Word: fossey
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...civil war forced Fossey to flee the Congo for Rwanda, where she established Karisoke Research Centre and generally shunned the company of her own species. "All of you have a family, a marriage and kids," she told curious visitors. "Those gorillas are my family...
More than most other naturalists, Fossey bonded with the subjects of her inquiry. When poachers killed the animals she had named Digit, Uncle Bert and Macho, she turned into a Rambo of animal rights. She beat captured poachers and terrified others with sham witchcraft. She shot at cattle that got too close to her "family's" territory...
...pleased with these tactics, the Rwandan government wanted to displace Fossey and market her research center as a tourist attraction. She dug in. To a journalist planning a visit in 1985 she wrote, "If push comes to shove, I am prepared to fight for my claim." Two days after Christmas, Fossey was hacked to death in her bed. Suspects ranged from vengeful poachers to an American researcher who had proclaimed his innocence and fled the country before a Rwandan court found him guilty in absentia. The judgment is questionable. Harold Hayes does not offer conclusive evidence about who committed...
...surprisingly, his book portrays a loner starved for affection. Raised in California, Fossey was an awkward six-footer by the time she was 14. She loved horses and dreamed of working with animals, but her college science grades were too low to qualify her for veterinary school. Working as an occupational therapist proved an insufficient outlet for Fossey's yearnings. In 1963 she took her first trip to Africa, where she paired off with a strapping young Rhodesian farmer. An on-again-off-again engagement eventually ended, as did a later romance with a nature photographer. Her tempestuous affair with...
...That Fossey impulsively embraced a heart of darkness is obvious. Yet the wild shadows in Hayes' biography are illuminated by what he calls a "miracle of will." Its origin is Fossey's desperation to escape her own loneliness. It made her fearless; it triggered her outrage and outbursts and was the source of her fierce attachments...