The Ark's Anniversary
‘Well,’ said Mr X, ‘what can I do for you?’
I told him.
He listened without question.
‘But of course I will help you,’ he said, endeavouring to pour me another drink, the action on the expensive bedsprings bringing us closer and closer, as if we were on a trampoline. ‘How much do you want?’
Feeling like a dishevelled and singularly unattractive courtesan who had found an easy prey, I croaked out the amount. I remember the chequebook being brought out, smoothed delicately with the assurance of power, the figures meticulously filling in the magic amount and then I was free into the wild winter’s night again, with the cheque warming my wallet. The man had been tactful and charming and at no time did he give me the impression that (even on the trampoline of a bed) he was anything but in my debt. To do this under the circumstances required urbane charm of immense degree. In return, I was determined that I would call our first baby Orangutan after him. Three months later, my Mr X suddenly hit the headlines. It seemed that he had, allegedly, swindled a large number of sober Jersey citizens out of their wealth and was, in consequence, forced to spend a short time in one of Her Majesty’s less salubrious prisons. I wish I had known him a lot sooner. Not only for his charm, but for his happy banditry. He could have taught me a lot.
During the course of my Robin Hood-like career (taking from the rich to give to conservation) I have travelled widely and met with a lot of adventures, many amusing, many less so, but I never thought that in my efforts to raise funds I should be involved with two countries as dissimilar as can be and yet both of which have in their own ways become inextricably entwined with the history of our work in Jersey. One of these is the most powerful and wealthy in the world – the United States of America – and the other is a poverty-stricken, remote island in the Indian Ocean. It was the latter which first attracted my attention.
Lying off the south-east coast of Africa is an enormous hunk of land 1000 miles long by some 300 miles broad at its widest point, looking like a badly-made omelette. It is called by the euphonious name of Madagascar, and it is the fourth largest island in the world. Biologically speaking, Madagascar is probably one of the most fascinating tracts of land on this planet. The reason for this is that in the dim distant past, when the continents were being forged and crushed into shape, pushed to and fro on the red-hot porridge-like surface of the earth like paper boats on a pond, Madagascar became separated from her parent body, Africa and, like a gigantic ark containing a host of plants and animals, drifted down and to the right to take up its present position. This meant that all its plants and creatures continued to develop in isolation and evolved in totally different ways from their relatives on the mainland.
Nearly all of the living creatures inhabiting this extraordinary island are found nowhere else in the world and what a fantastic range there is. The lemurs, from the huge black and white Indri the size of a four-year-old child, down to the mouse lemurs, the smallest the size of a matchbox; woodlice the size of golf balls; a whole range of hedgehog-like tenrecs, some capable of giving birth to inordinate numbers of young at a time; tortoises as big as footstools, and ones the size of a saucer; an orchid so huge and complex that it can be fertilized only by a moth with a super-long proboscis; a modest pink flower which helps in the treatment of leukaemia, and a host of other biological wonders inhabit this rich and fascinating island.
Unfortunately, Madagascar is a fairly typical example of how we are destroying our world. Once mostly forested, rich in plants and animals, the island is now in a decline. Over-grazing by zebu herds (kept as status symbols instead of mere sources of meat) and wasteful and disastrous slash-and-burn agricultural methods, both undertaken by an ever-rising population have desecrated the Malagasy forests so that ninety per cent of them have now disappeared. This not only means the vanishing of many trees and plants but of the creatures that depend on them. In their place comes erosion, changing, drying and rutting the landscape as age wrinkles and dries the human face. Fly over Madagascar today and you can see this giant island bleeding to death, for without the forest the soil is washed down the rivers and out to sea, great streams of laterite, like blood from slashed veins, coiling their way out into the blue of the Indian Ocean.
Needless to say, the fate of Madagascar is of paramount importance to conservationists because at the present rate of habitat destruction hundreds of unique life forms (many of them possibly of great importance to man) will vanish within the next twenty to fifty years, or maybe sooner. But it is difficult to get a conservation message across when the standard of literacy among the peoples of Madagascar is not high and their economic problems are so severe. It is appalling to realize that the French, when in control of the island, laid down large areas as reserves but did little or nothing to ensure that they were adequately run and policed; moreover, they did nothing to ensure that the native inhabitants were aware of the fascinating and important land which was their heritage. Until recently, the man in the street had only one way of learning of the extraordinary fauna found in his country and that was by looking at the backs of matchboxes on which were depicted in a blurred and highly-coloured form a few species of lemur. It was obvious that, until conservation in Madagascar got under way, it was essential to try to build up breeding groups of all the Malagasy fauna one could procure.
We have always thought it sensible to work with a common species which is related to an endangered one; in this way you can evolve the best techniques for husbandry and breeding, so that when you acquire the endangered specimens you have already had some experience with a similar creature. Thus, say, the keeping of black bears would be experience which would stand you in good stead if you were going to try to found a colony of the much rarer Spectacled bears. So when we decided that we should seriously consider acquiring various Malagasy fauna to establish breeding colonies, we chose first the three species which were readily available, none of them thought to be in any immediate danger of extinction. They were the Pigmy hedgehog tenrec, the Spiny hedgehog tenrec and the Ring-tailed lemur, one of the most handsome of the lemuroids. The tenrecs are curious, primitive little beasts, moving like tiny, spiky, clockwork toys, pulling the flexible skin of their foreheads down over their noses into a prodigious frown of disapproval should you pick them up, giving birth to gigantic litters of young (the largest litters known among mammals, up to thirty-one in one species). Emerging only at night to feed on insects, raw eggs and meat, the tenrecs kept themselves to themselves and could never, by any stretch of the imagination, be described by that degrading word, ‘pet’.
Although we had some setbacks to begin with, we had soon established flourishing colonies. Indeed, in the case of the Spiny hedgehog tenrec, almost too flourishing, for over the years we have bred over 500. One of our male Pigmy hedgehog tenrecs which arrived fully adult beat the longevity record for this species; when he died he must have been at least fourteen and a half years old, an incredible age for such a fragile and delicate creature.
We had success too with our Ring-tailed lemurs. These lovely animals, clad in black-and-white and ash-grey fur with a pinkish wash, have long, elegant black-and-white-striped tails and yellow eyes. They look exactly as though they have wandered out of one of the more bizarre drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. When they walk they do so with a swagger, and their tails are held proudly aloft like banners. Ringtails are great sun-worshippers and the moment there is the most transient gleam of sunshine they seat themselves facing it, hands on the knees or outstretched, heads pointing up with eyes dosed in ecstasy, while they drink in the health-giving rays. Our first pair were called by the unimaginative names of Polly and Peter (christened before we received them) and there was no doubt that Polly wore the lemur equivalent of the pants. Poor Peter was thoroughly bossed about, pushed off all the more comfortable branches, driven away from the sunniest spots, forced to relinquish all the better tidbits to his harridan of a wife. However, he seemed t
o thrive on this treatment, so we did not interfere. Polly, of course, was a real prima donna, swaggering about the cage, dozing in the sun with her arm stretched high so that her armpits would get the benefit of the ultraviolet rays, or dancing about elegantly trying to catch those butterflies misguided enough to fly through the wire. In a benign mood Polly would also sing for you, a performance as startling as it was unmusical.
‘Come along, Polly, give us a song, you pretty girl,’ you would cajole and flatter.
Polly would stretch, preen herself and stare with pensive yellow eyes into the distance as if making up her mind whether you were worth of her talents. A little more flattery and she would suddenly begin, clasping hold of a branch as a singer clasps her abdomen. She flung back her head, opened her mouth wide and threw herself into her song with all the verve and fire of a lemuroid Maria Callas.
‘Ow,’ she would sing, ‘ar-ow, ar-ow, ar-ow, ar-ow.’
She would pause for applause and then plunge into the second verse.
‘Ar-row, ow, ow, row,’ she yowled, ‘ar-ow, ar-ow.’
The volume and penetration of the sound more than made up for the slight repetitiousness of the lyrics.
When Peter finally plucked up the courage to seduce Polly we never knew, but he must have caught her in one of her rare weak moments, for she surprised us all by giving birth to a fine male youngster. He was an adorable baby with huge, wistful eyes and a little face, pointed, pixie-like ears and thin arms and legs which made him look in the last stages of emaciation, like a lemur Oliver Twist. To begin with, this enchanting baby rode around on Polly, spread-eagled on her stomach, clutching firmly on to her, his little hands and feet buried in her fur. As he grew older, he grew bolder and started riding on Polly’s back, like a diminutive, melancholy-looking jockey on a large steed. Once he had observed and absorbed the world, he became more self-assured and his expression changed from one of melancholy to one of mischievousness. He ventured off Polly’s back and explored parts of their domain and would then swiftly return to the safety of his mother’s arms when imaginary dangers threatened. He danced and pirouetted daintily, sunbathed like his parents and indulged in the liberty of using their tails as swings. He even learnt to sing with Polly; a shrill, rather quavery accompaniment which did nothing to make the song more tuneful or add anything to the lyrics.
Once we had established the Ringtails, we were lucky enough to secure a group of Mayotte brown lemurs, which come from an island in the Comores off the coast of Madagascar. They were large, attenuated animals with pale eyes and woolly, rather sheep-like fur in various shades of chocolate and cinnamon and black. They settled down very well and within a surprisingly short space of time one of the females gave birth. It was then that we learnt, through bitter experience, some of the psychological problems of the male Mayotte lemur when faced with the joys of parenthood. The baby was no sooner born than it was torn off its mother by the male and killed. This infanticidal attitude of the male was a great shock and we had to work out some means of circumnavigating the male lemurs’ evil intentions towards their offspring. In each cage we constructed a maternity den, a cage within a cage as it were. As soon as it became apparent that a birth was imminent, the female was locked in the maternity den. Although separate from the male, she could be seen, smelt and touched through the fine-mesh wire by the male. More important still, he could witness the birth and get used to the idea of the female having a baby. Once the baby was firmly established, the female could rejoin the male and he took the baby’s presence as a matter of course.
One morning, I was standing in front of the Mayotte lemur cage with Jeremy and we were admiring the antics of one young couple with their latest youngster.
‘At the rate they’re breeding, we will soon have to start thinking of some more accommodation,’ said Jeremy.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and a lot of money it will cost too.’
‘I know,’ said Jeremy, adding wistfully, ‘it would be super to have a whole new range of cages for these lemurs, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, it would,’ I agreed.
The baby lemur swung adroitly from his mother’s tail to his father’s, administered a painful bite and danced out of range of punishment.
‘I’m thinking of going to America,’ I said.
‘America,’ said Jeremy ‘you’ve never been there, have you?’
‘No, but I’m thinking of going there and setting up a sort of American branch of the Trust.’
‘For raising money?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘After all, everyone else seems to go to America to get money. I really don’t see why I should be an exception.’
‘Yes, well, it should be an interesting trip,’ he said, thoughtfully. Neither of us knew just how interesting the trip was to be.
I decided that I did not want to fly, because I felt that flying to and over a country gave you no sense of distance and you miss so much. So I was to go across to New York on the QE II and then travel over a great deal of the United States by car and train. That all the Americans I met thought that I was mad goes without saying, but at that stage I knew very few Americans so my resolve to view America from the ground was unshaken. I had arranged to lecture in places as far apart as San Francisco, Chicago and New York, so the tour was going to be a long and arduous one. I decided that I would need somebody to act as my watchdog and protector – my minder, as they are now called; someone who would cope with booking hotels, purchasing train tickets and so on, leaving me free to get as many Trust members as I could, enlisted from my audiences and the people I stayed with. I chose an old friend, Peter Waller, who for some years had been connected with the Royal Covent Garden Opera Company and had, in recent years, helped his friend, Steve Eckart, set up the American School in London. Tall, slim, and handsome, Peter looked no more than forty but was considerably older. He had enormous charm and women – especially elderly women – adored him. I felt that he would be the ideal person to protect me from the overbearing American matrons of the blue-rinse brigade, of which I had heard such frightening stories, for it seemed that my trail might be fraught with terrors unknown to a person used merely to the complications inherent in an expedition to catch wild animals in a jungle. Peter turned out to be a charming, lovable companion, who watched over my welfare carefully, though there were times when his Jeeves-like ministrations fell somewhat short of expectations.
Apart from an elegant series of suits I had built specially for the occasion, I took several hundred copies of our Annual Report (a bulky document) and several thousand leaflets explaining the work of the Trust. Owing to some hold-up at the printers, these were delivered only at the last moment and instead of being incarcerated in stout cardboard boxes were done up in shapeless bundles covered with brown paper and spiders’ webs of string. There was no time to repack, so Peter and I arrived at the QE II looking as though we had sacked a gypsy encampment and come away with all the more unsavoury spoils. An urbane and aristocratic purser (looking like one of Her Majesty’s ambassadors) saw that our gypsy encampment was safely stowed in the bowels of the ship and we were shown our cabins.
It was fortunate for me that some old friends of Peter’s were travelling with us – Margot and Godfrey Rockefeller and their two children. Margot, who explained that they were the poor Rockefellers, was a most attractive woman, with a beautiful face framed by prematurely white hair and blue eyes as piercing as a hawk’s. She had an impish sense of humour and a great gift as a comedienne, being able to screw up her face and turn her voice into a squeaky falsetto, reminiscent of some of the famous Hollywood puppets. Godfrey, by contrast, was a massive muscular man with a great, round, good-humoured face, perpetually smiling, and humourous sleepy eyes. Their children were an enchanting boy and girl, Parker and Caroline, whom I irritated enormously by calling them Baby Rocks.
The beginning of the voyage went smoothly and Godfrey, who appea
red to have an unlimited quantity of Scotch hidden in his cabin, insisted that we all foregather before meals for a few drinks. And then we were struck by bad weather. The next morning both Godfrey and Peter had taken to their bunks. However, I had little time to spare for their woes for I had some of my own. During breakfast I had been approached by the elegant and aristocratic purser to be vouchsafed the unpleasant news that my gypsy encampment of parcels had broken loose during the night and that the baggage-room was now knee-deep in Trust literature. Would I, the purser asked, like to do something about it? The thought of having to repack hundreds of Annual Reports and goodness knows how many thousand leaflets was daunting, but Margot came to my rescue. She rounded up the Baby Rocks and the four of us went down to the baggage-room armed with paper and string supplied by the kindly purser, and surveyed the carnage. To say that we were knee-deep in Trust information was putting it mildly. Grimly, we set to work. It took us all day, but finally the last bundle was wrapped and tied.
‘Well, thank God for that,’ said Margot, examining her grubby hands. ‘What a job.’
‘But what a story to dine out on,’ I said.
‘What story?’ asked Margot, suspiciously.
‘How I crossed the Atlantic on the QE II incarcerated in the hold with three Rockefellers who were tying up my baggage.’
‘I shall sue,’ warned Margot. ‘Anyway, no one would believe you. No one would think that the Rockefellers would be so stupid.’
The night before we arrived, we gathered in Godfrey’s cabin to consume several bottles of champagne which he had procured to celebrate our arrival in New York the next day. Under the influence of this delicate liquid, Peter was moved to reminisce about his early days in Vienna in the ballet school.