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cle around the neighborhood, taking a 
bubble bath, playing tug of war, and 
squirting water from a hose into the 
upper-story windows of the Raven 
house. In one sequence, Meshie picks up 
a baby in the family, carefully carries 
her to a high chair, brings over her food 
in a bowl, and feeds her with a spoon. 
After the baby is finished eating, 
Meshie fetches a damp cloth and neatly 
wipes clean the baby’s tray. Meshie was 
adept at escaping from any kind of cage 
or leash, and one sequence in the film 
shows her untying herself from a tree by 
loosening the knot with her teeth, pull- 
ing open the knot’s loop, climbing 
through the loop, and scurrying away. If 
the rope were double- or triple-knotted, 
she would simply climb through the 
knot’s loops several times, a rather so- 
phisticated piece of topological reason- 
ing. Meshie also learned how to open a 
padlock by packing it with sand, how to 
break an iron chain by knotting it and 
Harry Shapiro will introduce and show 
the film about Meshie made by Harry 
Raven in the 1930s in a special program 
open only to Museum members. Bringing 
up Meshie will take place on Wednesday, 
December 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the Museum’s 
Auditorium. The program is free, but ad- 
vance tickets are required. Call the Mem- 
bership Office at (212) 873-1327 for ticket 
availability. 
then pulling, and how to remove leather 
collars by wetting them over and over 
again with her tongue until they became 
brittle. If put in a cage, she would en- 
deavor, sometimes with success, to pry 
or bash her way out. In many ways 
Meshie was curiously “human.” In the 
movie, for example, she walks upright 
most of the time instead of walking with 
her knuckles on the ground. And Raven 
reported that, like many New Yorkers, 
the chimp had a pasty white complexion 
in winter but tanned a rich brown in the 
summer. 
Exactly how much coaching Meshie 
got in performing many of her tricks is 
unclear, but it was considerable. If 
primatologists were to study the movie 
today (none have, surprisingly enough), 
they probably would disagree about how 
much Meshie was being “cued” and to 
what extent her actions were simply 
imitative. But no one would disagree 
that Meshie led an extraordinary life for 
a chimpanzee — or even for a human. 
Meshie lunched with many prominent 
citizens, including Museum president 
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mr. and Mrs. 
Ralph Pulitzer, and the novelist Edna 
Ferber. The high point of the chimp’s 
social career in New York was de- 
scribed by Raven in 1933: 
Not long ago Meshie had the honor of being 
the guest of President F. Trubee Davidson 
of the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory at a formal banquet at the Waldorf- 
Astoria. What could be stranger, more un- 
like her former home in the African forest, 
than the ride across Manhattan in a taxi- 
cab, the brightly lighted hotel with the 
gaily-dressed people everywhere, the brass 
band and Negro minstrels! But she rode her 
kiddie car through the foyer, into the ban- 
quet hall crowded with strangers, and took 
her place at the table with the rest of the 
guests. She politely ate some of each course 
as the dinner was served, sat quietly while 
the speeches were made, blinked while the 
press photographers took more than a dozen 
flash-light photographs of her, and did not 
get home until long after midnight. 
Meshie spent about five years with 
the Ravens in their Long Island home. 
Her final year with them was one of 
increasing difficulty, according to Sha- 
piro: 
“When Meshie became sexually ma- 
ture at about six years old she became a 
real problem. Meshie thought of Harry 
as her father, and he was really the only 
one who could control her. Mrs. Raven 
often had to call Harry at the Museum 
because of Meshie, and he would have 
to rush home. They didn’t know what to 
do. Finally Mrs. Raven insisted that 
Meshie go, and so they sold her to a zoo 
in Chicago. 
“About a year or so later I ran into 
Harry in the hall at the Museum. He 
was very upset. He told me he had been 
passing through Chicago and decided to 
see Meshie at the zoo. The zookeeper 
warned him that Meshie had become 
absolutely wild and dangerous. Sure 
enough, as Harry approached her cage 
he could hear her screaming and 
banging on the bars and carrying on. 
The zookeeper didn’t want to let Harry 
go into the cage, but he insisted. When 
he went in, Meshie rushed into his arms 
and clung to him tightly. Tears were 
streaming down her face.” 
Meshie died in childbirth a year later, 
and the zoo shipped her body back to 
the Museum, where it was mounted and 
put on display in the Hall of Primates. 
No label indicates the animal’s identity, 
but it is said that Raven stopped by the 
hall once in a while and gazed thought- 
fully at the stuffed chimp with the glass 
eyes. “I suppose,” said Shapiro, “it was 
kind of a memorial for him.” 
Douglas J. Preston 
76 
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