The Girl Who Loved Animals

The girl who loved animals is a short story written by Bruce McAllister. McAllister is known for his literary work in fantasy, science fiction, poetry and nonfiction. This particular work of short fiction was originally published in Omni may 1988. It was included in American Gothic Tales in 1996 along with many notable authors. The story describes a future where primates are extinct and young impressionable women are targeted for an experimental procedures to impregnate them with a primate embryo, in an effort to bring back the species.

Plot

Set in the near future and narrated by Jo, a Victim Rights Advocate, the story begins as Jo arrives at the Hi-Tec thirty-three million dollar holding cell where Lissy is being held. Jo is there to interview Lissy Tomer, a twenty-one-year-old woman who was beaten up by her abusive husband. The holding cell is state of the art with CCTV, microwave eyes, pressure mats, blast doors, laser blinds, eight different kinds of gas, and Vulcan mini cannons form the Helipad three floors above.

Lissy has a history. She was abused as a child by both parents and as far no better in marriage. Due to her I.Q score of an eighty-four Lissy is classified as a Collins psycho-type class three dependent with a Vulnerability Rating of a nine-point six, and with all factors considered, County classifies her as protected.

Lissy is pale and skinny, with a bloody nose and lip, clothing bloodied as well. But that’s not the only reason she’s here. Lissy is seven months pregnant; something that her felony restraining option on the marital bond should have taken care of. But that wasn’t the only problem, Lissy wasn’t just pregnant, she had been impregnated with the embryo of an animal.

Jo soon finds out that a man had approached Lissy in the park and that he had noticed how she liked to watch the squirrels in the trees. He was nice and they talked about how she loved animals. The man was a Lawyer, and had offered her a lot of money: nine thousand to be exact. But it wasn’t about the money, he had promised she could see and visit the ape when it was born.

The broker represented a species resurrection group; he calls himself a resource advisor because it sounds better. His job was to find woman of childbearing age, in good health, without any drug problems. Lissy was one of ten woman he found who would agree to carry a baby ape. The apes had been extinct for over thirty years, victims of inbred depression, petechial hemorrhages, cirrhosis, and renal failure.

Jo takes a special interest in Lissy, perhaps because of her own failure as a mother. Jo has a young daughter who after a failed sex change operation turns to drugs. Jo couldn’t help her, or wouldn’t and her daughter wants to hurt her for it.

She is a walljacker, one of the four hundred thousand who have chosen to deal with life’s disappointments by hooking themselves up to a wall jack in order to shut out the world. They say you don’t feel a thing when you’re on the juice, that you’re numb to the world around you.

In the past Jo has always been able to shut off the circuit breaker when she finds her, but now her daughter has rigged it so Jo cannot shut it off. She has wired it so no one can turn it off, or death will come to both of them. All she can do for her now is to prolong he death with an I.V, but even then she has two months tops.

After the public outcry it’s decided that the baby ape must be aborted, but Jo finds herself torn and so she works a deal. The broker Group and County agreed on an arrangement, Lissy would have her baby, but would have a post partum wipe to erase her memory, new I.D, and a fund set up to take care of her afterwards. Her new name is Mary McLoughlin.

A year later as the story comes to a close, Mary is standing in front of the primate exhibit, looking at Cleo, the baby ape, at the San Diego zoo. A year has passed. That when Mary senses that the baby ape staring at her knows her, but she can’t really remember how that would be possible. Jo shares her last thoughts about Mary (Lissy). Jo has filed for guardianship and if all goes well Lissy will be moving back to L.A with her.

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Publication history

This particular work of short fiction was originally published in Omni may 1988. It was included in American Gothic Tales in 1996 along with many notable authors.

Analysis

When analyzing the story “The Girl Who Loved Animals”, Lissy Tomer is described as a young, married woman that was abused by her parents as a child, as well as her husband. She isn’t very smart, however she is physically well enough to bear a child. Or in this story a baby mountain gorilla. The story points to the question asked by many scholarly authors of whether animals should be considered to have the same rights as humans. This line of inquiry is found in Ted Benton’s book Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights, and Social Justice. Benton finds that “…what is peculiar for our fellow human, are certain very specific dimensions of sociability: self-conscious intention in communication, recognition of mutual autonomy in economic activity, the growth of reciprocity in parent-child relations, and so on.” (Pg. 15) This would further explain the motives behind human versus animal reasoning; clarifying the skills that people are able to utilize when sensibly making decisions and acting on behaviors in life that cannot purely be communicated with the animal species. Therefore Lissy may adore animals and intends to bond with the mountain gorilla fetus that she is impregnated with; the division in anthropology will supersede any rational optimism considered when identifying if the animal will be fit for the diverse political society that it is about to encounter. ^[2]

In “The Animals in the country” Sherryl Vint argues that there are many inequalities in our society. Whether its race, gender, or species-oriented Vint is able to link this fact to the story “The Girl Who Loved Animals” where a woman who has a Gorilla fetus growing inside of her is also a victim of abuse, and is once again alienated by society. Sherryl Vint shows that the relationship between animal and human is put in to question by McAllister, arguing that humans are not ready to accept this extreme plan to put a Gorilla species in a human’s body play out in this day and age. She links the relationship between human and animal to the acceptance of a cyborg in today's “technoculture” social structure where a human and a machine could not be accepted as one pg 178. Another point that is brought up in the text is the fact that humans cannot coexist as equals with animals because humans don’t view animals with the same level of respect as they view themselves. This is a conflict that is seen throughout the story “The Girl Who Loved Animals” in that humans cannot accept the fact that the fetus growing within Lissy is non-human and is considered by society to be an abomination.

Bruce McAllister’s “The Girl Who Loved Animals” (1988) is an interspecies pregnancy story about Lissy Tomer, a 20-year-old woman from a broken home who accepts a contract to become surrogate mother of a mountain gorilla fetus as part of a radical plan to increase the population of the endangered species.^[3] Recently, British Scientist from King’s College London, Newcastle University, and Warwick University have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in laboratories between 2008 and 2011.^[4] The scientist-released data detailing 155 ‘admixed’ embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been collected in England since the passing of the Human Fertilization Embryology Act.^[5]

In the setting of science fiction “The Girl Who Loved Animals” raises questions about the human/animal boundary in society and the place of the animals. In the story, “Arks” are intensive care zoos where many of last species on earth lived until new diseases and land use policies destroyed the Arks and two-thirds of the animal kingdom. The Arks where needed to balance contested water and lands rights against urban dwelling and business development. In 2009, interspecies pregnancies was proposed by the University of Tehran, Iran to be a tool in preservation programs of endangered species where water and lands rights are being contested today.^[6]

References

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