I don't know how i got here. No one really does—not the staff, not the gorillas, not even the older zookeepers who still swear they were just on a routine patrol when it all happened.
What is known is this: fifteen years ago, during a chaotic thunderstorm, a toddler was discovered wandering the back trail of the Nairobi Zoo. Security footage, blurred by rain and time, shows a lone small figure slowly moving through the outer fence—mud-caked, leaf-covered, half-naked.
That night, the zookeepers lost track of him in the storm. The next morning, they found him inside the gorilla enclosure, curled against the chest of Mala—the troop's dominant female—as if he'd always been there. She had wrapped him in her arms and shielded him from the rain like he was one of her own, it was a small human baby.
Every attempt to separate them ended in catastrophe. Mala would scream and lash out; the boy would go silent and cold. After months of failed rehoming and behavioral study, he was declared a legal ward of the Nairobi Zoo under the care of the gorilla program—a "special case" registered under wildlife-human coexistence law.
They named him Kito, after a leaf that landed on his head during his first observed interaction with the troop. He picked it off, examined it, and then tried to eat it. "Kito," said the primate behaviorist. "It means 'jewel' or 'precious one.'" And somehow, it stuck.
He had no last name. No birthday. No shoes.
But he had a home.
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Fifteen years later, Kito is a legend.
He lives full-time inside the gorilla habitat, moving like a shadow between vines and rafters, a blur of sinew, straw, and sunburnt skin. He's small for his age, wiry and fast, with knotted black hair that shines like polished onyx when he swings into the light.
To tourists, he's a viral mystery—"the boy raised by apes." To the gorillas, he's just Kito.
Each day, the zoo opens to the same routine: Kito hanging upside-down from the overhead beams, chirping to the troop below. Sometimes he imitates the staff—walking on two legs with an exaggerated limp like the zoologist, or stealing a walkie-talkie and mimicking their clipped Swahili.
He's constantly getting into things.
He once smeared mashed banana on the exhibit glass to draw pictures. Another time, he snuck into the giraffe enclosure at night and rearranged the feed buckets, leaving them in the most awkward positions for them, giraffes furious, keepers baffled.
He's stolen everything from sunglasses to a tranquilizer gun. He once accidentally reprogrammed a drone to drop apples only on Tumo, his overgrown gorilla brother, and then pretended not to know why Tumo was being dive-bombed all afternoon.
There's a video of him out there somewhere— Kito riding a zebra, howling like a baboon while startled guests scattered.
And no one knows how he got the keys to the zebra habitat.