Read Online The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys by Marina Chapman, Lynne Barrett-Lee - Free Book Online Page A

little homes here with what looked like beds, or seating areas – some of the troop were certainly sitting in them – where they could bask and groom each other far from the damp and steamy forest floor. Closer inspection revealed that they seemed to have made these by collecting bits of branches they’d snapped off while playing ‘look who’s the strongest’ (which was something they did often) and had brought up to the canopy to use. These had then been laid crosswise over bigger branches that were still attached to the trees.
    For softness, Mother Nature had helped them out, it seemed, because the ‘nests’ would naturally collect any fallen or drifting leaves. They had also added strips of bark – something that was always in plentiful supply, because one of their favourite things to do was to pull off long strips of tree bark in order to get to the tastiest, juiciest bugs.
    I sat and watched my monkey family for some time, contentedly taking in the excitement of it all. Compared to what was below, it just felt like such a lovely place to be. And I soon realised that they didn’t just use the structures they’d made for sitting and sleeping on. They also seemed to use them as places to play: jumping up and down on them, whooping and shrieking, making a great deal of noise and giving off bursts of an intense odour, the air becoming even more hazy than it usually did with the sharp, acrid smell of their excrement.
    Not that I minded. By now I was immune to such odours. I was just so happy to be up there and joining in. It felt as if I’d at last escaped my prison and properly become one of them, which, physically, was happening, even though I probably wasn’t consciously aware of it. I was growing a new, muscular body, strong in ways a child’s body normally isn’t. I had harder heels and palms, and an appetite for strange jungle foods. I was also beginning to move around like a monkey, and one of the reasons, perhaps, that I wasn’t aware of how I was growing, was that I almost always walked on all fours now. There was just the one skill I lacked and that I’d struggled to master – flying. How I longed now to sail through the treetops as they did, via their expressway, à la Tarzan, on the vines.
    As the vines were thick and plentiful, especially high in the treetops, it seemed that it was yet another skill I could master if I tried. So, after the first few days of being able to climb to the canopy, I would spend time trying to do what my monkey family did: get from tree to tree, bough to bough, by means of these stringy curtains, feeling the euphoria and wind-rush, the giddy sensation of being airborne, and then landing – in my case, mostly messily and indecorously – on whichever bed of branches had been my goal.
    But again and again, something was telling me I shouldn’t. No sooner would I launch myself than I’d feel a sudden crunch and the unmistakeable sinking feeling that the vine I was holding onto was coming loose from its anchor. I’d then be sure of one thing only. That I was about to get my back, arms and legs thoroughly grated. The first couple of times this happened, my fall was mercifully short, because the vine tangled in another and I jerked to a stop. I also had the consolation, once I’d got over the painful bit, of a fresh crop of scabs to sit and pick.
    But one day my run of luck ran out. I had clung on and launched myself on what had seemed a sturdy line, when only a second later I felt the snap of the vine breaking free. This was closely followed, inevitably, by a stomach-churning plunge and the feeling of pure terror that only the sight of the ground rushing up to meet you can provoke. Thankfully, I was spared by the embrace of a spray of branches which slowed my fall sufficiently that I was able to grab them as I hit them and get enough purchase to stop me plunging straight on down to my death.
    Hanging there with the forest floor dizzyingly far below me, I perhaps should