Beasts in My Belfry

  ‘He looks tame enough,’ I began, glancing at Harry.

  The moment my eyes had switched away from the stallion he tucked in his backside and, in a sudden spurt, reached the stall door in a vicious machine-gun-like rattle of hooves. He struck at me through the bars with open mouth, showing great, sharp, square yellow teeth. I leapt back so quickly that I fell over a bucket. Harry sat on his chair with his toes twisted round the legs, whittling away at his stick and chuckling silently to himself.

  ‘See what I mean, boy?’ he said as I picked myself up. ‘Calm as a baby; and a right bastard.’

  The first few days, as usual, were spent in learning the routine chores, the feeding times of the different animals and the proportions of food that you gave each one. Probably the hardest work on the section was our weekly mucking-out of the buffalo shed. The herd had a vast acreage of sloping downland to wander in, surrounded by a tall iron fence, but they came up to the great low shed on the crest of the downs to be fed every day. Normally we emptied the food through the fence, making piles of bran, crushed linseed cake, and oats, and then, when the buffalo had finished this, we would pitchfork dozens of mangolds over the fence so that they bounced and rolled, and the buffalo moved with heavy enthusiasm after them, sinking their teeth into the crisp round bulbs with a noise like somebody splitting firewood. The apportioning of the oats and cake had to be done with care so that the older males did not get more than their fair share. The art of this was, I soon learnt, to put out five or six piles – just sufficient in quantity to keep the males fully occupied for four or five minutes – then you could move farther down the fence and make further piles of food which the cows and calves could eat in peace without getting a horn up their rump.

  Seen close to, the North American buffalo is, I think, one of the most impressive of all the cloven-hoofed animals. The massive, humped shoulders covered with a thick curly mane of fur, the plus-fours of fur round the stocky front legs, the curly wig on the great skull with the Viking horns curving out of it, give an immense sense of power. For the most part they move slowly and ponderously but they could butt each other suddenly and savagely, swinging the great head like a battering ram. That they could move fast when they cared to I saw one day when a lorry that had been delivering a load of mangolds to the shed backfired as it was leaving. The herd, which had been clustered along the edge of the fence like a great chocolate-coloured cumulus of curls, turned as one animal and thundered away over the green turf of the downs at an incredible speed, kicking up chips of chalk as their hoofs bit deeply into the ground. They looked like some enormous and rather terrifying avalanche tumbling down the green slopes of the downs, and I would have hated to have been in their way.

  So when it came to the job of mucking out their shed I was always filled with a certain misgiving for, as we forked up the straw and dung and piled it into barrows and wheeled it out of the shed, the old bulls of the herd (who never appeared to tire of watching this performance) would come and stand in a massive row in front of the open side of the shed and stare at us with deep interest, occasionally uttering a prolonged, sonorous snort which would make us jump. One day, one of the old bulls suddenly lumbered into the shed amongst us and we dropped our tools and fled incontinently. But we soon saw that his invasion of the shed had not been with vicious intent; he had merely spotted half a mangold which our cleaning efforts had uncovered in his straw. Having munched it up, he lumbered out on to the downs again.

  On the southern slopes of their enclosure there was the favourite rolling ground of the herd and here their heavy bodies had worn away the turf and left several great naked patches of chalk, white against the green. To this rolling patch the old bulls would descend in a slow-moving, orderly line. Then they would lower themselves on to the chalk and with massive kicks from their hind legs would tumble their massive bodies on to their backs in a series of convulsive heaves. From a distance they looked as though they were trying to extricate themselves from an invisible net in which they had become entangled. The rough chalk rasped against their hides and removed the loose coat which always seemed to worry them. Presently, sufficiently relieved after half an hour or so of delicious scratching, they would scramble heavily to their feet and a convulsive quiver would travel over the soft brown skin on their flanks and belly, shaking off the loose chalk. Then they would lumber away to browse, with just a few white chips of chalk embedded in the tangled curls of their forequarters.

  When they were losing their winter coats the process appeared to drive them mad and everywhere you looked the buffalo would be leaning against the fence or against the gnarled hawthorn trunks, scratching and scratching, their eyes closed in a sort of ecstasy. I discovered that they employed another method to get rid of the loose hair round their heads and shoulders. The tiny, close-growing copses of the blackthorn trees provided excellent posts to scratch an irritating back but their tightly interlaced branches hanging low to the ground were used by the buffalo as a comb, for it provided a way of shearing off the dead winter coat. You would see them taking turns, walking deliberately under the trees so that the branches caught in their thick manes and the thorns and twigs tore loose the dead hair. In the spring the blackthorn trees looked as though they were bearing a crop of some strange fruit with all the tufts and sprigs of soft, fallow-coloured hair hanging from their branches. These handfuls of soft fur would be eagerly sought out by the sparrows and yellow-hammers to use as nest lining.

  When the Europeans came to North America the buffalo were almost as numerous as the stars. The great herds numbered in millions and were the biggest conglomeration of land mammals that the world has ever seen. To the Red Indian, the buffalo was everything – a house, food, clothing, even down to providing such mundane objects as needle and thread. But the Indian only killed what he could conveniently use and his depredations had no effect on the countless thousands of these great shaggy animals. But with the coming of the European and his sophisticated weapons the picture changed. The buffalo was hunted murderously and slaughtered by the thousands. To begin with the whole carcass was utilised but then it palled as a source of food. Now they were killed in the same vast quantities but for only two reasons: firstly, so that their tongues could be procured as a delicacy, and, secondly, as a deliberate policy of extermination, for it was felt that since the Indian relied so much on the buffalo, if the buffalo became extinct so would the Indian.

  At this time professional buffalo hunters made their money and their reputations – people like Buffalo Bill Cody, whose biggest day’s bag was two hundred and fifty of the great beasts. As the railroad proceeded across the prairie, cutting the buffalo’s migrating roads, the animals were shot from the trains and left to rot. In places, the stench from their rotting carcasses was so great that trains passing through this huge charnel-house had to keep their windows up. With such hideous and profligate slaughter it is small wonder that in 1889 the buffalo, from being the most numerous land mammal ever recorded, dwindled to a scant five hundred specimens. Only then did a small duster of conservation-minded people, horrified at the thought that the buffalo might vanish for ever, take steps to ensure its survival. Now there are several thousand buffalo in existence and the species is safe, but never again will mankind enjoy the awe-inspiring sight of the prairie covered as far as the eye can see in all directions by a black, moving rug of buffalo.

  Another animal we had on this section, which is at the moment undergoing the same fate as the buffalo, was the anoa. These are diminutive black buffalo from the Celebes. They seemed terribly small – about the size of a Shetland pony – to be relatives of the great buffalo. They had long, earnest faces and soulful eyes; their dark fur was harsh to the touch and unevenly distributed over their fat rumps so that the dark, mauvey-pink skin showed through; their hooves were small and neat and their alert ears delicately furred inside; their horns, some eight inches long, were absolutely straight and sharply pointed. The two that we had seemed very inoffensive; they would nuzzle bran
from my hands and gaze up into my face with expressions of martyred innocence. It came as quite a surprise, when I read them up, to learn that they could be very dangerous indeed. Their small size, speed of movement, manoeuvrability and sharp horns had made them an animal to be reckoned with. It was because of their ferocity when disturbed that the anoas were left strictly alone by the local people in the Celebes for many years. But then, with the coming of modern weapons – particularly that absolutely indispensable one for every sportsman, the machine-gun – the anoas’ days became numbered and now their outlook is very bleak.

  The Chapman zebras, on the whole, I found to be very dull animals. They formed an attractive pattern against the grass of their vast enclosure but appeared to do nothing of interest except graze and occasionally have little bickering fights with each other when, with ears back and teeth bared, they would threaten each other. The stallions, to a man, were determined to try and kill you, and as they could move with ferocious speed you always had to be on your guard.

  First thing every morning, Harry and I would climb the fence into the zebra paddock and collect the velvety, dew-drenched crop of mushrooms that had sprouted there in the night. These Harry would cook in butter in a little saucepan and we would devour them for our elevenses. They made a delicious meal, but the hazards involved in mushroom collecting with a couple of murderous zebra stallions in the paddock were extreme to say the least. We worked close together, with a pitchfork handy, and when one was bending down to pick mushrooms the other was watching the zebras. One morning there was a particularly fine crop and we had filled half a bucket and were congratulating ourselves upon the enormous feed we should be able to have at eleven o’clock. I was just bending down to pick an exceptionally succulent mushroom when Hany shouted.

  ‘Watch out, boy! The bastard’s coming!’

  I looked up and the zebra stallion was thundering towards me, his ears back, his lip pulled back over his yellow teeth. Leaving the bucket, I followed Harry’s example and ran like a hare. We scrambled over the fence panting and laughing. The zebra scudded to a halt by the bucket and glared at us, snorting indignantly. Then, to our extreme annoyance, he swivelled round and, with immense accuracy, kicked the bucket in a great swooping parabola through the air, scattering white mushrooms like a comet’s tail. It took us half an hour to collect the mushrooms again.

  There was one zebra, however, that I did like. This was a solitary male gravvy. These are the biggest of all the zebra and their body shape is more like a horse; their head is long and elegant, and though it bears a superficial resemblance to a donkey’s head it is really more like that of an Arab stallion with a fine, delicate, velvety muzzle. The stripes are thin and very regular, as though drawn with a ruler, and the ears are enormous, like huge furry Arum lilies. This particular zebra was, as far as I know, the only one of its kind in England and apart from its beauty and gentleness of disposition, its rarity entitled me to give it extra rations of crushed oats which it would take delicately from my hand with lips that were as soft as the mushroom tops that grew in its paddock.

  To the north of the section lay a large, green, velvety paddock surrounded by a crisp crinoline of oak trees. Here lived what were undoubtedly the rarest animals in our care, a pair of young Père David deer. To look at, they were not nearly so graceful as, say, the red deer or fallow deer that lived not far away from them. By deer standards one would almost have called them ungainly. They stood some four foot high at the shoulder and they had long, earnest faces with curiously slanted, almond-shaped eyes. Under each eye there was a curious vent; a little pocket of pink skin which could open and close at will, which led nowhere and seemed to fulfil no useful purpose. They had stocky, rather donkey-like bodies; their colour was a peculiar acorn-brown, with white bellies and a heart-shaped patch on their bottoms. The shape and slant of the eyes, the curious body, the long black hooves, and – unique in the deer family – a long tufted tail like a donkey, all went to make them look as though they had wandered out of a rather uncertain Chinese print.

  Their movements were clumsy, lacking in the grace that is usually displayed by their family. Occasionally when I passed their paddock my sudden appearance would startle them and they would wheel round to face me, legs spread out, ears pricked; then they would set off in panic-stricken flight to the other end of their domain with a gait reminiscent of a drunken donkey. The legs seemed to be held very stiffly and the abnormal length of the body made the whole deer roll from side to side. When you compared it to the beautiful movements of the other deer you realised just how donkey-like the Père David was. The only part of it that had any of the normal beauty of line and movement of the deer family was the head and neck.

  The story of the discovery and subsequent survival of this odd-looking deer is as curious as any in the annals of natural history. In the middle 1800s Père David, a Franciscan missionary, worked and travelled in China and, like so many men of the Church in those days, took a deep interest in natural history. I suspect, in fact, that the number of unique natural history specimens he obtained greatly outnumbered the souls he saved during his sojourn in China. It was he, in fact, who first obtained specimens of the new and famous giant panda. While in Peking he heard a rumour to the effect that in the Royal Gardens of the Emperor’s Palace there existed a herd of deer – a type of deer, it was said, unknown anywhere else in China. This naturally intrigued Father David, but the problem was how to get a chance of seeing these animals. They were in a walled garden carefully guarded by Tartars. At that time, of course, foreigners were scarcely tolerated in China so Père David had to move with great caution. It shows the depth of the interest that the man had in natural history that he was prepared to take risks that could well have led to imprisonment or even death. His first step was to bribe a Tartar guard on the gate of the Royal Palace to allow him to climb up on top of the wall and survey the garden. From this vantage point he could see eventually a herd of deer feeding among the trees. It must have been a thrilling moment for him as he found himself looking at a herd of deer grazing about a hundred yards away, and realised that he was seeing a new and particularly unusual species.

  He at once wrote home to Paris, to Professor Milne-Edwards at the Museum of Natural History, describing his discovery:

  ‘Three miles to the south of Peking there is a vast Imperial Park about thirty-six miles perhaps all round. There it is that since time immemorial deer and antelopes have lived in peace. No European can get into this park, but this spring, from the top of the surrounding wall, I had the good fortune to see, rather far off, a herd of more than a hundred of these animals, which looked to me like elks. Unfortunately, they had no antlers at this time: what characterises the animal that I saw is the length of the tail, which struck me as being comparatively as long as the tail of the donkey, a feature not to be found in any of the cervides that I know. It is also smaller than the northern elk. I have made fruitless attempts to get the skin of this species. It is quite impossible to have even portions and the French Legation feel incapable of managing to procure this curious animal by unofficial approaches to the Chinese Government. Luckily I know some Tartar soldiers who are going to do guard duty in this park and I am sure, by means of a bribe, that I shall get hold of a few skins which I shall hasten to send you. The Chinese give to this animal the name of Mi-Lou, which means the four odd features, because they consider that this deer takes after the stag by its antler, the cow by its hooves, the camel by its neck and the mule or even the donkey by its tail.’

  Père David was now determined to obtain specimens, but this was not so easily done. He knew that, in spite of the penalty for such an action being death, sometimes the Tartar guards fed on poached venison, so with the aid of more bribes he succeeded in getting them to agree to save for him the skins and the skulls of the next ones they ate. In due course this was done and Père David shipped the skins and skulls back to the Museum of Natural History in Paris where it was discovered that they were indeed a species
new to science. In recognition of Father David’s great contribution to oriental natural history they were named Elaphurus davidianus in his honour.

  Naturally, zoological gardens and private collections in Europe wanted to obtain specimens of this rare deer and, indeed, if any deer could be called rare, Père David’s could, for the only known living herd was in the Imperial Palace Gardens, and there is still a certain amount of doubt as to where they came from in the first place. It is almost as though they had evolved within the grounds of the Emperor’s summer palace. As a wild animal, it is now believed to have been extinct two or three thousand years ago. Semi-fossill remains show that before this time it apparently roamed wild about the Honan district of China. The Chinese authorities, however, were not anxious for any of their national treasures to be exported, but at length, after prolonged negotiations, several pairs of the deer were sent to various zoos in Europe and a pair was sent to the then Duke of Bedford’s extraordinary private menagerie at Woburn.

  Not long after this the Yangtze River flooded its banks and the flood waters breached the wall round the Emperor’s Palace Gardens in several places. Most of the deer escaped into the surrounding countryside where of course they were immediately slaughtered by the starving peasantry. There still remained a tiny nucleus in the gardens; but it seemed that the Père David deer was dogged by bad luck for next came the Boxer Rebellion and during this time the Tartar guards seized the opportunity of eating the remaining deer. So now the species was extinct in its home of origin and the total world population consisted of animals scattered about Europe.

  The Duke of Bedford, one of the earliest and most intelligent conservationists, decided that he must add to his tiny herd at Woburn if the species was to be saved, so he negotiated with the zoological gardens that had specimens of the deer and eventually managed to establish a herd of eighteen. This was the total world population. Gradually, living under ideal conditions at Woburn, the animals increased in number until, at the time I was at Whipsnade, the Woburn herd numbered nearly five hundred. Now, the duke felt, was the time when the animals should be distributed because to have every living representative of the species congregated in one spot was risky in the extreme. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, for example, could have exterminated the Père David very successfully. Therefore, the duke started by giving a pair to Whipsnade as the nucleus of a breeding herd.