Whilst most children have treasured teddy bears, I collected a small army of cuddly primates. Of course, I had the typical teddies as well, but it was the array of monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans and lemurs that made up the majority of my toy collection.
My childhood favourite, and a toy that I have to this day, I very originally named 'monkey'. I actually stole him from a shelf in my mum's shop as a one year old and stubbornly refused to give him back until she had to give in and let me keep him. I always kept him close to me when I was little, and even took him on every holiday, making him a very well-travelled toy.
In fact, monkey has travelled to some places that I myself have not reached. His I love NY t-shirt is a souvenir from when my mum and sister took him to New York in my absence. At that time I was in Costa Rica on a ten week conservation expedition and so my mum, who had never had me away from home for so long before, was comforted by the presence of my much-loved toy whilst I was away.
I think my mum actually found it slightly strange that her young daughter's favourite animals were the chimpanzees. She probably found it even stranger that while my younger sister was somewhat traumatised from viewing all of ten minutes of a documentary about her favourite animal, entitled "the dark side of dolphins", I only became more interested in chimpanzees after becoming aware of their carnivorous and even cannibalistic behaviour.
Having wanted to follow in the footsteps of Jane Goodall and study chimpanzees in the wild since I was a young girl, I cannot quite believe that I will soon be leaving for my first chimpanzee chasing adventure!
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