes, this is “Ham” of Project Mercury, first Great Ape launched into the abyss,
reporting what I see through the window—
Oh, humans… This loneliness is what you’ve been seeking?
Please, bring me back,
let me feel again soil between my thumbs opposable,
damp in Cameroon and bone-dry in the New Mexican deserts,
bring me home into the blue green cradle,
only jungle in this measureless void.

My view from up high does not astound,
the lesson to be learned here one I learned in the womb—
we are bound to one another.
To calm myself, I recall my troop’s bedtime stories,
of the world before humans
pulled their hands away from the ground, took
to two feet and forgot what it means
to belong.

HOT! It’s HOT—my heart thump—thump—THUMPS—
I hear my mother hooting from deep under my brow ridge.
Bang on the glass! Scream in this vacuum,
this too much pressure—HOTTER, OUCH! 
Laika, girl, is this how it feels to be disintegrated?
Space dog, soft friend of fur, please be with me, I am frightened!
Tumbling back as if from the tallest branch of time toward Earth, I vow, if I survive—
to walk forevermore on all fours, hands touching always the curve of home.

Crashing back,
falling not gentle like raindrops in a Cameroonian highland,  
but a sharp tear through ozone like lead bullets and bombs—
SPLASH! I collide with the sea. My nose smacks against the window,
springing a scent of iron. I feel waves sloshing—
but chimpanzees cannot swim.
If they don’t come to recover me,
at least I will die in the blue.

Descending to the seafloor, or so it feels, the whales sing
as Laika licks the blood from my nose,
but I will not give in to their music or a sweet sticky tongue,
for the humans must see me alive
to believe they can catapult out of this world into beyond—
Space Chimp Lives:
Paves Way for Mankind’s Moon Conquest!
After two hours at sea, the armada spots my capsule,

military boats and helicopters drown out the lapping water, surrounding me,
“Ham the Astro Chimp,” who left Earth’s orbit before any man,
Ham, No. 65, who was not amused by the vastness.
They pull my scorched vessel aboard the USS Donner—
named for that mountainous pass in the Sierras—
unlatch the fastenings with solemnity, everyone presuming my casualty, but—
there am I! Brown eyes reflecting back fresh horizons for the taking.
Seeing me, they smile wide, like the chimpanzees smile,

pat each other on the back, like we chimpanzees pat each other,
to reassure of the sanctity of bonds and existence.
The men laugh, only not like the chimpanzees laugh,
tickled not by this moment, but by its implications for tomorrow—
craters and empty seas and colonization unbridled,
flags to be planted amid the chalky dust of a satellite that cannot support life.
The veterinarian performs a quick exam—“Ham appears healthy
and in good spirits! Though, he did mess himself upon re-entry, dirty monkey.”

The microphone presses to my chin. “Hoot! Hoot!”
THE MOON AWAITS YOU, HUMANS!
PACK UP YOUR FIRE! “Hoot! Hoot!” AND BLAST OFF!
Please just leave the rest of us,
chimpanzees and pigs and street dogs and fruit flies, behind.
Interview over, they hand me an apple to quiet my voice
so man can at last claim his rightful place among the gods.
Crunch, crunch. Ah, a taste found only here, on my Earth so delicious.

III. Concrete, 1963 – 1983

Now, I am the retired hero, knuckle-walking across hard slab,
back turned toward the visitors who yell through bars—
“Tell us, Ham—is there a heaven?”
Of course, there is, hoot hoot. You’re standing on it. 
The zoo staff brush off my lethargy, joke that I’m mad I didn’t get a ticker-tape parade,
but I’m not mad, just going mad slowly,
because here, at the National Zoological Park in D.C.,
birthplace of democracy for the human animal,
I live alone,
like I’m still orbiting in isolation aboard Mercury-Redstone 2.

But there are cardinals overhead.
Drooping elm branches nearly within reach.
Sometimes a mouse whose tiny whiskers nudge at my big toe
to remind me I’m not still floating out in the void.
After sixteen years solitary, I’m relocated to a zoo in North Carolina.
There, I inhale a musk like my mother’s and as the steel door opens,
my new cage-mates eye me with curiosity.
Slowly we move closer, hoot softly,
then pat each other to reassure of the sanctity.
Pulling me into an embrace, they say, “good ape.”

When, at 25, my too-big heart stops beating,
the Air Force decides to stuff my body for display,
but the Washington Post cries “dreadful precedent!”
for all the bipedal spacemen to come.
My bones are sent to a museum in Silver Spring,
my organs necropsied,
and all that’s left of my skin and hair,
what little tufts I didn’t pluck out during the stress of isolation,
is cremated and buried in the desert at Alamogordo,
my final resting site also the birth place of man’s nuclear flame.

For decades, I will continue to be called a hero,
until Doctor Jane Goodall,
examining the footage of my space flight,
declares, polite but firm,
that in her decades spent observing chimpanzees
both in the wild and behind bars,
during my 6 minutes alone in the universe
she sees clearly the “most extreme fear”
ever beheld
in the eyes of man’s kin.

In Moscow, tucked away in an alley off the main streets,
stands a monument to Laika. Failing to mention the color of her eyes,
it notes instead her great honor.
How from her heavy life as a stray
she crawled triumphantly into space,
sacrificing herself
honestly, burning
for the sake of science.
Staying forever a star.
But Laika was never Moscow’s star. She was her mother’s daughter.

On my marker at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, it is written:
“Ham proved mankind could live and work in space.”
But my journey proved nothing of mankind, 
other than his own lunacy,
at believing himself fit to rule a sentient universe.
So, thank you, Dr. Leakey et al., for your offer to accept the chimpanzees,
but we do not wish to share classification with man,
alleged Greatest of the Apes,
who would trade gentle raindrops and whiskered friends for

  —oblivion.

The Science

I studied great ape behavior as an undergraduate and, after college, worked for years with chimpanzees, western lowland gorillas, and many other species in zoological, rehabilitation, and sanctuary settings. I have long known of ‘Ham’, the chimpanzee sent into space by NASA, and felt compelled to write a poem from his perspective, giving agency and voice to his lived experience as a reasoning and embodied being who was subjected to a spaceflight that rocketed him out of Earth’s orbit with no promise of return. While my poem takes certain creative liberties in the realms of cognition, philosophy, and soul, given my years spent in the company of non-human great apes, I am one to err on the side of granting expanse around the consciousness of another, rather than prescribing restrictions - particularly for a chimpanzee forced into the role of ‘Astrochimp’ in service of mankind's aspiration to conquer the moon.

The Poet

Echo Guernsey is a former animal behaviorist with a lifelong passion for conservation and environmental justice. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University. Beyond her writing life, she is a licensed funeral director and death midwife with a commitment to sustainable and equitable deathcare.

Next poem: Orchestration by Shona McQuilken