When the old keeper forgot one latch, the 400-pound silverback reached through the steel

calling it a warning. But at Redwood Mesa, every gate had a sequence, and every sequence existed because a four-hundred-pound silverback lived on the other side of it.

I was standing in the observation booth with a paper cup of bad coffee cooling in my hand when Tom stopped in front of the latch plate. He had already checked the outer lock, set the continue reading …