Something different about Tom

by Arryn Ketter
September 2001 newsletter

Tom is one of those amazing souls that you feel honoured having had the privilege to meet. Everyone who meets him, I think, must see how wise he is from the look that he gives you; from how deeply you can look into his eyes and he into yours. He's an old soul, as they say.

Tom enjoys painting. In fact, his paintings fetched over $300 each at an auction in Calgary and we currently have orders for more. You can tell that he enjoys it as he enthusiastically brushes the paint on the canvas never releasing his brush or the canvas until he has finished. Sometimes this involves covering the entire canvas with paint so that no white is left visible.

Yet, one afternoon, as I set up the paints, the brushes and the canvas, it was different. Tom didn't reach for the brush or the canvas, but rather kept pointing at the one jar of paint that I had been unable to open-the jar of black paint. Now as you know, the hands and feet of chimpanzees are very dark, black on some. Tom, as a result of an injury that occurred in the laboratory, has a foot that is very badly scared and the skin on that foot is still pink.

I asked him to forget about the black paint since it was stuck shut but, as chimpanzees so often do, he persisted and persisted. Finally, when I realized that he wouldn't give up, I went to find a wrench to open up the black paint. I got the jar of paint open and set it in front of him. Clearly pleased, he gave me a grunt of approval. Then he did something unexpected. I waited for him to pick up his brush and begin applying paint to the canvas but he had other intentions.

Tom dipped his fingers into the jar and applied the black paint to his pink foot. He worked slowly and carefully to cover every inch of visible pink. I couldn't help but feel the tears well up in my eyes. As they rolled down my cheeks, I thought how this man in front of me must feel incredibly self-conscious about his pink foot and how difficult it must be for him to look so different from the others. I was also crying at the thought that this too is something we share with chimpanzees: an acute awareness of what it means — and the suffering that may entail — to look different.

With each moment I spend with chimpanzees, it is the similarities that have become increasingly obvious, not the differences. What is all the more difficult to understand, however, is how so many people don't see them at all. I am sad for those who met Tom in the past and missed knowing that they met one of the most amazing persons on this planet.