A brave soul, a medical mystery, and a new best friend—Great Ape Trust’s newest orangutan traveled a long road to get to Des Moines.
By Jennifer Wilson
 This is the story of a brave little ape named Allie. The 11-year-old orangutan with a tuft of auburn hair atop her head had some tough breaks in her short life.
Allie’s mother died suddenly when she was just six years old. Young orangutans tend to stay with their mothers for the better part of a decade, and the tragedy devastated her.
Soon after, Allie experienced an unexplainable neurological event that rendered her legs and arms useless.
Allie’s keepers at the Denver Zoo ran test after test, extremely concerned for one of their favorite orangutans, and desperate to help her.
Though the cause of her paralysis was never discovered, Allie began to recover slowly, but not completely. The Denver Zoo knew Allie needed a facility that would assist her physically in getting full use of her body again.
That’s when Lynn Kramer, vice president of biological programs, called his good friend Rob Shumaker of Great Ape Trust of Iowa.
A grim situation, a real presence
“I was very, very afraid.”
That’s Rhonda Pietsch, who has known Allie since she first arrived at the Denver Zoo in 1996. Pietsch was there when the zoo opened the crate on Allie and her mother, Penari. She was there for Allie when Penari died. Pietsch was also there two years ago when Allie seemed constantly tired, then slowly lost her motor coordination.
“It’s pretty scary,” says Pietsch, her soft-spoken demeanor and long brown hair putting to mind a favorite aunt. “When you’re dealing with a human, you can ask a series of questions to narrow down the problem. We couldn’t do that. It was one of the scariest things I’d ever been through.”
 When Allie began to recover with high doses of antibiotics and steroids, Pietsch and Kramer hoped for the best. But a 100 percent recovery just wasn’t happening, the Denver team thought immediately of Great Ape Trust.
Shumaker remembers when Kramer first called.
“I said ‘Lynn, it’s just not going work,’” he says. “We have a vertical building—a physically demanding place. He had sent me some video of Allie, and the situation seemed somewhat grim. She really had a tough time getting around.”
But Kramer was convinced that Great Ape Trust was right for Allie. So Shumaker went to Denver to meet her himself.
Pietsch took Shumaker directly to Allie when he arrived. He says he could see instantly that she was mentally, emotionally and psychologically whole.
“She was a real presence,” says Shumaker. “She just needed more time, more help and a different facility to start getting the physical part back.
“The folks in Denver did a spectacular job. They had been truly heroic. This may not have had a happy ending if not for the patience and ethics the people at Denver Zoo have.”
After a brief conference with his staff and the veterinarians, Shumaker transferred Allie to Des Moines in October 2005.
New friends
That happy ending began somewhat painfully.
The earnest caretakers at The Trust, Andy Antilla and Peter Clay, along with Shumaker, would nudge along Allie’s rehabilitation—but they’d agreed she wouldn’t be treated like a victim. She never acted like one anyway. Allie was determined to move around the challenging enclosures in Des Moines—though she didn’t have the agility and strength to do so when she arrived.
If Allie wanted something, she had to get up and get it. She often overdid, causing substantial soreness and muscle aches. Then she developed a problem no one had predicted—large blisters which re-opened every time she used her hands.
“That was a long road, because we couldn’t help her with that,” says Shumaker. “Her hands just had to toughen up on their own.”
 Each day, Antilla and Clay massaged Allie’s palms, opened the fingers of her tightly closed fists, and doctored her blisters. On top of the ministrations, Allie had met Azy, the resident male at The Trust, more than 17 years her senior. She was afraid of him.
Staff members knew Allie was stressed and were tentative about introducing her to Knobi, the older female ape in the enclosure. But, when they did, a wonderful thing happened to both of them.
Knobi was allowed into Allie’s space and the significantly younger Allie held out her hand.
Knobi, who had been quietly observing the new girl since her arrival, gently picked up that hand and performed the entire physical-therapy routine on her new friend. As orangutans do, Knobi used her lips to examine Allie’s blisters and stiff fingers.
They were instant friends, a turn of events that made Allie’s life just a little bit easier.
“Knobi is like her best girlfriend,” says Pietsch. “Knobi watches out for her. She’s protective of her. She seems to worry about where she is, if she needs anything. The happiest part for me is that I think she has the best time here—she has social companionship with her own species and human companionship for physical therapy.”
As Pietsch returned to visit Allie in late October of this year – as she’s done a half-dozen times – she sees tremendous change in her former charge.
Allie still doesn’t have full use of her legs, but her hands are close to normal. And the leg thing doesn’t get her down.
“She’s very creative in coming up with alternative methods of locomotion,” says Pietsch with a smile. “She somersaults everywhere now.”
Shumaker says the whole Des Moines staff admires Allie’s desire to be normal despite everything she’s gone through. She’s not only determined to be functional—she’s determined to thrive.
“This is not a charity case. We’re not doing anybody a favor here. We’re doing what’s right,” says Shumaker. “Allie has been through a lot. Yet she was determined to get through it. She had to have a chance. We were honored to give it to her.”
Watching Allie play quietly in the orangutan enclosure, her face covered in purple marker from a day of free-form art projects and her mouth full of sugar-free Jell-O and popcorn, it seems like the bright little ape exemplifies many things. Typical kid. Brave soul. Broken heart on the mend.
Great Ape Trust Background
When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
