HE CAN SEE AGAIN
✓ Verified · cross-checked against 2 independent sources
Pierre could not see the people who loved him. He is fifty-four, he is a chimpanzee, and cataracts had taken his sight completely.
And then, among the first people he saw was a woman who has cared for him for more than twenty-five years. Pierre looked straight at her.
Pierre lives at Chimp Haven, two hundred forested acres outside Keithville, Louisiana. It is the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world, home to nearly three hundred chimpanzees retired from biomedical research. For many years, Pierre was the alpha of his social group.
Which is how his caregivers knew something was wrong. He began to withdraw. As the sanctuary tells it, it did not take his team long to trace that back to his eyesight, and over the next year, he went completely blind.
Here is the part I keep thinking about. Before anyone reached for surgery, the staff rebuilt his world around him. They used sound cues. They changed how they fed him. They added handholds and ladders to the places he went every day, so a chimpanzee who could no longer see could still get himself where he wanted to go. That is not a medical decision. That is a dignity decision.
Surgery came later, and it took months of preparation. As the Good News Network reported, the team used positive reinforcement training to teach Pierre to offer up his own eyes for care, to hold still for eyedrops and monitoring. And they taught him that while he was still blind. Think about what that asks of him. Hold steady. Let hands come toward your face. Trust that this is help, when you cannot see it coming.
He learned it.
A board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist named Doctor Kenneth Pierce removed the cataracts. It was the first cataract surgery ever performed on a resident of Chimp Haven.
The results came fast. Within hours, Pierre was responding to the sight of a caregiver he had known for years. Within days, he had reunited with Jill, one of his closest chimpanzee companions. He went back to his social group earlier than anyone had expected. And Michelle Reininger, the colony director who has cared for him for more than twenty-five years, said watching Pierre look at her again was something she will never forget.
Earlier this week we told you about Fatou, a gorilla in Berlin who turned sixty-nine, older than any gorilla on record. Today it is Pierre. There is a quiet theme running through both. The animals we took responsibility for are growing old, and somebody has decided that growing old is not the same as being finished. As the sanctuary's veterinarian put it, every chimpanzee ages differently, just like people do.
His veterinarian said the surgery itself was only one part of the process. She is right. The months of teaching a blind animal to trust hands he could not see coming, that was the actual work.
Here is my question today. What is one good thing that happened to you this week? Tell me in the comments.
Sources: chimphaven.org · goodnewsnetwork.org
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