Gibbons in the Family Tree - Hardcover

Vanderhoef, Jeanne Ann

9781556181610: Gibbons in the Family Tree

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556181612 ISBN 13: 9781556181610

Publisher: Brunswick Pub Co, 1996

It's one thing to look at apes in a zoo! It's quite another to bring them up from babies, have them rule your home, possess your heart and bring more laughter and chaos into your life than you can imagine! Animal lovers will understand a family who complicated their lives and their travels with Great Danes, extra special mutts, cats and, above all, children. Non-animal lovers will immediately reform. The gibbons joined the Vanderhoefs in Bangkok and came home with them to the United States thereby causing the transference of a Thai family and the building of a new house to contain the ever growing multitude. They also caused an upheaval in the quiet course of events in the, then, small town of Vienna, Virginia. Gibbons are the smallest and most beautiful of the ape family. Penny and Pogo's inventiveness, humor, problems and intelligence would fill more than one book, but here they are, just as they climbed into the Vanderhoef family trees.

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About the Author:

Jeanne Ann Vanderhoef is the daughter of a U.S. Cavalry officer (in the days of horses) and comes by her love of animals naturally. Her mother, Janet Lambert, was a well-known author of best-selling books for teen-age girls, and so . . . she also comes by her love of writing naturally. She attended the University of Missouri and then moved with her parents to New York City where her father was Post Commander at Governor's Island. She was a model for John Powers until her marriage to Dean T. Vanderhoef, a new graduate of West Point, and began her second nomadic life. After WWII, her husband became an Intelligence Officer and a Russian linguist, and the family (one son and one new daughter) moved to post-war Germany. A second daughter was born in Munich. After three years of living in Germany, the family returned to the U.S. bringing with them their adored Great Dane. Most of their U.S. service was in the Washington, D.C., area where they lived in Vienna, Virginia. In 1956 they were transferred to Bangkok, Thailand, and thereby hangs the tale.

Mr. Waters, the mail carrier, turned in, and seeing the multitude on the lawn, drove slowly up the drive. Penny and Pogo [the gibbons] pushed themselves from the loving arms and, hand over hand, swung from one small dogwood tree, under the great canopy of poplars and hickories, to another. They snapped Mr. Waters' aerial and dropped it onto the gravel half-way up the lane. Sensing company for their own misery, the crowd cheered.

The car windows were open and in the apes went. In a heart beat they were back out the windows and up into the trees, each clutching an arm load of letters.

Mr. Waters leapt from the car in pursuit of the mail entrusted to him, but no one noticed that he still had not closed the windows. While everyone, the ladies included, ran in undisciplined frenzy to gather the envelopes drifting from the trees, Penny and Pogo quietly swung down, gathered more letters from the seat of Mr. Waters' car, and the "mail drop" continued almost without interruption.

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