Volunteer Gardeners Give Zoo’s Gorillas a Taste of the Jungle

Several Valley residents have adopted needy families in the Los Angeles area and are supplying food on a weekly basis.

Not only do they provide the food, but they raise it. A praiseworthy undertaking, and one that takes considerable understanding, as well as effort, on their part.

The recipients are what the middle class might politely term dysfunctional.

Chris, 31, has impregnated both Sandy, 32, and her daughter, Cleo, who is 16. Cleo and Chris have a son, Kelly, who is 7. Sandy and Chris have another daughter, Angel, who is 6 1/2. Chris doesn’t smoke, drink or do drugs, but he does monkey around.

When the Valley folks bring food to the families, Chris is always there trying to grab most of it. Then he takes things like cornstalks and tries to bop other members of his family over the head with them.

Evie, 18, another member of the group and something of a lady, likes to take the food and make a little circle around herself with it. Then she rearranges it like a housewife pushing around the furniture.

Chris and his friends and family reside in the Los Angeles Zoo gorilla compound, and the Valleyites who bring them food are known as the keepers of the Gorilla Garden, located in the Sepulveda Garden Center in Encino.

You will find these gardeners on Saturdays planting and picking flowers and vegetables in the 12 plots rented by the zoo for this purpose.

On Sundays they gather up the newly grown goodies and turn them over to the gorilla keepers, who spread them around the compound.

This enterprise began about eight years ago when Thaya du Bois, the assistant director of research for the zoo, started thinking about how she could get the gorillas some food to augment their nutritionally correct but repetitious zoo diet. She was also concerned that the apes were bored just sitting around in their compound all the time with no fun or excitement in their lives.

“I wanted to bring something to them that would get them up and moving around--give them a sense of adventure,” she says.

She wondered if she could find some people who would grow some of the plants, vines and flowers that the gorillas might find if they were free and foraging in the jungle.

She rounded up a small but faithful group of gorilla groupies who knew how to make a garden grow gorilla goodies.

The grub growers are a dedicated lot who don’t mind getting down and dirty once a week.

“We’ve had a few society types show up on Saturday dressed in white pants and wearing jewelry,” Ginny Oeland says. “They come once and never show up again.”

Oeland and her husband, Roger, and son, Kris, operate Aero Specialties, an aircraft modification facility at Van Nuys Airport. She showed up six years ago and has been at the gardens just about every Saturday and Sunday since.

“When I first heard about the Gorilla Gardens, I decided it was just the sort of volunteer work I wanted to get involved with. It would get me into the outdoors and, to be honest, get me away from my family.

“When you have a family-owned business where you are with everyone both at work as well as at home, you need some time for something you can do by yourself,” Oeland says.

But that was not to be.

Ginny found out there were only four or five regulars willing to do the dirty work, and no funds or people to help with the mechanics. So, when the rototiller needed repair, she said, “My husband can do that.” And he did.

Du Bois and the Oelands make up a corps of dependable volunteer gardeners, but all say they can use more help.

Du Bois, who not only oversees the project but also volunteers her time on weekends, says all it takes is one Sunday trip to the zoo to make a believer out of a volunteer.

“We take the gorillas things like roses, sunflowers, sweet potatoes on the vines, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, geraniums, hibiscus, pansies and petunias. The parts of the plants they don’t eat they make up games with,” she says.

She said anyone who wants to join the group should call her at the zoo or just show up at 16633 Magnolia Blvd., Encino, any Saturday about 10 a.m.

Forget the white pants and the jewelry though.

The Day the Music Stopped

Amiya Dasgupta, 70, a faculty member at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, composer and disciple of Ravi Shankar, died while performing on the sitar at a recent multicultural festival.

He was stricken by a heart attack.

As a friend of George Harrison, Dasgupta played on the Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Dasgupta moved to the United States from Bombay, India, in 1969 to direct the Ravi Shankar Kinnara School of Indian music before joining the Valencia faculty, according to Anita Bonnell, director of public affairs at CalArts.

She said he helped write and edit Shankar’s books “My Music, My Life” and “Ravi Shankar Teaches.” He also accompanied Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin in the EMI recording “East Meets West.”

Too Much Fun to Give Up

We all know that chocolate is bad for us, but does that stop us from scarfing? Get serious.

We know that “Melrose Place” is trashy mind candy, but we still keep sneaking a peak. Right?

Those of us who receive the newsletter of Chatsworth realtor Gary Washburn know he is the Rush Limbaugh of the Valley and not to be taken all that seriously. But he’s too funny not to read.

Maybe one might be better off perusing the works of Proust, but as Alice Roosevelt once said, “If you don’t have anything good to say about anyone, come sit next to me.”

Washburn would have been right there by her side.

In his most recent newsletter he has his fun with the vice president’s recent visit to the Valley. The headline on the story: “Al Gore Seen Cutting Trees and Dining on Spotted Owls.”

Al Gore, of course, did nothing of the kind, but he did have his picture taken with Washburn on that visit, and the veep’s people kindly sent the picture to Washburn.

Overheard:

“There’s one good thing about fires, floods and earthquakes. It makes the way the smog irritates my sinuses seem like such a minor problem, now.”

Woman in Calabasas to her neighbor.