Beasts in My Belfry

  The inevitable would now happen. Fred’s globule would give up the unequal contest with the laws of gravity and drop accurately on to the forkful of haddock which was travelling towards his mouth. He would chew it methodically.

  ‘Well,’ Joe would say, ‘I’m going out.’

  He would get up and clump off, whistling through the echoing hall. I would feel Fred’s gaze turn on me and, to avoid the endless and tedious commentary on his day’s work, I would follow Joe’s example. As I reached the hall I would hear Mrs Austin asking Roy if he liked fish.

  9. Odd-Beast Boy

  All that is comprehended of flesh and of spirit of life and so of body and soul is called animal – a beast – whether it be airy as fowls that fly, or watery as fish that swim, or earthy as beasts that go on the ground and in fields, as men and beasts, wild and tame, or other that creep and glide on the ground.

  Bartholomew (Berthelet),

  Bartholomeus de Proprietatibus Rerum

  For a happy two or three months I became what I could only describe as ‘odd-beast boy’. That is to say, I had a tiny section of my own, which consisted of half a dozen pairs of huskies and two pairs of Arctic foxes, to look after, but as these did not fill my time I was sent to various sections to take the place of anyone who was on a day off. This was fascinating as it allowed me to renew my acquaintance with a number of the animals that I had got to know, like Paul the tiger, and as I moved on to a new section virtually every day, the work was never lacking in interest.

  I had never had to deal with huskies before and, the first day, I treated them with a certain amount of circumspection for they were massive animals, but I soon discovered that although they were willing at the drop of a bone to fight each other to the death, they exhibited towards all members of the human race an almost embarrassingly exuberant bonhomie. The largest of the group was an immense cream-coloured bitch called Squash. I did not appreciate the aptness of this name until the first time I went into her paddock. Beaming goodwill, her panting tongue looking as long and red as the average V.I.P. carpet, she hurled herself at me in an endeavour to lick every portion of my face in order to show her undying devotion to the human race. Standing on her hind legs she came to slightly over six feet and so, to have this immense, white powder-puff suddenly hurl itself at you and rear up on to your shoulders, not unnaturally sent you reeling back against the wife, whereupon Squash would live up to her name and unless you were pretty nimble you were liable to collect a couple of broken ribs. Once the first mighty embrace was over, however, she would behave slightly more sensibly but would nevertheless still persist in walking round and round you as you swept out her paddock, wagging her tail vigorously and uttering moaning lovecalls at you. Occasionally, she would hit you across the shin with her tail and it was rather like being kicked by a horse. In spite of the fact that one had to be in as good, if not slightly better training than the average all-in wrestler for working with Squash, she was a beautiful and most endearing animal. All the other members of the husky pack were attractive and lovable enough in their way, but it was the great, waddling Squash who really had the personality.

  Phil had told me when I had taken over the huskies that Squash had been mated and would in due course produce puppies, so I kept a careful eye on her and gave her all the best titbits of the meat, and, referring to the poaching I had indulged in when on the lion section, I searched the local farmers’ hedges for eggs to give her. It was exceedingly difficult to keep a daily check on Squash so that one would know when she was about to have pups because any advance on your part was treated with such wild excitement that the whole thing would get out of control and, anyway, she wore such a massive coat of fur that it was extremely difficult to judge her girth or see whether her teats were full of milk without undertaking a prolonged wrestling match so that you could dig your fingers sufficiently far into her coat to be able to judge the signs. Gradually, as time passed, her teats grew heavy with milk and then, one morning, she greeted me with less than her normal exuberance and, after a quick lick, disappeared to her hutch where I could hear the whewling cries of the pups. She sat outside the hutch wearing an expression that could only be described as smug, and when I peered into the bed of straw I saw six fat babies rolling about uttering high-pitched squeals, blundering into each other like a group of drunks outside a pub. Four of them were ash-grey and white in patches and two of them were the same creamy-white as their mother. They were fine, healthy babies with a thick layer of fat, tight, shiny coats, and blunt, nuzzling heads like a strange type of otter.

  Although it was not Squash’s first litter, from the pride she displayed in them you would have thought it was. As soon as I entered her paddock to sweep out in the mornings, having licked me ‘good day’ and sent me reeling against the wire, she would rush to her hutch, pick up one of her puppies and bring it to me. If I crouched down she would place the puppy in my lap and stand there breathing stertorously, her tongue flopping out, wagging her tail, while I fondled the puppy. After a moment or so she would pick it up gently in her mouth, carry it back to the hutch and then reappear with another one. This performance would be repeated until I had had every puppy in my lap; then she was satisfied and would let me get on with my work.

  It is hard to know what a large percentage of the human race would do without these incredibly tough and reliable members of the dog family. They do, after all, enable man to exist in a portion of the globe where he would be hard pressed if it were not for the help of the husky. A Dr Guilleinard, writing in the 1800s describes the huskies he saw in Camp Kamchatka as follows:

  Most of them are white, with black heads, or entirely of a brown black; and their general aspect, owing to the sharp muzzle and prick ears, is decidedly wolf-like. The only food they are provided with by their masters is salmon of the hump-backed kind; but during the summer they pick up game, eggs, and birds in their wanderings about the country. They are usually inspanned in teams of eight or ten, but where the sledges are heavy or the roads bad, double that number, or even more are occasionally used. When the snow is hard and even, they will draw a weight of 360 lbs a distance of five-and-thirty or forty miles with ease in a day’s work; and with an unloaded sledge, with a single occupant, a pace of eight versts an hour can be kept up for a considerable time. On the road they are given one-third of a fish twice during the day, and a fish and a half at night, which they wash down with a few gulps of snow . . . Each has a name, which he answers to when he is driven in the sledge, just in the same way as a Cape ox in a waggon team, for no whips are used. If chastisement be necessary, the driver throws his stick at the delinquent, or pounds the unfortunate creature with any stone that comes handy. There are many ways of tethering these animals, all having in view the one object of keeping them apart, as, excepting upon the road, they seize every opportunity of fighting. One method is by making a large tripod of poles, and tying a dog at the bottom of each; and in many villages, owing to the large number of dogs which have to be kept, these tripods form a characteristic feature.

  The huskies in my charge displayed incredible strength and were completely oblivious to the weather. They only used their wooden hutches for having their puppies in and much preferred, even in heavy snow, to dig a hole for themselves and sleep out. They also displayed a completely catholic taste in food that would have done credit to an ostrich. One of them ate a handkerchief one day; such things as bus tickets or ice-cream cartons pushed through the wire by the animal-loving British public were immediately engulfed with apparent enjoyment; and one day, whilst I was sweeping out one of the paddocks, I dropped my wallet – fortunately empty – and in two gulps it had disappeared down the throat of one of the young dogs who seemed delighted at this largesse and suffered no ill-effects from it. It came as no surprise to me to read Dr Guillemard’s comments on the husky’s fortitude:

  No comfortable home is provided for him to enable him to withstand the rigours of the Arctic climate, and the poor beast, except when actually at
work, has, in most cases, to ‘find himself’. Long experience, and the instinct transmitted to him by his ancestors have, however, given him all the resources of an old campaigner. Stumbling at night about the uncertain paths of the settlements, the traveller is not unfrequently precipitated into the huge rabbit-burrows which the animal constructs to avoid the cutting winds. His coat, nearly as thick as that of a bear, is composed of fur rather than hair . . . Wonderfully well-trained, cunning and enduring, he is at the same time often obstinate and unmanageable to a degree, and is apparently indifferent to the kicks and blows so liberally showered upon him by his master. Excepting in settlements where neighbouring stretches of tundra render the use of sledges possible in summer, he has a long holiday during that season. During this time he wanders over the country at will, sometimes returning at night to his burrow, at others being absent for days together. A good hunter and fisherman, he supports himself upon the game and salmon he catches, and it is but rarely that he deserts his master for good. But the inhabitants have to pay a good price for his services. Owing to his rapacity it is impossible to keep sheep, goats, or any of the smaller domestic animals, and Kamchatka is one of the few countries in the world in which fowls are unknown.

  Wandering freely about in the park, as well as the wallabies and peacocks, were the diminutive little antelope called muntjaks and a lot of Chinese water deer. These curious deer were about the size of an Airedale. You would think that in a large paddock, where the turf had been cropped down by various herds of antelope and deer, an animal this size would be conspicuous; but a Chinese water deer lying down in grass three inches long just seems to melt away and you do not see it until you have almost stepped on it. They are a dull shade of yellow-brown and the hair is rather coarse. When you look at the individual hairs closely you will see that each one is slightly flattened and jointed like a miniature piece of bamboo. These odd deer do not grow horns but instead, in the male, the canine teeth are elongated into two Dracula-like tusks which they use in fighting for possession of the females and probably, in parts of their range, to dig in the snow for roots and bulbs.

  I received news one morning that one of these deer, filled with the spirit of adventure or a migrating urge, had somehow made his escape through the perimeter fence that surrounded the whole of the park and had managed to find his way into a local field which was fenced in as a chicken run. Phil Bates, myself and Billy, who happened to be doing nothing at the time, went down to recapture the truant. We took a little green van stuffed with nets and drove down to the field which covered about a quarter of an acre and was shaped like an isosceles triangle.

  In the centre of it stood the Chinese water deer surrounded by a group of excited and interested chickens; he looked as though he were just giving them a lecture on the beauties of travel. He gave a start of horror when he saw us entering the field and, metaphorically, lost his place in his notes. Now he looked rather like a parliamentary candidate who perceives with nervousness that a rowdy element is creeping into his audience.

  We spread the pig nets out in order to cut down the area over which we would have to chase him while he watched us with ever-increasing alarm. The idea was for two of us to chivvy him round so that he became entangled in the pig nets while the third person stood by to leap in and subdue him at the right moment. There was only one flaw in our plans and that was that he refused to be entangled in the nets. Pursued by us, he ran round and round the field but always adroitly managed to change course so that he came nowhere near the nets. We had a hasty consultation and decided that we would try the rugger-tackle plan. The chickens hitherto had been a deeply fascinated but orderly group of spectators but this proved too much for them. As the first of us landed with a resounding thump in the grass some four yards behind the deer’s tail, the chickens broke ranks. The air was full of cries of pain from winded and bruised hunters, shrill startled squawks from the chickens and clouds of feathers.

  The Chinese water deer became more and more panic-stricken and started hurling himself at the tall wire fence in an effort to break through. He made one prodigious leap, hit the fence and hooked himself neatly on to the mesh by his two tusks and hung there kicking and struggling. We made a concerted rush but at the last minute he managed to unhook himself with a magnificent display of muscular contraction and, landing on the grass, turned with tremendous speed and broke through our ranks. He passed close by me and so, fixing my eye firmly on his hind leg, I launched myself through the air with what I hoped was hawk-like grace. The next three seconds were confused and painful. I got an iron grip on his leg and we rolled over and over together into what turned out to be the only patch of thistles and nettles in the whole field. The deer lashed out with his free hind leg and his hooves, as sharp as a knife, slashed me neatly from wrist to elbow. We rolled over and over together and I still managed to maintain my grip on his leg in spite of the fact that he had turned his head and I felt his tusks slash the back of my hand.

  But this was his final gesture of defiance; suddenly, he stopped struggling altogether and started to give vent to the most blood-curdling and piercing screams. He could not have produced a better performance if I had been burning him with red-hot iron. As it was, I was quite shaken and relaxed my grip considerably, under the impression that I was hurting him, but as we were pushing him carefully into a sack Phil explained that this was the normal way a Chinese water deer accepted his fate.

  He lay in the sack still uttering these ear-splitting screams while we collected the nets. Then we put him in the van on top of them and started to drive back to the park. I felt sure that the novelty of driving in the van would make the animal stop, but not a bit of it. We were forced to drive the entire length of the park with these fearsome screams issuing without pause from the back of the van. Each person we passed went pale and looked after the van with the horrified expression that they would have assumed had the driver been headless. One stout, military-looking man stopped dead and glared after us as though he were half-contemplating giving chase and demanding to see our vivisection licence. The deer continued to scream unremittingly until we reached the area in which we were to release him. Pig-killing was music in comparison to the noise that this comparatively small animal produced. Eventually, we shook him out of the sack and he stopped screaming.

  Then two quick bounds and he crouched down in the grass and disappeared.

  One day I had noticed that one of my foxes had developed a type of boil at the base of its tail. I went to Phil with the news and he procured for me some ointment from Captain Beale with which I had to anoint the boil every day. This was a tedious performance and one that the fox, being highly nervous, did not enjoy, for it meant that he had to be caught. I did the catching in something resembling a large butterfly net. It had a heavy metal rim padded rather ineffectually with sacking and the bag was made out of coarse fishing net. The actual catching process was fairly easy owing to the fox’s set pattern of behaviour. As soon as he was routed out of his den and the door to it closed, he would start to run round and round the outer perimeter of the cage at a steady canter. All that was needed was to place the net suddenly and swiftly just in front of him and, provided it was close enough to him, he would run straight into it. One had to be careful, however, for the metal rim, although padded, could be dangerous.

  On the fourth day the boil was showing distinct signs of improvement when I went to catch up the fox. He was circling the perimeter of the cage and I was edging the net into position when Billy rode up on his bicycle. I did not notice him and so just as I swept the net forward I was startled by Billy suddenly shouting ‘Yoo hoo!’ in a falsetto screech through the wire. In my surprise I raised the net a fatal two inches so that the fox, instead of running into the bag, was caught across his forelegs by the metal rim. There was a noise like a rotten twig breaking as the fox’s right foreleg snapped neatly, halfway between elbow and paw.

  ‘You bloody idiot!’ I said to Billy. ‘Look what you’ve made me do.’


  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Billy contritely, staring at the fox which was still circling the cage with undiminished speed on three legs. ‘I didn’t see what you were doing.’

  ‘It’s Phil’s day off, too,’ I said, ‘so what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t leave it like this.’

  ‘Take it to Daddy,’ said Billy promptly. ‘Take it to Daddy and he’ll set it. That’s what Phil would do.’

  I suddenly remembered that the captain was a qualified veterinary surgeon and so this seemed intelligent advice.

  ‘Where is your father?’ I asked.

  ‘In the office,’ said Billy. ‘He’s in the office working. He says he always works better on a Saturday when there are no secretaries and things to disturb him.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, we’ll go and disturb him.’

  I caught the fox and extricated it, snapping and snarling, from the net. For their size silver foxes can put up a show of ferocity that would be envied by a Bengal tiger. On examination I found the break was a beautiful one; that is to say that if a broken leg can be beautiful, this was one, for the bone was not splintered into a compound or squashed and bent into a greenstick fracture. It was a lovely clean break, as neat as snapping a stick of celery. Of course, I did not expect the fox to share my enthusiasm but I knew such a break would be much easier to set and stand a better chance of healing successfully.

  When we got to the administration block we found that the captain had finished his desk work and had retired to his house for a bath. Having acquired this knowledge from Mrs Beale I would have been content to wait until the captain had finished his ablutions. However, both Mrs Beale and Billy said that the length of time that the captain spent in the bath was unpredictable and so, on humanitarian grounds, he ought to be disturbed. Billy went and battered on the bathroom door.