The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals

by Charles Siebert

An award-winning journalist’s all-night vigil with a retired chimp performer named Roger blossoms into a whole new way to regard our fellow creatures as well as ourselves.

While researching a recent New York Times Magazine cover story about chimpanzees, Charles Siebert visited a retirement home for former ape movie stars and circus entertainers in Wauchula, Florida known as the Center for Great Apes. There Siebert encountered Roger, a twenty-eight-year-old former Ringling Brothers star who seemed convinced he knew the author from some other time and place. Haunted by Roger’s response, Siebert takes up residence at the Center for Great Apes and, in the course of one late-night visit to a sleepless Roger’s quarters, gets to the bottom of this mysterious connection between himself and his simian counterpart.

The result is The Wauchula Woods Accord , a strikingly written, wide-ranging physical and metaphysical foray into the increasingly fraught frontier between humans and other animals; a journey that encompasses many of the author’s encounters with chimpanzees and other animals, as well as the latest scientific discoveries that underscore our intimate biological bonds not only with our nearest kin, but with far more remote-seeming life-forms. By journey’s end, the reader arrives at a deeper understanding both of Roger and of our numerous other animal selves, a recognition—an accord— that carries a new sense of responsibility for how we view and treat all animals, including ourselves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Nature, Wildlife

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Charles Siebert is a poet, journalist, essayist, and contributing writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine. His work has appeared in a broad array of publications, including The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, Vanity Fair, Outside, Esquire, and Men's Journal.

Reviews

[Kerri]

The book is rather shallow and anecdotal in content, but it is so beautifully and passionately written, it's worth every word. I can't figure out whether he's trying to say that we and and animals are incredibly alike, or we and animals are so different that we will never understand them (he seems to attempt to make both points at different times), but if anything, his stories and experiences make it quite clear that we are ruining animals. A fast read, and a powerful one.

[Terlamaine]

Charles Siebert is my professor at New York University. I am yet to read this books but I am well acquainted with his New York Times articles. As a person, he is deeply passionate about translating science into words which tell a story. Having traveled across the globe in an effort to immerse himself in his stories, and acquainted with the likes of Jane Goodall, he has a wealth of knowledge to share. He is the type of teacher who cares about the process more so than a grade. A poet by training- expect this book to be rich in imagery and metaphor- but don't let this make you lose sight of the larger picture. His care for animals stems deep, and I'm sure his voice will ring true in the pages of this book. He is a wonderful man in person, who genuinely cares about he does. I hope a small part of his passion, which is found within these pages, reaches you.

[Elisa Kay]

I love chimpanzees and thought that this would be an interesting read.
I definitely found out some facts that I was not aware of before.
I also found out some facts about elephants.

[Jessica]

Warning: This book details some of the saddest statistics, facts and stories you will read. Your heart will break and you will at times feel like throwing up from some of the brutality documented within these pages.

*I wept reading about “Lucy” the chimpanzee that was raised as a human daughter by a psychologist and his wife, just to see what would happen. What follows can only be described as bizarre years of breaking Lucy of all Chimpanzee instincts, lifestyle and knowledge and creating a dependent being that cannot function on her own as a human in a human world or a chimpanzee in a chimpanzee world. Dr. Temerlin stresses that he never had xual relations with Lucy but would allow her to hold him member in his mouth if she liked. Years later the Temerlins decide they want more freedom in their lives and want to rid themselves of Lucy. Some of the options they come up with make you question their humanity, as if you didn’t already. Eventually they decide to ship her off to Gambia to be rehabilitated back into a chimp. The shock, depression and angst Lucy experiences is disturbing. Miraculously, she is eventually rehabilitated to the point she can live in the jungle and fend for herself in natural settings. Although she never loses her human roots and in subsequent visits by her rehabilitator, she is always the first to greet human coming into her territory. It is ultimately this lack of fear that leads to her death by poachers. Her body is found hands, feet and pelt removed from her corpse.

*The documentation of the Palm Oil workers camp that captured an orangutan, shaved it, chained it to a bed and kept it as a X slave for all the camp worker. The orangutan was raped and beaten repeatedly. I could barely get through this passage.

*Four time a year in Missouri is the country’s largest exotic pet auction. Where anyone can buy anything as long as they have the money, regardless of what nefarious reasons they may have for owning these animals. Breeders, roadside tourist attraction zoos, theme parks etc. whose only goal is to exploit these animals not provide for them. And if you think that by supporting your accredited metropolitan zoo, that supposedly touts a message of conservation and preservation you are saving those animals from the auction block you are wrong. The sad fact is almost every zoo sells off its surplus to the auctions to make room for all the cute cuddly babies you want to coo at.

*Page after heart wrenching page documenting instances of kept animals who get out of their incarceration and harm or merely frighten humans and are brutally murdered in mob like fashion. Whose only crime was wanting freedom.

It is still a good read. This book truly does give you a better understanding towards animals. Informative and eye-opening. Just prepare yourself for some the horrific details you will read.

[Stephen]

Enthralling. Disturbing. Up-lifting.

Yes, somehow author Charles Siebert manages a hat trick.

The central narrative in the book The Wauchula Woods Accord, is the surprising connection, i.e. relationship that spontaneously happens between the author and Roger, a “humanzee”: a chimpanzee that has spent his entire life living with humans, now being forced to retire in the company of other chimps. Roger must somehow find his inner chimp relinquishing his humanity. But is that even possible? Can his human/chimp psyche even be stretched that far? Isn’t it too much to ask of him emotionally? And just where is the line between humanity and "chimpanity"?

Even though Roger’s great ape retirement village is idyllic, he sits alone, plagued by insomnia, self-isolated from the other members of his species.

As the book progresses, Siebert dismantles the notion of anthropomorphism: the projection of human behaviors and emotions onto animals. He writes about other very “human-like” qualities found in mammals—great apes, elephants, whales, dolphins—completely dispelling the myth that only people have personalities, emotions, remembrances.

Siebert writes, “And yet it makes no difference any longer that we can’t, as the standard warning against anthropomorphizing goes, possibly know what Roger is thinking. Or what a Roger day is like, or a whale’s, or an elephant’s, or a parrot’s.

“That is one of the peculiar things about this moment we’ve arrived at with the animals. We’ve come to know enough now about the shared biological underpinnings of so many of those brains in Dr. Hof’s cooler that somehow the question of what Roger’s or another animal’s day might be like has become wholly incidental to the fact that they clearly have days, too, and deeply wounded ones.

“Science has obviated anthropomorphism—the crime of projecting our stories upon the animals—by, of all things, repeatedly pointing out to us just how uncomfortably close to our stories so many aspects of theirs actually are."

Along the way, many of Siebert’s side trips are disturbing as he details some of the anguish our kind has wrought upon the world of their kind, but in the final pages he restores our humanity, or at least the sense that it IS possible to heal a wounded psyche. And in the end we come to realize that our species is not alone, only disturbingly self-isolated like Roger.

This book is profound; its implications far-reaching. Why look to outer space for other intelligent life when it surrounds us here on earth.

[Bucket]

Siebert has been traveling the world learning about animal personalities and how much smarter/more thoughtful/more emotional they are than we thought. The main focus of the book is on primates and their struggles after they have been used as circus performers or actors or research subjects. There is also interesting information about animal trials throughout history (from flies to rats to pigs to elephants) and how wars and poaching in Africa affect elephants there. Siebert tells the story of his travels while spending the night sitting in front of the cage of Roger, a chimp who has never been in the wild and now resides in a top-notch primate retirement facility in Florida. He and Roger stare at each other for hours and Siebert tells stories of his travels and his mindset while always returning to the present moment with Roger.


This book didn't engage me at first. I was a little confused by Siebert's laser-like focus on Roger and their relationship and more interested in the stories of Siebert's travels all over the world. The ending made the Roger focus make more sense, but I still was a little confused by Siebert. He seemed a little depressed, and occasionally suicidal (mentioning things like wishing that when he touched Roger, Roger would just kill him and end it all that way). I didn't really understand his need to get in touch with his inner chimp, no matter the cost. I was very interested in the science here though, as well as in Siebert's observations about what he has seen animals be capable of (as opposed to his internal reflections).

Themes: animal sentience, animal rights, animal personality, evolution, human/primate similarities, animal intelligence, science, road-side zoos, some philosophical discussion of the treatment of animals

[J.D. Steens]

Siebert's book takes you on his tour around the country (and abroad) where he relates revealing stories about human relationships with animals. For instance, Siebert tells the story of a psychologist who had sexual fantasies about a female chimpanzee he was raising and who admitted that he frequently let the chimp mouth his penis. The author tells us about a British historian whose book on the "Lost History of Europe's Animal Trials" describes cases of animals put on trial for their perceived crimes. Siebert met a group of American college kids on a safari in Africa. Siebert's enthusiasm for the mysteries evolution met with uncomfortable silence and then the push-back from one of the group: "Six days Dude! He did it all in six days!" Siebert also observed that experts shy away from making strong connections between roaming, pillaging, and raping herds of parentless elephants and parentless kids in Uganda. The connection is so obvious to him, but the experts don't touch it because of the fear of being charged with anthropomorphism.

The center of this story is Siebert's special relationship with one chimpanzee, Roger. For Siebert, Roger represents all of these captive (research, entertainment) apes who are now finding homes in sanctuaries here and abroad. This is Siebert's focus. One such sanctuary is in Wauchula, Florida. The "Wauchula Woods Accord" is not a formal document. It is, rather, the author's plea that we stop abusing other creatures and one another. Given his encounters with some very crazy thinking, it will take more than pleas of Siebert's sort to accomplish his well-intended objective.

[Mari]

An interesting story of a journalist interested in wildlife and conservation. The tales about the captive primates and other animals he has encountered are interesting. However, it comes off as a self involved book, more about him than the animals when he delves into his wandering thoughts about the line between human and animal, if there is one. These sections could not keep my interest. Also, I had my doubts about at least one claim in the book, which made the entire rest of the book suspect. He stated that zoo animals are sold off at auctions to private owners when they get old and are no longer crowd pleasers, even from large, reputable zoos. This is not the case. Having worked in multiple zoos in multiple countries, I can say that the vast majority of people who work in zoos would find this abhorrent and would not let it stand. Also, there has been a distinct shift in zoo animal medicine to accommodate the health issues of the increasingly geriatric zoo animal population. If the author got this wrong, I have my doubts about the accuracy about all his statements.

[Ryan Holiday]

What a writer. I've read a lot of books about exotic animals throughout The Medici Giraffe and this is the most thoughtful, well-written and interesting. It has a narrative for a change, which is nice. It's a book about our relationship with animals and our growing understanding of their psychology and personalities, told through the events of a night the author spent with a chimp in the woods of Florida. Why, he asks, are we so drawn to portraying certain species as the opposite of what they are - chimps as comical man-children, elephants as kindly old women? How is this any different than the Roman's absurd caricatures of sex hungry apes or their belief that elephants could live to be 300 years old? A wonderful example artistic mastery, I loved this book because the author says so much in so few pages, without footnotes or research papers or lecturing.

[Annette]

Ordered this book because I wanted to learn about chimp sanctuaries and more about chimp minds. The book is mostly about the BORING existential musings of the author, who fancies himself a poet. The framing device is a night spent staring at a chimp who seems obsessed with the author. Flashbacks to interesting research and history beliefs about the animal mind are a welcome relief and what one wants to read the book for.

The framing device is supposed to be about a bond between the author and the chimp. Really, it seems he's just keeping the chimp up all night. In the end, the time spent staring at the chimp and not hurting it, as previous similar looking humans might have, seems to be therapeutic for the chimp. I hope it was for the author. I prefer my artists do their therapy on their own time.

[Colleen]

On the one hand I’m glad I know about the various rescue efforts described in the book. On the other hand, I didn’t like the way it was written and some of the story was fabricated. The copyright page has a note admitting that the interactions with Roger (a chimp at the Center for Great Apes), which form the backbone of the book, are embellished. The author claims to have sat with Roger at night which, apparently, was simply not possible. The speculation about Roger’s feelings and the musings about humans’ interactions with apes felt pretentious at best. So I’m giving it three stars because I think it’s worth knowing about some of the sanctuaries that exist out there, but I often found the writing to be annoying and I can't classify it as either fiction or nonfiction.

[Marla]

I heard the author interviewed on the Diane Rehm show (with a substitute interviewer) and the book sounded rather interesting. Although I believe the book to be a treatise on the human/animal relationship in general, most of it is concerned with chimpanzees. In fact, he noted in the interview that he originally wanted to title the book "Humanzee" but his publisher warned him that "no woman would buy a book with that title". (Woman? Huh?) Coincidentally, on the same day I read an essay by David Quammen in "The Boilerplate Rhino" exploring our exploitive relationship with chimpanzees and decrying the fates of many of these intelligent animals raised for entertainment or research.

[Sue Bridehead (A Pseudonym)]

It's a little hard to get into Siebert's writing style at first. The book has an unusual structure to it: part introspective journal, full of speculation and anthropomorphism about how animals feel/mourn/endure psychological wounds; and part factual overview of how humans relate to, fear, condescend to, domesticate and abuse wild animals, historically and currently.

Intellectual in tone, elliptical in storytelling. I read this at a skimming pace and enjoyed it. But beware: Siebert veers toward the pretentious. Read it any slower and you risk getting ejected from the story.

[Amy]

I don't read a lot of autobiographical non-fiction, because in general I find that people talking about themselves is tedious. If Mr. Siebert had cut out the paragraphs and pages in which he pondered the connection between himself and Roger, I would have been much more engaged. Since I began to skip those pages about halfway through, it made this a very quick read. On the other hand, his essays on the relationships and clashes between humans and animals were often riveting and worth sorting through the new agey interior monologues to get to.

[Kurt]

This is an amazing look at our closest cousins, chimps and other great apes, who have been ripped out of their own world and brought into ours, as performers and pets. Siebert makes a strong argument that these animals are essentially a distinct species, not quite human, not quite ape. He does so without treacly anthropomorphism either, yet the stories he tells of these unique and uniquely lonely creatures will break your heart. An eye-opener, for sure.

[Christina]

Only 200 pages but it took me weeks to read because the stories within were so painful that it was hard to continue. I appreciate the author bringing the tragedies humans inflict on animals to light, but I was less excited by his metaphysical ramblings at the beginning of each chapter. Also, I was expecting a much more light hearted book after hearing about it on This American Life, but the fun moments were interspered with things like rape of orangtuans by humans and the like.

[Katie]

I was really excited to read this book after I heard about it on the "Lucy" episode of Radiolab. Unfortunately, it didn't come even close to my expectations. Siebert has a long-winded, comma infected writing style that was very hard to follow. Furthermore, any insights he gave seemed to mostly come from other sources (quoting books and interviews) and not his own. It was an interesting topic, but I don't think I'll be going to him directly for any information in the future.

[Jennifer]

How could a book about chimps in retirement homes be boring? Well, Siebert succeeds by framing each chapter as a minute by minute account of him sitting with a chimp and waxing on about the metaphysical connection between man and animal. More facts and less fluff would have made this book more interesting.

[Ward Bell]

Fascinating; read in one sitting. What happens to chimps after 6? They're too dangerous to be pets (200 lbs & 5x stronger than the strongest of us). They live past 70. Cheetah of Tarzan / Weismuller fame is in fancy retirement home. They're incredible lock-pickers and escape artists. And we are so much like them. What happens to Lucy (the renowned sign language star) will break your heart.

[Cat]

A beautifully written, haunting yet strange, introspective book. It gives us a glimpse into the lives of captive chimps and holds a mirror up to us humans, asking the questions: What kind of creature are we to do so much harm? And: Do we want to live in a world without wild chimps, and if not, what are we going to do about it?

[Andrew Quinn]

Siebert can flat out write, almost too well, so that mediocre minds like mine heave from paragraph to paragraph to follow him, causing some brain drain. I was also influenced by my own hyper-sensitivity to animal cruelty, which made this subject hard for me to read and imagine. For this reason my review is not subjective.

[Kate]

A very self indulgent book. Siebert spends half the time recounting stories he'd previously written or books he'd read, and the other half musing in purple prose. With no less that four passages fantasising about him being murdered by various primates, I'd say there's more pathology here than in just the author's subjects.

[Anne]

I liked this book and would be read another by the same author. Certainly explored some intresting themes about animals and how they are 'kept' by humans. What it means to be captive and one can get to all sorts of thoughts about how humans are captive to thier worlds (culture, work, entertainment)

[Pam Porter]

Siebert has written a memoir about his travels to explore the similarities between all animals, especially humans and chimpanzees. Some of the author's visual images and complex sentences are so wonderful that I had to stop and reread them. The book felt "unbalanced" to me because this beautiful writing was interspersed with traditional narrative portions.

[Kathy]

guy visits and writes about captive chimps in the u.s., homed after once being used in entertainment industries. He believe one chimp who took a liking to him once saw him on the street years before. seems possible to me. sad story about animal mistreatment

[Laura]

Ever wonder what happened to the "Trunk Monkey"? Siebert discusses the plight of primates used in the entertainment industry after they are no longer "cute". Pair this with Elizabeth Hess's book "Nim Chimpsky" for a compelling examination of the fate of our closest animal relative.

[Tyger]

I do not understand what this book is about other than a man's love for a chimpanzee. It is interesting, but it's true nature is shrouded in the author's inability to make a point.

Interesting reading, but no focus.

[Stephen]

One of the best books I've read in years. It's a beautiful blend of memoir, nature writing, and research. Scientific and at turns impressionist, the implications of Siebert's writing have profoundly changed the way I look at the world. I will talk about this book with everyone that's close to me.

[Anna]

This American Life left me with more questions on the topic of ape retirement! Maybe this book will answer them.

[Laura Pedersen]

Thought this would be an interesting read, especially in light of that horrifying chimpanzee attack this past year. Not to mention poor ole' Bubbles. ( :) )