This is the story of a woman, madly in love with animals, and a gorilla, who loves to watch pics and videos. Lindsey Costello, a military trainee, is a diehard animal lover and wanted to keep a pet while undergoing training. But, the strict rules of the training facility do not permit its students to keep pets.
This left Costello craving for animal company. Such is her love for animals that whenever she went home on leave, she wanted to be surrounded by animals. Once, when she was on leave after 10 months of grueling training, she planned to visit the Louisville Zoo on the last day of her leave, just to be with animals that she so loved.
It was there that Costello while walking into the gorilla exhibit, saw Jelani, an 18-year-old Western Lowland gorilla. What really astounded her was the fact that one lady, sitting outside the glass pane separating the Jelani’s enclosure, was holding her phone and showing the gorilla videos and pics.
Seeing Costello’s fascination, the lady readily offered her phone and got Costello in on the action. This exciting moment was snapped by the lady and put on Instagram and Facebook. Costello’s friend happened to see this photo and sought her permission to share it on Reddit.The rest, as they say, is history.
According to Costello, Jelani is unlike other gorillas, he is really interested in watching pics and videos, especially of baby gorillas, apes and monkeys. Occasionally, he also likes to look at the pictures of people.
To find out whether Jelani was really looking at the phone, whenever Costello turned the phone away from him, he would stretch out to take a look at it. What’s more, on getting bored with a pic, he would convey that it is time to move to the next one!
It was not the first time that Jelani had watched the pics and videos. He holds the reputation of being people-friendly and loves to interact with visitors.
With this new-found fame on the social media, Costello considers herself blessed for this amazing experience and to be able to share some happiness across the globe.