Lowland gorillas are really shy of humans, because they’re hunted throughout Central Africa. After I finished the original Ndoki coverage in 1995, Mike Fay started telling me of a strange lone gorilla that begun visiting his base camp.

He was named Ebobo, the pygmy word for gorilla, and he seemed to enjoy scaring the women coming from the forest. The pygmies begged Mike, “please let us kill this gorilla.” No way, and at Mike’s insistence, he became something of a mascot that came a few times a year and stirred things up.

When I was visiting, he allowed Fay and I to follow him into the forest. Aggressive at first, after a time he became calm and seemed to even wait for us to catch up. In 2001, word reached us that Ebobo is traveling with a female gorilla.