The Coco the Talking Gorilla Expertease

Ladies and gentlemen, our audience tonight is composed mostly of wild animal lovers. And Clare Sera, since you're friends with Coco, the talking gorilla, we thought we could probe your area of... Expertise! Spelled wrong? Naturally. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, animal lovers from north, south, east and west, here comes expert Clare Sera.

Hang on, hang on, hang on. Is that you, Clare? Or is that Coco, the talking gorilla? That was me. I was actually teasing Coco because, of course, Coco doesn't speak in chimpanzee. An inside joke. Oh, you are speaking chimpanzee to a gorilla? Yes. Oh, stupid, stupid. Coco can't translate? No, I mean, hey, thanks for inviting me to this podcast. It's great to have you here, Clare. Now, is Coco, the talking gorilla there with you? I am here with Coco at her little pad in just north of San Diego. Oh, so I know there's the San Diego animal retreat there. Oh, sure, yeah.

Or does Coco have her own place? Coco has her own pad. It's a little modernist overhang on a cliff, beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. She likes to hear the waves crashing. Oh, so how long have you and Coco, the talking gorilla been... Cohabitating? Yes. Co-cohabitating? We've been co-cohabitating for the last 17 years. That sounds like a very friendly relationship to be co-cohabitating with a gorilla. Is that safe, Clare? Is cohabitating with any other mammal safe, Dano? Not with my ex-wife, I'll tell you that right now. All right. Can I hear it from the married couples out there?

Yes. Oh, and she wasn't even a gorilla. And Coco and I are not married. I don't want any mail about that. Yeah, you mean letters. You know, communication is the centerpiece of any relationship between two humans, between a human and another species, between two other species, between a species that's like the same as a different species, but also... I would even say between me and this jolly, comfortable Chesterfield I'm sitting on. I think any relationship is worthy of respect. I guess I would like to hear how you communicate with your Chesterfield. I didn't mean to imply that there's actual communication going on between me and an inanimate object, but I do have a certain amount of respect for the provenance of this Chesterfield.

I feel like the many bottoms that have sat upon it provide a certain burnish interest, history, and charm. Well, it might be of some interest to your listeners that Coco and I are taking a trip to Provence in the spring. Provence in France or Providence in Rhode Island? Yes. Oh, around the world trip, it sounds like. Yes, we are visiting all the pro places. Yes, you're pro pro, as you should be. And Coco. Oh my gosh. Okay, we've got to just get it together. So Claire, I want to hear all about your gorilla-related world travels. It just sounds fascinating, but I do feel like we need to backtrack just a little bit.

Sure, sure. You know, you and I are old enough to remember when Coco the talking gorilla was just Coco the not quite talking baby gorilla. Yes. Could you just give us the overview of Coco's provenance, if we may? Right. How did you form a relationship with Coco? How did Coco supposedly learn to talk? Well, I'm going to try and let go of your supposedly inferred in that tone, because Coco does communicate. As you well know, Coco uses sign language to speak her wants and desires. You've put up some videos. It's wonderful to see this kind of communication going on.

But what I've seen so far is Coco seems to want a Coco nut. I've seen Coco ask for some Coco puffs. Yep, yes. I've seen Coco do that little swirl around the ear to sort of indicate that someone is cuckoo. Coco's communication seems to be very, very limited. And for you to say that you're in a relationship. Yes. That involves communication. Yes. I'm just not seeing the communication beyond asking for a Coco nut. Because I think that if you don't mind me saying, you're interpreting one sentence one way. And this is how it came about. When I started to visit, I first, of course, came to Coco as a gawker.

I got my pass to the San Diego animal retreat area. Yes. And I went to go and stare at this freak of nature. You know, a gorilla. I fully admit it. Coco and I laugh about it now. But I was one of the ones that was there throwing nuts at her. I was with the crowd that was doing the taunting dances. And I mean, you know, I- This was pretty extreme anti-Coco stance that you started with. When I think back on it now, I'm just so mortified. She has a great sense of humor about it. But I just wasn't- I was a non-believer, Dano. So what tipped it for you, Claire? Well, let me ask it this way.

What was your first conversation with Coco, the talking gorilla? My first conversation was, I'm sorry I fell in your cage. Please let me out. Please let me out. Are you speaking with your mouth, with English? Yes. Yeah, I was- Screaming, I'm guessing. Screaming, in a panic, trying to climb the little chicken wire cage that she's in. I thought it would be so funny to get in there and get a picture. I was wearing a t-shirt that said, you know- I'm with stupid. Yes, and pointing at her. Yeah. It was a big mistake. It was a big mistake that turned out to be the best big mistake of my life.

Now, first of all, could Coco read the t-shirt? Is she a reading gorilla? She can read signs. She could read the arrow that was pointed. Okay. And she understood the likeness of the gorilla face of hers on the- Oh, so that was actually signified on the t-shirt. Yeah. But she probably was not insulted by the slogan, I'm with stupid. Well, she wouldn't know that, but I also- This t-shirt also had a mirror built into it so that if she looked at it, she would know that she's the stupid one that's implied on the t-shirt. That's wonderful though, because that speaks so much of her human-like.

Just any person, I think, looking into the mirror of your I'm with stupid t-shirt would be shocked, appalled, and offended. Yes, it's really offensive. So you were wearing the shirt specifically to taunt Coco, the talking gorilla. I really was. I thought I was showing the world how dumb all these shenanigans were. Yeah. So there you are, locked away inside the cage with an enormous talking gorilla who you have personally insulted, personally pelted with nuts. Now, just asking, shelled nuts? Brazil nuts, the biggest of all the nuts. Hard and pointy. Hard pointy, and from Brazil, which is also part of her heritage.

Oh, is she a Brazilian talking gorilla? She, it's part of her heritage. Oh, I see. Also, I don't really hear too well out of my right ear, I'm sorry. Oh, after she swatted you? Yeah, she did give me a concussion and she did start to eat my face. Oh, gosh, how did you get out of that? Luckily, one of the other taunters that had come with me, they started taunting- So making fun of her Brazilian heritage, that sort of thing? Yes. And your face seems to be mostly healed up, that's nice. Thank you. So that's really, you know, a meat cute story, as they say in the movie business.

My face was the meat. And now it's cute. Thank you. But you know what a lot of people don't know is that Coco came to visit me while I was in the coma. Oh, that's so wonderful. I was in a co-coma for about six months. So for that period, she was Coco the visiting gorilla. She was. Now, I don't want to get personal, but I'm just, I'm trying to picture the scene at the nurse's station in the hospital when a gorilla opens the elevator and steps out. Was there any trouble there? Was she a welcome guest? You know, there started to be trouble, of course. She's large, she's loud, she smells.

I don't know if you understand the pungency. Again, reminds me of my first wife. But she has a tremendous sense of humor. It's a charming, charming. She was wearing a t-shirt that says, I want to see stupid. Not having bitten off your face, was she able to actually recognize you? Oh, she recognized my smell. Even in the coma, I was still emitting terror and adrenaline and cortisol, you know. Yeah, that fear pungency. Yeah, I had the fear pungency. So that was the beginning of your close relationship with Coco. Hers was the first face I saw when I came out of the coma.

She was looking down over me on my hospital bed. And I opened my one good eye and I saw this fuzzy, hairy face coming into view. So at some point through this bizarre and unpleasant getting to know you phase between you and Coco the talking gorilla, something shifted somewhere along the line. Did she realize that you were no longer fit for human habitation? Is that how you came to be living with her in the pen? You're speaking of the night where Coco broke me out of the hospital and brought me. Carried you down the side of the building. You must have felt a little like Fay Wray.

I did. And she brought me to her home. She brought you back to San Diego? Yes. Back over the chicken wire fencing. Ironically, the animal retreat where she has lived for all those years do not allow humans, if you can believe it, to take up residency there. So now we were both homeless. We were homeless together. This is where your story takes on monumental poignancy. Yeah. When I read about your adventures, hitchhiking up and down the highways of America's small towns, small town farmers stopping with a pickup truck as you thumb down a ride. And then this gorilla runs out from the bushes by the side of the road and hops in the back.

Well, and it took us a while to get our routine down. Sometimes she would hitchhike with her thumb out and I would then jump into the back of the flatbed truck. Sometimes she would wear the hospital gown and do the hitchhiking and I would be naked. So you were really just trying everything you could just to find a place to call home. Just to find a home. That's exactly right. You have in your memoirs just this wonderful story in Coeur d'Alene when you stopped in at Lil Frankie's Diner. That was a turning point. Coco had learned to love coffee from you. She loved cocoa flavored coffee.

Coffee. Mocha. Mo Mocha. Mo Coco. What happened there at Lil Frankie's? Well, Lil Frankie's Diner, you know, it's a little side of the road diner in Coeur d'Alene. It's wonderful. However, they are not into fancy elitist mocha java. So they served Coco, regular Joe. And I thought, this is the end. This is the end. I'm starting to exude some of that putrid smell just listening to the story. I saw in her eyes immediately. There was no Coco in that coffee. No Mo Coco. This was just some plain Columbia dirt water in her turn. That's so close to Brazil. She leapt up on the table.

She banged on her chest. I thought she was going to leap from our table and grab Lil Frankie himself by his Cocos. That's not what happened, Dano. Coco spoke her first words. That's when it happened. So she had not been Coco the Talking Gorilla up to this point. Which is what I had been protesting with my fellow protesters. That's right. We would go and protest. She's not a talking gorilla. Let's not. This lies. That is lies. But on this day, on this day, and you can imagine what she said. A slice of lemon meringue, please. Coco, Coco. Because that's what she wanted.

It's who she was. It's where she came from. It's where she was going. It was her mission statement, Dano, in her name. It was everything summed up in one word. Now that explains why I feel like when I watch her communicate, it's the same dang word over and over. But like the Mandarin or the Sichuan language, where so much is implied in the intonation, I guess I finally understand now that Coco can say so many things that mean so many things and still only know one word. That's right, Dano. That's right. Wow. Who's with stupid now?