Carden Crockett - 2024

The two primates lumber up the cloudy steps to a pair of vine-trussed pearly gates, joining hundreds of animals queued to be admitted to the afterlife. Though they were the same species, they had lived drastically different lives. As they approached the pearly gates, a man with a face of light greeted them.

The man at the pearly gates knew their lives. The first primate had lived his life in the forests of South America, and not once had he known the yokes of captivity. Yet he had spent his life evading logging crews and deforestation, humanity always spreading into his lands like mold. He had never known safety and peace of mind, but he had been free.

The second primate born in captivity, consigned to the rest of his days in a zoo, where human beings gawked and stared at him all day. He had never wanted anything – when he was sick, human beings came and took care of him. When he was hungry, human beings came and fed him. There was always a warm place to sleep and water to drink in his 30 square foot enclosure. He died on a laboratory table surrounded by the humans who had kept watch over him all those years.

As the two primates recounted their lives to the man at the pearly gates, they began to realize the differences between their lives, and they began to argue, bickering over which of them had lived the better life. The one raised in captivity argued that he had had the best quality of life, as he had never felt pain, want, or fear. The one from the forest fired back, stating that even though his life hadn’t been easy, he had lived that life outside of a small glass enclosure.

While they argued, the man at the gates sighed to himself. He had lived through this debate time and time again. And each time, the animals failed to notice the common theme between their lives- that their lives had been overrun and governed by humans. Humans, who abducted them from their families to live in zoos. Humans, who took their homes and their spaces. Without humans taking from them, their lives wouldn’t have had to change. They would have lived the same lives and remained as one. But the man at the pearly gates knew that this wouldn’t last long.

Soon, the humans would run out of things to take. But who they were taking from would be gone long before that.

Artist's Statement

While thinking about this project, I had the idea to write a small story depicting two primates arguing at the gates of heaven. The idea was that one had lived in a zoo his whole life and hadn’t suffered (in one of the rare cases where the animals at the zoo are treated well.) The other, a primate of the same species, had lived freely in the jungles of South America, but had spent his life running from poachers, logging companies, and other humans encroaching on their homes. The key difference I was trying to showcase was that both of their lives were impacted by humans in a negative way, whether it was taking their homes or taking them from their homes.

Illegal logging in the Amazon and other areas of the world is widespread, and results in the destruction of species habitats in addition being unsustainable consumption. My piece hopes to bring this to light so that we no longer destroy these animals homes.