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Sheila Siddle's life was changed forever one fateful day in 1983 when a local game ranger brought a battered, malnourished chimpanzee to the door of her cattle ranch in central Zambia and asked her to do whatever she could to save it. As Sheila and her husband nursed it back to health, they treated the young chimp they would name Pal as if he were a human infant — feeding him medicine and bottled milk, sharing their bed with him at night, and carrying him on their backs until he regained the strength to survive on his own. From these humble beginnings Sheila and David Siddle would go on to launch the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, an internationally acclaimed animal refuge that has grown to become the home for more than eighty chimps, one disarmingly domesticated hippopotamus named Billy, and a variety of other endangered animals. In My Family Tree is the inspiring journey of a woman who has dedicated her life to providing a refuge for chimpanzees in Africa — and of the chimps that have become a part of her family along the way.
