This was not so much feeding as an all-in wrestling match. We couldn’t put her food in the cage because she’d immediately upturn it, and all the fruit and milk and everything would become so sticky and filthy that it would be impossible to clean. So we let her out of the cage to be fed twice a day. She had a large, flat, baking-tin which we piled high with succulent fruit and vegetables, and then filled with milk, and as soon as you sat down in front of her cage and put the tin on the ground, she would start screaming at the top of her voice and banging her little snub nose against the door. This was the tricky part of the operation. You had to open the door and grab her firmly, if you could, to prevent her rushing at the plate, misjudging the distance, and overturning the whole lot, which is what she did on frequent occasions. So, as you opened the door, you tried to grab one of her long floppy ears and hang on to it like grim death, because she came through the door like a bullet out of a gun. Then you’d lead her carefully to the pan and she’d plonk both her stubby front feet into it, little hooves widespread, and dig her nose in and guzzle, uttering purring grunts of satisfaction, and occasionally high-pitched squeaks.
Even when the last drop of milk had disappeared from the pan, and the last crumb of food had been found and eaten, she was still not totally convinced that there wasn’t some more to be had if she searched for it, and she would go – if you didn’t prevent her – at a mad gallop round the other cages. Normally, she ran round to where the monkeys were, but on one occasion she ran towards the leopards’ cage and I only just caught her in time. The cleaning slot at the bottom of the leopards’ cage was just wide enough for them to be able to get their paws out, and that might have been the end of Blossom. Blossom, however, as the leopards snarled and clawed at the wire to try and get at her, displayed no signs of fear whatsoever. She gave high-pitched indignant screams, gnashed her little tushes at the leopards and struggled madly in my arms trying to get down and fight them. The leopards were about twenty times her size and yet she seemed absolutely unafraid of them.
Ann, as I had asked her to, devoted herself entirely to the Colobus. As I had anticipated, it was a whole-time job. It was not only a question of getting them used to a completely new series of foods, but also of teaching them new feeding habits. Colobus monkeys have no thumbs. In the wild state they move so rapidly and perform such prodigious leaps through the branches that a thumb would only get in the way, and so these have been reduced to mere knobs. This makes it difficult for a Colobus to pick anything up, because it has to do it with the side of its hand, rather like somebody brushing crumbs off a table. Also, of course, if you are feeding in the top of a tree, you take a mouthful of something and then drop it and it disappears a hundred and fifty feet to the forest floor below; then you move on to the next branch. But in a cage you can’t do this. Up country, and in Freetown, where we’d been feeding them on leaves, the matter was fairly simple because we would just push the leaves in through the wire at the top of the cage so that they dangled down and the monkeys could pluck them at their leisure and drop whatever they didn’t want. But they would never go down and pick it up off the floor. Now we had no leaves to feed them on, and the nearest approach to leaves that we had was cabbage. This they didn’t particularly care for. They also didn’t particularly care for any of the other things we had, such as carrots, pears, apples, grapes and so on.
It was a battle between Ann’s will to make them live and the monkeys’ desire not to eat the food provided, and thus die on us. For hour after hour she would squat in front of the cages, patiently teaching them how to pick things up and trying to get them even just to sample a grape or a piece of carrot – just to see what it tasted like – because they would sniff at it and throw it down with disdain without even trying it. The biggest of our Colobus group was an old male who I reckoned must have been some thirteen or fourteen years of age, and we had christened him The Sod because he hated everybody. In particular, he hated Ann. There was a tremendous battle of wills between The Sod and Ann throughout the voyage. If the food was simply put into his cage in a plate he would upset the whole thing and then, to show his disdain for the diet and for Ann, would shuffle himself round and round, backwards, on his behind in the sawdust, so that all the fruit and sawdust got mixed up together in a most indigestible and horrible mess.
Ann had to try another method. Already The Sod hated her with a great loathing which almost seemed to give him his interest in life, and so she would sit patiently in front of his cage holding out food on the palm of her hand. As The Sod could get his arm through the wire of the cage, he would leap at the wire, banging his head against it vigorously, and shoot out his arm in an effort to catch hold of Ann’s hand and pull it near enough to the wire to give it a good bite. This would send the food flying across the hold. One day, after this had been going on for some time, Ann decided to try him with a piece of coconut for a change. She thought the white flesh of the coconut would shine more noticeably in her hand, and anyway he’d shown such contempt for most of the other foodstuffs that had been offered to him.
Now, it may have been coincidence but this time, in trying to grab Ann’s hand, he grabbed the coconut instead and, pulling his hand back into the cage, sniffed at it before dropping it on the floor. With incredible patience, Ann went on with this performance hour after hour until at last The Sod began to show signs of wearing down. He still banged his head on the wire when he saw her, but in snatching at her hand he would grab the coconut, smell it and eat a bit of it. Soon he was taking it from her with considerably more gentleness and it was obvious that we had found something that he really liked. Gradually, both he and all the other Colobus began to understand how to feed from a dish on the floor and they ate a bit more each day. Our spirits rose, for although they were still only eating a small quantity, they were now starting to eat grapes and carrots and bits of apple, and most of all, they were taking their milk which we reinforced with vitamins. So at least we felt that they were getting enough nourishment to keep them alive. But it was a herculean task and it required all Ann’s patience to keep them going. Fortunately, we had no bad weather to contend with, for I think if we had had a heavy sea it might well have made the Colobus seasick. This would have been the last straw, and I’m sure we would have lost them.
At last we got to Las Palmas, rushed ashore and made straight for the local market. Here we purchased everything that we could lay our hands on that we thought might tempt the Colobus, though many of them, of course, were things they’d never seen before: spinach, for example, and strawberries and cherries, and every imaginable kind of green-stuff and fruit that we could use. These we carried in triumph back to the ship and tested out on the Colobus. Needless to say, they turned up their noses at the expensive cherries and strawberries, although they did take to cherries a little later on. The spinach they tried but it didn’t seem to satisfy them. However, there was one thing – a strange, bean-like thing – that Ann had spotted at the last moment in the market, and which we’d taken some of just in case. If we’d only known, we’d have brought back a whole sackful, because the Colobus went mad over them and gorged themselves for as long as the supply lasted.
At last we arrived at Liverpool. To my delight, it was a blazing hot summer’s day. I thought our troubles were nearly over, for all we had to do now was to get the animals from the ship to the airport and fly them straight across to Jersey. By that evening, I thought, they’d be safely installed and having all the love and care and attention that they could possibly want from the staff. As the ship steamed slowly in to tie up at the docks we were busy down in the hold, nailing sacking and cheap blankets over the fronts of the cages. I always take this precaution, not so much to protect the animal as to prevent people from poking and prying and possibly getting themselves bitten, and frightening the animal in consequence. Also, the animal tends to feel safer in the dark when the cage is being bumped and battered about. Once again they were piled in the great nets, hauled ov
er the side, and put on the docks where the lorries were ready to transport them to the airport and the special charter plane that was waiting for us. We got them all neatly stacked into the lorries and I heaved a sigh of relief. It would only be a matter of a couple of hours now, and we’d be back in Jersey, I thought. Then a small man made his appearance and asked me whether I was Mr Durrell. Beaming happily, I said I was.
‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘it’s about them leopards of yours.’ My heart sank.
‘What about them?’ I inquired.
‘Well, sir, you haven’t got any permits for them.’
‘But I have,’ I said. ‘We approached the Ministry, the Ministry passed the permits, and said that as the leopards were only in transit to Jersey they didn’t have to be quarantined in England.’
‘Well, I haven’t got any documents to that effect, sir,’ he said.
‘Look . . . You’ve only got to phone up the zoo . . .’
‘I don’t know about that, sir. If I haven’t got the documents, I can’t pass them.’
I took a grip on myself. I’d had to deal with petty officialdom so often in the past and I knew that to lose your temper was the worst possible thing you could do.
‘Let me phone up the zoo, then,’ I said.
‘All right, sir. But I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for the call.’
‘I’m quite willing to do that,’ I said between my teeth. We went into his grimy little office and I put through a call to Catha.
Where in hell were the leopard permits? Catha said that she’d just received them herself at the zoo, and thinking this rather peculiar, she’d phoned up the Ministry, though feeling sure that a copy had been sent to Liverpool. No, said the Ministry, kindly, there was no copy sent to Liverpool because they were always sent to the people who were expecting the leopards, or whatever the animals happened to be.
I groaned.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to phone up the Ministry, Cath.’
She gave me the appropriate department and telephone number, and I got through to them. They were very apologetic, but the fact was that the permits had been sent to the right place, as far as they were concerned, which was the place that was expecting the leopards.
‘Well, will you kindly talk to this gentleman here?’ I said. ‘He is preventing me from taking the leopards to Jersey because he says he has got no permits . . . Will you assure him that the permits have been issued?’
I passed the phone over to the little man. He mumbled and grumbled and was as obstructive as he possibly could be, but in the end the man at the Ministry convinced him that the permits had been granted for the leopards. He put down the phone rather glumly. It had been the big moment of his day, and I’d spoilt it for him.
‘Can I go now?’ I said sweetly.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said, in a disgruntled sort of way.
So we drove out to the airport. But all this had wasted at least an hour of our time and we’d had to phone to tell the plane to stand by. At the airport the animals were all put into the plane and we climbed in after them, sat down in our seats, and fastened our seatbelts. The plane revved up, roared for a moment or so stationary on the tarmac, and then started to take off. Then, suddenly, it stopped. It taxied back again, it revved up again, and once again it started to take off, and then stopped. We taxied back, and this time the engines were switched off altogether. Very apologetically, the pilot came through to see me.
‘I’m afraid there’s some mechanical fault, sir,’ he said.
‘We can’t take off.’
‘How long will it take to repair?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid we don’t know, sir.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘can the animals be left in the plane while she’s being repaired.’
‘We could do that, sir, or we could move them all out and put them in one of the hangars, if you’d prefer that.’
‘I think I would prefer that,’ I said, ‘because some of them need to be fed now.’
So all the animals were taken out of the plane again and put in a big spare hangar. Hours passed, and we fed them and gave them all milk. Presently, an official of the airline came to me and said that they were still trying to trace the cause of the trouble, and that they would let us know as soon as there was any hope of us getting off. I phoned Catha up at the zoo and told her what was happening. It came to lunch time, and then it was two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock. At five o’clock they came to me and said that they had tested the plane once more, and although they had thought that they had cured the fault, they hadn’t.
‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to get another charter.’
‘Let us have one more try, sir,’ they begged.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But I don’t like the idea of going up in a plane that’s liable to give out on me. I don’t like going up in planes at the best of times, let alone when they’re faulty.’
It was quite late in the evening when they came back and said that they had finally fixed the fault. By this time my ribs were giving me hell and I was in a thoroughly jittery mood because, to begin with, I don’t like flying, and secondly, the animals were liable to get chilled as the night was growing colder.
‘No!’ I said, suddenly, with firm resolve. ‘I’m damned if I’m going in that plane. I’ll get another flight.’
‘I can assure you, sir,’ said the captain, ‘it’s perfectly all right.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ I said. ‘But I just have a feeling, and when I have a feeling I don’t fly – which is most of the time . . . I’m damned if I’m going to take up all my animals and myself and my wife in a jinxed plane. No, I’m afraid I’ll have to get another charter flight.’
‘Well, it’s just as you wish, sir,’ he said, disappointment in his voice.
So I went to see the airport officials, got their permission to keep the animals in the hangar, and then set about the task of trying to find another charter flight – which wasn’t as easy as all that. Eventually we did manage to get one. The following morning we raced down to the airport and peered anxiously into each cage, hoping that the cold night hadn’t affected any of the animals. It didn’t seem to have done any harm. Then they were loaded into the new plane, and this one actually took off. When we were airborne, I wiped the sweat from the palms of my hands, lay back, lit a cigarette and closed my eyes. It’s almost over, I said to myself; all we have to do is land safely in Jersey. The plane droned on through the sky and eventually the island appeared like a speck on the horizon. We dropped lower and lower and came in to an absolutely perfect landing, and as we taxied towards the airport terminal, there was a row of fork-lift trucks ready to take the cages, and practically – as far as I could see – the entire staff of the zoo.
The animals were unloaded, the press flashlights flared as they took pictures of the leopards and the chimps and all the other creatures being loaded on to the fork-lift trucks and then taken over to the vans that were to carry them to the zoo. Within an hour we were back home, the animals had been unloaded, and those that didn’t have to undergo quarantine were released into their new cages. A great feeling of relief poured over me. We’d actually got the Colobus back. Now we would have ample time to give them our full and undivided attention. Now, in addition to their normal diet, we would have an unlimited supply of green leaves to give them – from oak and elm and lime, and other such trees, and I felt sure that they would take to them and thrive. At least, I hoped it was going to be like that.
8. A Pageant of Births
Dear Mr Durrell,
We have so much enjoyed watching your programme Catch Me A Colobus, that we would like to send you our congratulations, and best wishes for the future.
You remind me very much of a friend I had in York about twelve-years ago, were you ever c
alled John Mitchell? I should be interested to know . . .
Naturally, when you come back from a trip of any length, you find an enormous backlog of work to catch up with. Although I had been kept informed of the zoo’s progress in my absence there were a hundred and one things I had to do. I had to find out what all my committees had been up to, for a start, and I was faced with a desk that was piled almost a foot high in letters that had to be answered. Fortunately, I found that things had been going very well indeed. Our Trust membership had leapt up, so we now had some two thousand five hundred members dotted about in various parts of the world, and this income, in addition to what the zoo earned from its gate money, would enable us to go ahead with some of our long-cherished plans.
To my infinite relief, all the Sierra Leone animals had settled down very well. The leopards, who were, of course, undergoing six months’ quarantine on the zoo’s premises, were injected against feline enteritis, to which they took grave exception. And the Colobus, now that they were in more spacious cages which gave them room to leap and to swing, were eating avidly a number of things that they would not take on board ship. We even experimented by giving them bamboo and holly. To our delight they took both of these and ate them very well, so now we knew that we could at least supply them with some green-stuff during the winter months. We had divided them into two groups. The Sod, with the three adult females, was in one cage, and the young male and two females of approximately his own age were kept in a separate cage. We felt it was better to keep the colonies apart because The Sod’s temper was never good at the best of times and if we mixed them all together he might do some mortal damage to the young male. As The Sod himself was getting on in years we had no means of knowing how long he would be with us and we did not want our young male, the only other male we had, to be killed or injured.