Island Zoo

Ever since I was quite small I have wanted to have my own zoo. When I grew up I traveled all over the world, catching wild animals for other people’s zoos, and I found it heartbreaking to have to part with a creature that I had spent six months looking after and brought back from some strange part of the world.

Well, eventually I managed to save enough money to start my own zoo. I came to Jersey, in the Channel Isles, which are owned by Great Britain but are quite close to France. There I found a lovely old manor house with beautiful grounds, the perfect setting for my animals.

1 have tried to make my zoo different from other zoos in a number of ways. For example, we try to get creatures that other zoos do not have, and we try to keep them as tame as possible, so that they are always ready to show themselves to the visitors. Another thing we are trying to do, which I think is very important, is to save various kinds of birds, animals and reptiles from becoming extinct. All over the world many different kinds of animal might disappear altogether as the forests are cut down, roads and towns built, and the land ploughed up for farms. This is a great pity, for many of these creatures are beautiful and interesting, and it would be a terrible thing if they were to vanish for ever. In my zoo, we are attempting to gather together some of these rare animals, so that they can live comfortably, well fed, protected from their enemies, able to rear their young in peace.

A great number of the creatures in my zoo I have collected my­self, going out to the countries where they are found, watching them in the wild state, trapping them and taming them, and finally bringing them back to live in Jersey. Many of the animals whose photographs appear in this book are very old friends of mine, and I have stories to tell about most of them, which I hope will make you feel you know them all a little bit better, not only as animals, but as friends.

The monkey family is one of my favorite animal families, because it contains so many interesting creatures, ranging from Man himself, right down to the marmosets and a number of other small creatures that do not look as though they are related to the monkeys in any way at ail when you first look at them. Next to man, the most intelligent of the monkey family are the apes, and the most important of the apes is the gorilla.

Our baby gorilla is called N’pongo, and he came to us from the deep forests of the French Cameroons in West Africa. We think he is just over a year old. When he is fully grown he will be six feet in height and weight about 280 pounds. But even now, although he is so young, he is terribly strong. When we take him out of his cage, he generally does not want to go back. Then, unless we tempt him back inside with a bowl of milk, he will simply cling onto a tree or the railings, screaming loudly, and it takes two people to push him back into his cage.

When N’pongo first arrived at the zoo his cage was not quite ready for him, and for a week he lived in the house with us. It was very interesting to see the way he soon settled down, and after the first day he carried on as though he had been born in a house instead of the forest. He would loll about on the sofa most of the time, occa­sionally getting down to go to the bookcase, where he would care­fully pull a book out of the shelf, tuck it under his arm, and then return to the sofa, where he would sit and carefully turn the pages of the book, looking exactly as if he was reading. He preferred books with colored pictures in them, of course, and then he would stare at the picture for a long time, and then bend down very carefully and lick it with the tip of his tongue to see what it tasted like.

One of his favorite toys was a big colored ball we bought for him. Sometimes he would throw this round the room and chase it, sometimes he would just sit on it.. But then he invented a special game of his own to play with the ball. He would lie on top of it, and, by making “swimming” movements with his little arms and legs, he would roll round and round the room. All the time he was doing this he would giggle away to himself, obviously enjoying the tickling sensation as the ball rolled round and round under his fat tummy. Sometimes he would laugh so much that he would roll right over the ball, and bang his head on the floor. Then he would sit there, looking very mournful, rubbing his head with his hands, and gazing at the ball rather reproachfully. Occasionally, if he

Gorilla

banged his head hard, he would get angry with the ball and hit it with his hand, for he obviously thought that the ball was responsible for his hurting himself.

Another of his favorite games was with a big, highly colored shawl that I had given him the day he arrived. He was very fond of this shawl and always walked about, trailing it after him, wherever he went. But, when he got excited; he would put the shawl right over his head, and gallop round the room, bumping into the chairs and sofa, and clutching at our legs when we passed, trying to pre­tend he was some fearsome monster. Then, when he was tired, he would lie down in the middle of the floor, the shawl right over him, and we would pretend we couldn't see him. We would call his name, and look all over the room, while he lay under his shawl very quietly. At last I would lift up the corner of the shawl and, with a shout of surprise, discover him. He would jump up, giggling loudly, and start to run round and round the room again, very pleased with the trick that he thought he had played on us.

It was very amusing the first time that I showed N’pongo a mirror. It was a big mirror and I put it down on the floor so that he could see all of himself reflected in it. He approached it very care­fully, and then sat down about a foot away and stared and stared at his reflection. Then he leaned forward very cautiously and licked the mirror. Then he banged at it with his hand, and of course his reflection did the same. He sat and thought about this for a bit, and decided that the other gorilla was hiding behind a piece of glass and taking an unfair advantage of him, so very solemnly he walked round to the back of the mirror to see where this other ape was. Finding nothing there, he walked back to the front of the mirror again and sat down, watching his reflection and pondering on the problem. Then, still sitting in front of the mirror, he leaned forward and, keeping a stern eye on his reflection to see it did not move, stretched his arm round the back of the mirror, feeling with his hand to try if he could catch this other gorilla he was sure was behind the mirror.

Gorillas, in the wild state, live in family parties, father gorilla, three or four of his wives, and various children of different ages. During the day they wander through the forest, feeding on vegeta­tion and fruit, and then, when night comes, they choose a suitable tree to sleep in. Father gorilla, being so heavy and big, cannot climb up. so he collects some bushes and makes himself a com­fortable nest at the bottom of the tree, sitting with his back to the trunk. His wives and children swarm up into the branches above and make themselves nice, comfortable, springy nests to sleep in. by twisting and interweaving the branches and creepers together. These nests are beautifully made, and in some of them have been found real granny knots, where the gorillas have tied the branches together.

The gorilla is not the fearsome monster that some stories make him out to be. Like most wild animals, if he is left alone he is a peaceful creature. But. of course, should you attack him or his family, he gets in a rage, and then his strength and speed make him a terrible animal to face.

Sharing the African forest with the gorilla is the chimpanzee. Many people say they cannot see any difference between these two apes, but if you look at the portrait of N’pongo and compare it with the portrait of the chimpanzee, I think you will be able to see what a great difference there is between them. Our chimpanzees are called Chumley and Lulu, and they are both great characters. I have known Chumley since he was a tiny baby, for I got him in West Africa when I was out there on an animal collecting expedition two or three years ago, and. when we returned to England, I kept him in the house for a long time and brought him up exactly as you would a human baby. His real name is Cholmondeley St. John.

Like N’pongo, the gorilla, Chumley very soon settled down in the house, and was soon carrying on as if he owned it. At mealtimes he would sit up at the table with us, on his own chair, with his own plate of food and mug of milk. As soon as he sat down to a meal he would take a hasty glance round the table to make sure that we had no tidbits on our plates that he didn’t have, and then he would settle down to his meal with little hooting noises of pleasure.

At that time I had a motorbike and sidecar, and Chumley loved to go for rides in it. He would sit in the sidecar, looking very aristo­cratic, and behaved very well, except that occasionally he would lean over the side and try to grab a cyclist when we passed one.

The cyclist, when he saw a chimpanzee leaning out of a sidecar and trying to grab his ankle, was generally so surprised that he would wobble about all over the road and usually end up in the ditch, and I would have to stop the motorbike and apologize. The first time I drove down to the garage to fill up with gasoline Chumley was fas­cinated, and watched carefully while I unscrewed the cap to the gas tank, and the garageman inserted the hose and pumped the gas into the tank. Chumley wanted to drink a little gas to see what it was like, but I could not allow that. About ten days later, we had to go to the garage again for more gas, and, to my surprise, Chumley, as soon as we got there, jumped out of the sidecar onto the saddle and started to try to unscrew the cap. He knew what we had come for, and he had remembered which part of the motorbike had to be unscrewed. I thought this was very clever of him.

One day, when we were driving in the country, we rounded a corner and came upon a large herd of cows that were being driven along the road from one meadow to another. Now, Chumley had seen cows before, but only in the distance, and suddenly to round a

Gorilla

corner like this and meet a whole herd of them was too much for him. He took one look at them, uttered a piercing shriek, leaped out of the sidecar onto my chest and wrapped his arms tightly round my neck. Now, it is extremely difficult to drive a motorbike successfully when you have a twenty-pound chimpanzee hanging round your neck and screaming in your ear. I had not expected Chumley to behave in this fashion, and I was so surprised that I drove the motorbike straight into the hedge. Luckily we were going very slowly because of the cows; otherwise we might both have been killed. We had to sit there in the hedge, while the cows passed us, Chumley clutching me tightly round the chest and hiding his face in my coat so that he would not see the fearsome monsters.

Chumley loved to play games, and, like N’pongo, he made up several of his own. He loved to be chased, for example, and he would do something to make you chase him if you were not feeling in the mood for a game. With my mother, for example, he would creep up on her when she was knitting, and then suddenly grab her ball of wool and rush across the room with it and swarm up the cur­tains, so that she could not reach him. If 1 was reading a book and taking no notice of him he would again creep up very softly, and then suddenly slam the book shut* He would then take to his heels and gallop round and round the sofa, giggling loudly as I chased him. Sometimes, when it was a rainy day and he could not go out in the garden to play in the apple trees, I would fill the wash basin full of warm water, and give him a piece of soap and a wash cloth, and he would perch himself on the edge of the basin, and with a very solemn expression, like a scientist performing a difficult experiment, he would lather the cloth and wash his hands. Sometimes he would sit there for an hour or so, first washing his hands, and then washing the cloth. Then, one day, I bought him a small plastic duck, and he thought this was wonderful He would first of all work up a good lather on the surface of the water, and then carefully float his duck in it. Then slowly, and with great care, he would push the duck down under the water to the bottom of the basin, and suddenly let it pop up to the surface of the water again. Then came the awful day when he chewed the duck by mistake and made a hole in it. So, when he put it on the surface of the water, the duck sank to the bottom, bubbling dismally. Chumley could not understand this, and spent half an hour trying to get his duck to float. In the end he decided that the duck was just being awkward, and so in his annoyance, to teach it a lesson, he put it on the floor and stamped on it. This, of course, squashed the duck flat, and we had to throw it away and buy him a new one.

Chimpanzees

When Chumley grew older and we put him in his cage in the zoo, we got Lulu as a wife for him. Lulu is a very quiet, sweet- natured chimpanzee, whereas Chumley has always been rowdy and boisterous. When they were first introduced to each other, although Chumley loved Lulu at first sight, he soon learned that she was too nice-natured to hurt him. And he started to tease her. If she found a special tidbit, Chumley would creep up on her and snatch it away; if Lulu found something to play with, Chumley would snatch that away too. It was not really because he wanted the plaything or the tidbit, but simply that he wanted to tease Lulu. Instead of teasing him back, or boxing his ears, Lulu would just sit there and scream. This went on for so long, with the teasing getting worse and worse, that we began to think we would have to move Lulu out of the cage and get another female chimpanzee, one of stronger character who would stand no nonsense from Chumley. But one day something happened that changed the whole thing. Every morning Chumley and Lulu had their fruit given to them in a great big metal bowl.

The first thing Chumley always did was to empty all the fruit out on to the ground, and then pick out ail the best bits for himself. While he was doing this Lulu would play with the bowl, sometimes sitting in it, sometimes wearing it like a hat. This particular morning Chumley finished picking out the best fruit, and seeing Lulu enjoying herself with the bowl, decided to tease her; he ran across the cage to take the bowl away from her. Lulu was just balancing the bowl on her head, and when she saw Chumley running toward her she got such a fright that she threw the bowl at him. Quite by chance it hit him on the head. Chumley was astonished, for he thought that Lulu had meant to hit him, and being a coward he didn’t like that.

He screamed loudly and rushed to the far end of the cage and sat down, rubbing his head. Lulu was also astonished, and she picked up the bowl and started across the cage toward Chumley, meaning to comfort him. But Chumley, seeing her coming with the bowl, thought she was going to give him another bash on the head, and he ran away from her, still screaming. Lulu sat down and thought about it, and she suddenly realized that if she stood up to Chumley he would not be so keen to tease her in the future. So now we have no more trouble. If Chumley tries to tease her, she picks up the nearest thing and hits him with it. Chumley has been taught some manners at last.

One of the most peculiar-looking and highly colored members of the monkey family is the mandrill. The one we have is called Frisky, because when he arrived he spent all his time skipping about the cage, and twirling round and round, as if he was dancing. Man­drills have an extraordinary coloring, with their blue and scarlet behinds, and their blue and red faces, with the strange tire-like ridges on the nose. In the wild state they are monkeys that live mainly on the ground (though they can climb trees if they want to) and they travel through the African forest in great herds. The fully grown males are very powerful creatures, and even a leopard will think twice about tackling one.

Just after Frisky arrived, when he was starting to get his beautiful colors, there was an accident. A painter was working on top of Frisky's cage, painting the woodwork. One morning he climbed up there with his pot of paint, and then found that he had forgotten his brush, so. leaving his pot of paint on top of the cage, he climbed down to fetch his brush. This, of course, was Frisky’s

Mandrill

chance. He had watched the painter for several days, and had been very interested in the painting operation, but this was the first time he had seen a chance to investigate the paint more closely. With the painter safely out of the way. Frisky ran up to the top of the cage, pushed his arm through the wire, and pulled at the paint pot. The next moment the pot tipped over, and Frisky had a shower bath of mushroom-colored paint, which I must say did not improve his appearance. As soon as the paint had dried on his fur, we put him in a cage with three female monkeys, hoping they would help him clean the dried paint from his fur. They certainly did, but not in the way we had hoped. Finding that the paint had dried hard to Frisky's fur, they all set to work and pulled and tugged to try and get it off, with the result that they were pulling Frisky’s fur out by the handful, and very soon we had a half-bald mandrill So we had to move Frisky to a cage by himself until his hair grew again.

The drills, which are related to the mandrills, are similar in their habits, and somewhat like them in shape, but they have not got the bright coloring of the mandrill. The adult male drill has a black face, and the only coloring on it is a curious red mark along the lower lip, as if it has been putting on lipstick, and not very suc­cessfully at that. In parts of West Africa, the drill is one of the commonest monkeys, and when I was out there collecting animals for my zoo, I was always being brought baby drills that the hunters had caught in the forests. Now these babies were very sweet little creatures, but they had one drawback. As soon as they had settled down they adopted you as their mother, and, having done this, they expected you to carry them round with you, as their mother would do when they were that age. If you put them in a cage and refused to carry them, they screamed blue murder. Now it is very difficult to get any work done with four or five baby drills clinging to various parts of your anatomy, like so many little Old Men of the Sea, and at last I had to work out a plan that satisfied the drills and allowed me to work. I wore an old coat for a couple of days and when the baby drills were thoroughly used to this garment, I hung it over the back of a chair and let the babies cling to it. This worked perfectly, for the drills seemed to think that the coat was a sort of extra skin which I could take off whenever I wanted to, and as long as they were clinging to the coat they thought they were still holding on to me.

Drill

It was in West Africa, where I got the baby drills, that I also got Sophie, the puttynose monkey. I think these monkeys are very handsome, for their black fur has each hair tipped with green, they have a nice white shirt-front, and, on their nose is a white spot, as if someone had thrown a snowball at them and it had stuck. Sophie was quite a baby when I first got her, and when she grew bigger I used to have her tethered on a long leash attached to a collar round her waist, so that she had plenty of room to move about, and she could watch everything that was going on in the camp. She was inclined to be a rather greedy monkey, and would eat almost any­thing that was eatable, if she got the chance, but what she liked best of all was grasshoppers. I used to get the local African children to catch these grasshoppers for me, and I kept them in a large blue tin. As soon as Sophie saw me with this tin she would get terribly excited, dancing up and down at the end of her leash and uttering loud squeaking cries. I would tip a pile of grasshoppers out on to the ground in front of her. and she would lean forward and grab a hand­ful and stuff them into her mouth as rapidly as she could and scrunch them up, screwing up her eyes tight, and wiping her hands hastily on her fur, for, although she loved the taste of grasshoppers, she did not like the way they wriggled and tickled.

Puttynose Monkey

A lot of people think that all monkeys can hang by their tails, but this is quite wrong. In actual fact very few monkeys can do this, and they all come from South America. The woolly monkey, for example, can use its tail like another limb. It can not only hang by it, but can, if it wants to, pick up things with it. Our woolly monkey is called Topsy, and we got her from a dealer’s shop.

She was very tiny—far too young to have been taken away from her mother—and, when I found her in the shop, she was very ill indeed, and there seemed very little chance of her living. However, we gave her injections and various medicines which we hoped would cure her. The trouble was that, at that age, Topsy would normally still be carried about everywhere by her mother. Naturally, she wanted something to cling to, but—not surprisingly—she did not trust human beings, and if we tried to handle her she would scream until we put her down. We were in despair, for we knew that she would not get better unless she had something to cling to which made her feel safe. Then we had an idea. We bought a very large teddy bear and put that in Topsy’s cage. To our delight she took to it at once, and spent all day with her arms, legs and tail wrapped round her new “mother.”

After a few days, of course, the teddy bear grew dirty, and we had to take it away to wash and dry it. Topsy objected strongly to having her mother taken away, and she just sat in her cage and screamed and screamed, until we could not stand it any longer, and we went into the town and bought her another teddy bear to take the place of the first one while it was being washed. Of course, this was a long time ago, and Topsy is now very grown-up, so much so that she has quite given up teddy bears and has a big guinea pig in her cage to keep her company.

Douracouli

Another monkey that, like Topsy, comes from South America is the douracouli. This is probably one of the strangest of the monkey family, for it is the only monkey that comes out at night instead of the day. They are quaint looking animals, for their mouths are so shaped that they look as though they are smiling the whole time. Then they have the nice white ‘‘picture frame” of fur round their faces, which makes them look like a cross between an owl and a clown. When I was collecting animals in South America, I once lived in a native hut in the forest and just outside the hut there were some fruit trees. The douracoulis would come down every evening to feed in these trees, and so I had a chance to watch them.

The first thing I noticed was that they had a very complicated language, making more different kinds of noise than any other monkey I had ever heard. They could give a sort of half purr, half barking noise, shrill squeaks, grunts, a mewing noise rather like a cat, and a strange bubbling noise like water in a pipe. They were very affectionate little monkeys, and would sit side by side, their arms round each other, peering earnestly into each other's faces and uttering their strange bubbling noise. Sometimes they would lean over and kiss each other on the mouth in the most human fashion. In the bright moonlight they were the most charming animals to watch.

White-eared

Marmoset

During the daytime the douracoulis’ place in these fruit trees was taken by the white-eared marmosets. These delightful squirrel-like monkeys are small enough to fit into a teacup, and they travel through the trees in big groups, searching for fruit, spiders, tree frogs and birds’ eggs, if they can find them. Marmosets generally have twins, and the curious thing is that the mother does not bother much with them. As soon as they are bom, she hands them over to the father, and he carries them clinging to him, one on each hip. He licks them clean, combs their fur with his claws, and only hands them over to their mother at feeding time. This is quite the opposite to normal monkey behavior. If you get them young enough, mar­mosets make very good pets. For eight years I had one called Pavlo and he was never shut in, but allowed to run all over the house and garden. His favorite perch was on the fence between our house and the next one, where he would sit in the sun and make faces at the big white cat that lived next door. The cat, naturally, thought that he was some sort of queer rat, and that it was her duty to kill him. but she was old and very fat, whereas Pavlo was young and agile, and she never really had a chance. She would stalk Pavlo carefully, and then, when she got close to him, she would rush along the fence, looking like a fat. white and rather wobbly tightrope walker. But Pavlo always saw her in time, and he would dive into a thick mass of creepers that grew on the fence, and hide there, still making faces at the poor cat, while she tried, without success, to squeeze her fat body between the creepers and catch him.

Another tiny member of the monkey family that makes a good pet, if you get one young enough, is the bushbaby. There are many different kinds of bushbaby found in Africa, ranging from ones the size of a cat, down to the demidoff's bushbaby, two of which can fit comfortably into a teacup. I remember, when I was collecting animals in West Africa, my hunters took me to a certain place where they said the Demidolfs lived. It was a wood, in the middle of great rolling grassfields, and the trees, though very thick and thorny, were not very tall. I waited at one side of the wood, while the Africans went round to the other side and started to make a noise, shouting and banging on tins. Nothing happened for a long time, and then suddenly the trees in front of me were full of bushbabies. There must have been twenty or thirty of them—mothers, fathers and babies. Some of the babies were only about the size of a walnut. They moved through the branches as silently as cats, and took huge leaps from branch to branch which were quite amazing. One baby I was watching suddenly found a large locust sitting on one of the branches, and. his eyes wide with excitement, he leaped on it and grabbed it in his little pink hands. Now, the locust was almost as big as the bushbaby, and as soon as he felt himself grabbed he kicked out with his powerful hind legs, and both he and the bush­baby fell off the branch. But the bushbaby managed to grab another branch with his hind legs, and, hanging upside down like a circus performer, he very soon polished off the locust.

At the moment we have one of the moholi bushbabies—which are considerably bigger than the Demidoffs—living in our house. He was bora in the zoo, and as soon as he was old enough we took him away from the parents, and kept him in our drawing room. Every evening, about seven o'clock, he wakes up and starts hopping around the room, investigating everything, for he is extremely curious and does not seem to be a bit afraid of anything new. The first time he saw the tea tray he jumped straight on top of the teapot, and of course burned his feet. Now he gives the teapot a wide berth, but he knows that there is milk on the tray, and he approaches very carefully to try to steal a drink from the milk jug, keeping a careful eye on the teapot meanwhile, to make sure it does not suddenly attack him. His jumping ability, like all bushbabies, is quite extraordinary, i have seen him sitting on the hearth rug in front of the fire, and the next moment he is on the mantelpiece, and a second after that on the bookcase six feet away, and all done so quickly that you can hardly follow it with your eye. He seems to be able to land on any sort of a surface,

and to get a grip where I am sure no other animal would find one.

We let him have the run of the drawing room when we go to bed, and in the morning every single picture is hanging crookedly on the walls, showing that he has jumped from one picture frame to another. I do not know of any other animal that can land on a picture frame.

Now we come to three very curious little animals which do not look as though they belong to the monkey family at all. They are the slender loris and the slow loris, from Asia, and the potto from Africa. It is very interesting to note that although these little animals live so far apart in the world, they are very similar in a number of ways, and have adapted themselves to a similar way of iife. The slender loris is, as you can see from the picture, very well named, with his long thin legs and baby. He is a night animal, and lives up in the trees. His enormous, owl-like eyes enable him to see very well at night when he stalks through the branches searching for his prey, which ranges from cockroaches, birds’ eggs and birds, to various wild fruits. During the day he sleeps on a branch, curled up in a ball, his head tucked down between his front legs. If you wake him up, he pulls his head up very slowly and glares at you, uttering a faint hissing noise, and then moves slowly down the branch. You get the impression that he is a very slow-moving animal; but watch him at night, and you will see his long, slender legs moving at high speed; the creature can gallop through the branches of the trees like a miniature racehorse. The slow loris (who is much bigger than the slender loris, and looks just like a cuddly teddy bear) can also move very fast at night, so “slow” is certainly not the right name for him. In the daytime he curls up on a branch, like the slender loris, and puts his head between his front legs. If you disturb him, he lifts his head and blinks at you sleepily, uttering a low, bearlike growl, just to let you know that he does not like having his slumbers disturbed. The third member of this trio, the potto, is very similar to the lorises in looks and habits. He too lives up in the trees and only comes out at night, sleeping all day in the same position that the lorises adopt, though I have seen some pottos go to sleep hang­ing under the branch. How they manage to do this without letting go of the branch when they go to sleep, and falling down, is a mystery. Now, if you look at the photographs of these three animals you will see that they have very similar hands and feet, which they have developed specially for climbing; the grip they can get on the branches is terrific. In the case of the potto, he has even got the

Slender Loris

forefinger of each hand reduced to a tiny stump, so that with his second finger and thumb he has a much wider and stronger grip on the branches. He has also got a special method of protecting himself against his enemies. With the lorises, if they meet an enemy, all they can do is to run away, or else bite. But the potto has a much more clever idea. The bones on the back of his neck—the vertebrae —protrude in a little series of spikes, rather like a saw blade. When an enemy meets him up in the treetops and rushes along the branch at him, the potto simply ducks his head between his front legs and holds on tightly. The enemy tries to grab him by the back of the neck, and gets the mouthful of sharp spikes for his pains.

Now we leave the monkey family and come to another large group of animals, the meat-eating animals. One of the chief members of this group is, of course, the lion. Our lion is called Leo, and he is nearly two years old. He is just starting to get his mane, which is a very pale straw color, and I think he is going to be a blond lion, which I am pleased about, because I think that blond lions are more handsome than the ones with brown or black manes. Leo is still very tame with those he knows, and he will come up to the wire of his cage and let you scratch his back and chin, while he purrs as loudly as a hundred domestic cats put together.

Up to now, except for his purring, he has been very silent, but just recently, in the evenings, he has started to teach himself to roar.

They are very quiet, thoughtful sort of roars, as though he is practicing. You have to listen carefully to hear them at all, but they will gradually get louder as soon as he is satisfied with them.

Lion

Of course, he is still a baby, by lion standards, and at times he gam­bols round his cage and behaves just like a gigantic kitten. He has a great log of wood in his cage, and sometimes he pretends that this is a juicy buffalo, and he stalks it carefully, moving slowly forward, inch by inch so as not to frighten the log into running away. Then, suddenly, he pounces, and wrapping his legs round it rolls over and over on the ground, growling to himself, and biting at the log. Another toy that he has, of which he is very fond, is a big, black rubber bucket. He likes to chase this round the cage, patting it with his big paws, just like a kitten with a ball of wool. One day a lady asked if we had got Leo from a circus, because he was doing such clever tricks. 1 went to see what he was up to, and found that he had succeeded in jamming the bucket on his head, and was walking proudly about the cage, wearing it like a rather curious hat.

Another delightful little animal that, like the lion, lives on meat, is the genet (Jen-et), different species of which are found in Africa and Asia. They are very handsome little creatures, with their long, slender bodies, and their golden fur covered with chocolate colored spots, like a miniature leopard. Genets make very good pets, if you can get a young one and hand-rear it, and they are like a mixture of a dog and a cat in their habits. They will climb very skilfully, and gallop along the ground like a dog when you go for walks. I have seen them in the wilds, and I always admired the way they could rush up the vertical trunk of a tree as though they were running on level ground, and then leap from branch to branch as skilfully as a monkey. The only time I decided that I did not like a genet was one day in the West African forest. There was a special place that I used to go' to near some wild fig trees, and there I would hide myself and watch the various forest animals that came to feed on the figs. The first would be the touracous—beautiful golden green birds with long tails. They would perch'in the branches and peck away at the ripe figs. While they were feeding, they would some­times be joined by a troupe of monkeys. Well, the touracous and the monkeys between them used to drop as much fruit on the ground as they actually ate, and so as soon as they had left the trees all the little ground-living animals used to come out and feed off the left­overs lying on the ground. In the undergrowth beneath the trees lived some delightful mice. They were a pale fawn color, with rows of white spots running in stripes from nose to tail, and they were about the size of a house mouse. They would come out, their whiskers wiffling, and bite pieces off the fallen figs, and sit up on their hind legs and eat them, uttering little squeaks of pleasure. If danger threatened, they would all leap straight up in the air, as though they were on springs, and then come down and sit quivering until they were sure the danger was past. On this particular morn­ing they were all feeding among the grassroots, when a genet happen­ed to pass by, back from a night’s hunting and on his way to bed. The mice were all busy quarreling over a particularly large and delicious fig, and so they did not notice the genet, and before I could do any­thing to warn them, he had leapt daintily into the air and landed among them. Of course, they all dropped their bits of fig and ran, but some of them were not quick enough, and the genet continued his way to bed, carrying in his mouth two dead mice. I had grown very fond of those mice, and I was annoyed with the genet. Still, I suppose he was very hungry, and you can hardly blame him.

The mongoose family contains different kinds, some quite small, others the size of a small dog. The black-footed mongoose comes from West Africa, and it is not only one of the largest of the mon­gooses, but also one of the rarest. We call our black-footed mon­goose Ticky, and I got her in a father curious way. I was travelling by truck through the thick West African forest, on my way to my base camp in the mountains. We had been travelling all day in the Genet ^terrific heat, and I was tired, hungry and hot. I decided that we

would stop at the next village and buy a big bunch of bananas. As usual when you stop at an African village, all the villagers came out of their huts and surrounded our vehicle, and stood watching us, completely fascinated. I bought my bananas and ate them, watched by a silent crowd of about a hundred people. Suddenly I noticed that a girl in the crowd was carrying something in her arms, some­thing white that wriggled. I called her, and she came forward shyly, and there in her arms was a baby black-footed mongoose. I was amazed, for it was such a rare animal and so hard to find in the forest that I had expected to have to search for weeks before I could add one to my collection. She told me that her father had found it in a hollow log when out hunting. After some bargaining I bought the mongoose, which was only about the size of a kitten, and was then faced with a problem. I had nothing to put it in, and I did not like to let it wander about in the front of the truck, in case it got tangled up with the gears or the brake and caused an accident.

Black-footed

Mongoose

There was nothing for it but to button it up inside my shirt. The first half hour Ticky spent wandering round and round my body and sniffing loudly. Then she decided to try to dig a hole in my stomach with her sharp little claws, and this I had to put a stop to. Then I gave her a piece of banana to eat, and she was so excited by this that she forgot her manners and wet all over me. Eventually she went to sleep, lying across my stomach, holding a large bit of my skin in her mouth and sucking it vigorously. I was never so glad to arrive at camp, where I could get Ticky out from inside my sodden

Coatimundi

shirt and put her in a cage. However rare an animal is, when it tries to dig a hole in your stomach, you begin to wonder if it was worth getting.

Another creature which, although tame, did me considerably more damage than Ticky the mongoose, was Mathew the coati (ko- WAT-ee). Coatis are rather charming little creatures found in South America. They lived in great troupes in the forest, shuffling along with their flat-footed, rather bear-like walk, their long rubbery tip- tilted noses wiffling from side to side as they investigate every rotten log or stone, in search of snails, scorpions, birds’ eggs and other delicious tidbits. Mathew, when I got him in Northern Argentina, was quite young. He had been captured in the forest by a native hunter, who had kept him for about two months before selling him to me, and so he was quite tame. I kept him on a collar and a long lead attached to a tree near my camp, and nearby was a big pile of logs. Mathew used to spend the whole day carefully turning over these logs with his paws, uttering excited squeaks and bird-like trillings as he found woodlice or snails. Sometimes I would go into the forest and fetch him a large, really rotten log, and this he loved. He would spend an hour or so carefully picking it to pieces, search­ing for tree frogs or snails, or centipedes which lived in the rotten interior, and, by the time he had finished, the log would be just a powdery heap of sawdust. When I brought my collection of ani­mals back I had found a young female coati as a wife for Mathew, and we called her Martha. We built a nice cage, introduced Martha to Mathew, and put them in it. They seemed very pleased, not only with the cage but with each other, and after they had spent a day in their new quarters I went in to see how Mathew was getting along. In the old days, when I had called him. Mathew would run towards me. twittering with delight, and let me lift him in my arms, and would then proceed to lick me all round the neck. On this occasion he ran forward as usual, and I started to lift him up. I had got him half-way up to my neck, when he suddenly turned round and sank his teeth into my elbow. I managed to shake him off, but not before he had torn a great hole in my elbow that needed six stitches in it. and that made my arm useless for three weeks. I was very puzzled at Mathew turning on me like this, and the only reason I can think of is that he had a new home and a new wife, and he felt he ought to show- me that this was his territory and that 1 could not just walk in whenever i liked. But whatever the reason, it just goes to show that you cannot be too careful with wild animals, however tame they appear to be.

Raccoons

Another little animal from North America that reminds me of the coati is the raccoon. They have the same inquisitive natures, and the same sort of flat-footed walk as the coati. In the wilds they sleep during the day, sometimes in hollow trees, and some­times in rough nests they build up in the tree-tops. They come out at night to hunt for their food, which consists of almost anything that is edible, from fruit to frogs and baby birds. They are very skillful climbers, and a lot of birds’ nests fall victim to them. In some parts of North America they are called wash bears, and this is owing to their rather bear-like walk, and a very curious habit they have developed. Whenever they find any food, they take it to the nearest water and very carefully wash it before eating it. They sit there, looking like fat, fluffy washerwomen, all wearing black masks, dip­ping their food into the water and rubbing it carefully with their paws before they eat it. It does not matter what sort of food it is: they will wash fruit or vegetables or birds¹ eggs, and will even care­fully wash a frog in the same stream in which they have caught it.

Now we come to one of the most popular of our zoo’s animals: Claudius the South American tapir (TAY-per). Millions of years ago, in prehistoric times, there were tapirs, and we know from their skeletons that they looked exactly as Claudius does today.

So Claudius is really a prehistoric animal, for he and his ancestors have come down unchanged through the centuries. Baby tapirs when they are born are a pale fawn color, streaked and spotted all over with white. When you first see this curious coloration, you think that it would make the baby tapir very conspicuous to his enemies. But then when you see the baby lying under some bushes in the forest, where the sunlight filters through the leaves and makes a dappled pattern in the shade, you realize that the baby’s coloration is his best protection, for he merges into the pattern of sunshine and shadow so beautifully that you have to look very closely to see that he is there at all. When I first got Claudius he was about the size of a large dog. and he was just starting to lose his pattern of spots and stripes. I bought him off a hunter when I was in Buenos Aires—the capital of Argentina—before I had any place to keep my animals. Naturally the hotel I was staying in would not let me keep him there, and in desperation I tele­phoned some friends of mine and asked if they could keep Claudius in their garden. They very kindly said they would. I bought

him a big collar and lead, and took him round to my friends’ ^

house. Here I found that the garden (of which they were very proud) was quite tiny. But we tied Claudius to the railings of the balcony, and he seemed very happy, with a great pile of fresh vegetables in front of him. Early the next morning I telephoned my friends to find out how Claudius was, and learned to my horror that he had grown bored when he had eaten all his vegetables, and he had calmly broken his lead and wandered about the garden, tread­ing on all the flower beds, and had eaten half the flowers. I had to rush round to my friends’ house with a new and stronger lead for Claudius, and a lot of potted plants to replace the ones he had eaten. I apologized to my friends, gave Claudius a good talking to and tied him up once again. The next morning I again telephoned to find out how Claudius was, and they told me that this time he had broken his collar, trampled down most of the garden and eaten the remains of the flowers. Again I had to rush round with more potted plants and a very thick collar and chain, which was strong enough. I would have thought, to hold an elephant. But the following morning my friends telephoned me and asked if I would please take Claudius away. That evening, they had given a dinner party to some friends. Claudius got bored with being left alone in the garden, and as there was a party going on inside the house he did not see why he should not be invited too. He broke his chain, and calmly walked up the steps to the balcony (trailing about twenty feet of chain behind him) and walked through the French windows and into the dining room. Of course, all the guests sitting at dinner were not prepared for the arrival of a live tapir in their midst, and were panic-stricken. The more frightened they became, the more it frightened Claudius, who could not understand what all the fuss was about. There was Claudius galloping round and round the dining- table, while all the guests screamed and leapt on their chairs. It was quite some time before one of the braver guests managed to shoo Claudius out into the garden again, and by then the dinner was ruined, with broken plates and overturned chairs lying everywhere in the dining room. As my friends pointed out, they could not keep Claudius and entertain friends to dinner, and Claudius would have to go. Luckily, by that time I had a place to keep my animals, and I moved Claudius. I do not think my friends were very sorry to see him go, for their garden, of which they had been so proud, looked as though it had had a bulldozer loose in it, and even their dining-room still had traces of the night when Claudius was the unexpected guest of honor.

Tapir

Another animal from South America, which I got at the same time as Claudius, was Juanita, the white-collared peccary (PECK-er-ee). I think that peccaries are one of the prettiest looking of the pig family, with their slender legs, neat, polished little hoofs, their handsome brindled gray coats and the neat white collar of fur round their necks. Juanita was brought to me by a hunter when she was only a few weeks old, and she measured about a foot high at the shoulder. She was, of course, very tame, and liked nothing better than to lie on her back to have her tummy scratched. At that time I was keeping all the animals I had collected in a big garage, and as most of them were tame I never shut them up in their cages, but let them have the run of the place. At feeding time I would put three or four large dishes on the floor, and from every part of the garage would come a strange mixture of creatures to feed out of the same dish: parrots, macaws, toucans, wild rabbits, a wildcat, agoutis, monkeys and coatis. Juanita, though much bigger than most of the other animals, would behave very well, and she did not push or shove at the food plate. The only time 1 saw her get annoyed—and I could hardly blame her—was when a parrot, eager for his food, flew down and perched on her nose. She shook him off with an indignant squeal and chased him right across the garage. It was the last time that parrot tried to perch on her nose.

Then, one morning, tragedy occurred. I went down to the garage to feed the animals, and I found that Juanita had developed pneumonia. Already she was so weak she could not stand, and I knew that unless we worked fast she would die. It was too cold to leave her down in the garage, so wrapping her in a blanket, I drove back to my friend’s flat, where I was staying. Here we put Juanita, who was by now unconscious, in front of a lire, wrapped up in blankets, and I gave her an injection of penicillin. For hours there was no change. She just lay there, hardly breathing, with her eyes closed. Then, towards evening, she opened her eyes and sat up, and I knew that there was a chance of her recovering. I fed her on brandy and milk, and last thing at night gave her another injection. To make sure that she did not uncover herself during the night and get a fresh chill, I decided to sleep on the sofa with her. That first night she behaved very well, though she tried to kick off the blankets in her sleep, and I had to keep waking up and covering her up again. The next morning, although she was still very weak, there was a great improvement, and she even had enough interest in life to object strongly when I gave her an injection. That night she was much stronger, so much so that when we lay down on the sofa to sleep, she decided that she would like a game. Her idea of a game was to go to one end of the sofa and take a running jump on to my chest, landing on her sharp little hoofs, and then try to bite my ear.

I soon put a stop to this game, and then she lay on her back along­side me and kicked her legs in the air, wriggled and grunted, and generally behaved in a most disgraceful fashion, until I had to put on the light and speak to her most severely. I must say that I was very glad when Juanita got better, not only because I did not want to lose her, but also because it is very exhausting to try to sleep with a peccary. Now, of course, Juanita is very grown up, and even has a daughter of her own. Her daughter, as her mother used to, likes having her tummy scratched, but Juanita just looks on in scorn: she feels she is much too old to indulge in such childish antics.

The anteaters and armadillos belong to a group of animals of which I am very fond, and they all come from South America. The giant anteater is, of course, the biggest of the anteaters, as well as being the most curious looking. With their long icicle-shaped heads,

White-

collared

Peccary

their handsome pattern of gray and black, and their huge bushy tails, the giant anteaters are spectacular looking creatures, and a full grown one may be as big as a St. Bernard dog. When I was in South America we once had a very exciting hunt after a giant ant- eater. It was in the grasslands of Guiana. An Indian hunter came to me one day and said that he had discovered an area where a giant anteater was living, and would we like to go and try to catch it. So, early one morning, we set off on horseback, carrying lassos with which to catch the anteater if we saw him, and several large sacks to wrap him in. We rode for three or four hours across the golden grass fields, and I was just beginning to feel very sleepy when our Indian guide reined in his horse and said that we had arrived.

He pointed to the area ahead of us, which was a very slight valley, filled with long grass and small, stunted bushes. Somewhere in there, the Indian informed us, he was sure the anteater was sleeping. So the three of us spread out in a line and rode through the grass and bushes, making as much noise as we could to try to frighten the anteater out of his hiding place. We were nearing the end of the little valley, and I was just beginning to think the Indian had been mistaken about there being an anteater hidden there, when from under a clump of bushes we were approaching, out rushed a huge male giant anteater, and galloped away across the grass, his tre­mendous tail streaming out behind him, like a flag, as he ran.

Immediately, shouting with excitement, we got our lassos ready, spurred up our horses and galloped after him. It was an exciting chase, because the ground was so uneven that we had to be very careful our horses did not stumble and throw us over their heads, but slowly we gained on the anteater. Our Indian guide was the first one to ride up alongside the animal, and he threw his lasso, but at that moment his horse stumbled, and his lasso fell short. He coiled up the rope and tried again, and this time the loop fell neatly over the anteater’s long snout. As I rode up alongside, the Indian leapt from his horse and pulled the lasso tight. I threw my lasso and managed it successfully, and it tightened round the anteater’s chest.

I jumped off my horse, and the Indian and 1, both hanging on to our lassos, were dragged across the grass by the anteater, who was, by now, very angry and snorting like a steam engine. But at last, after a long struggle, we managed to get another rope round his legs, and soon we had him trussed up so that he could not move. Then we put him in a sack, with just his head sticking out, and got ready to try to put him on one of the horses. Every time we lifted him up to try to put him on the saddle, he hissed so loudly and vigorously that the horse took fright and would not let us put what it obviously considered to be a fearsome monster on its back. In fact, none of the horses would carry our capture, so there we were miles away from camp, with an anteater in a sack and no method of getting it back. At last the Indian had to ride back to camp and fetch a bull, who was very strong and brave, and did not mind carrying anything, least of all hissing anteaters. It was late at night when we arrived back at camp with Amos, as we had christened the anteater. The next morning I had another problem, and that was to teach Amos to eat. In the wild state, of course, the anteaters break open the hard white ants’ nests and feed on them, but when you take an anteater back to a zoo you cannot supply him with white ants, so you have to teach him to eat something that can be supplied. It is a mixture of finely minced meat, raw egg and milk. At first, of course, the anteater will not look at this strange diet, and

Giant

Anteater

Amos was no exception. In fact he was so stubborn that I was beginning to think I would have to let him go, and then I had an idea. I went to a white ants¹ nest, broke it open and scooped out a jugful of white ants, and these I sprinkled over the top of the meat and egg mixture. Seeing white ants on top made Amos very en­thusiastic, and he had soon eaten up the whole bowl of food. For a week he was given the mixture, with white ants on top, and gradu­ally, day by day, I reduced the number of ants, until, at the end of the week, Amos was eating his new diet with gusto, and thriving on it.

Funny enough strangely, you have no feeding troubles with the other sort of anteater found in South America, the small brown and silver tamandua (ta-man-DWA). These will take to the mince, egg and milk diet without any trouble. The trouble they give you is in catching them. Unlike the giant anteater, the tamandua lives in thick forest, and is a skilful tree climber; the only way you can hunt and catch him is with a pack of dogs. I remember one hunt I undertook, in the Guiana forests, after a tamandua, and it was a hunt that lasted nearly all day. We had set off into the forests in the early morning, myself, three Indian guides and a pack of five dogs. The dogs soon found a scent, and rushed off through the trees, all barking ex­citedly, and we ran after them, ducking and jumping over the tangled creepers. It was very important that we kept up with the dogs: otherwise, when they cornered the animal, they might harm it if we were not there to call them off.

Eventually the hunt led us to the banks of a small river and there, standing at bay among the bushes, was a huge iguana, the giant South America lizard that, with its emerald green skin and crest along its back, looks just like a story-book dragon. After some difficulty we managed to get a net over him, and then put him in a bag before continuing with the hunt. We walked for about an hour before the dogs got another scent, and after we had run about two miles we found to our annoyance that the dogs had lost whatever it was they had been chasing. It was not until evening that the dogs found another fresh scent, and raced off, barking loudly. By this time we were very tired, and it was all we could do to keep up with them. Then, as I was running along, I brushed a small bush out of my way. It was unfortunate that this particular bush contained a tree-ants’ nest, and a dozen or so of the ants fell on to my arm. These ants, although quite tiny, can give you a vicious bite, and within a minute my arm was red and swollen, and I felt as though I had been stung by about forty wasps. Fortunately, shortly after that, the dogs came to a halt, and I was able to bathe my arm in a stream which made it feel better.

The dogs were very puzzled, for the animal they had been fol­lowing had apparently disappeared into thin air. They wandered round and round, sniffing here and there, wearing mystified expres­sions, while we lay on the ground to recover our breath. As I was lying there, gazing up into the treetops above, I saw what I thought was a very curiously shaped ants’ nest attached to one of the branches about thirty feet above us. The dogs were still sniffing about, and it seemed fairly obvious they were not going to find the scent again, and I was just about to suggest we made for camp, when I saw that the curious ants’ nest was now looking even more curious, for it had grown a tail. I looked at it in amazement, and as I watched I saw it move. Well, I had never seen an ants’ nest that could move, so I stood up to get a better look, and there on the branch was a tamandua, sitting quietly and watching the dogs. It was no wonder that the dogs were puzzled, for having tracked the

Tamandua

tamandua so far on the ground they did not expect him suddenly to take to the trees. I pointed the animal out to my hunters, and one of them quickly shinned up the tree, hoping to catch the tamandua unawares. However, he made too much noise, and the tamandua looked over his shoulder and saw the Indian climbing up towards him. He uttered a hiss of annoyance and started to climb higher into the tree. The Indian swarmed up rapidly after him, and the tamandua, finding himself being overtaken, got in a panic, and instead of continuing up the tree he rushed out to the end of a long thin branch. This was the stupidest thing he could have done, for when the Indian reached the branch, he squatted in the fork of the tree and drew out his machete—the long broad-bladed knife which all the Indians always carry with them in the forests. A few quick slashes with the sharp blade and he had cut off the branch, with the tamandua hanging on the end of it, hissing indignantly at having been fooled like this. Then we held out a net beneath the tree, and the Indian dropped the tamandua, branch and all, into it. In a minute or so we had the furious creature safely in a bag, and we set off jubilantly for camp.

Other animals that belong to the same group as the anteaters are the armadillos, of which there are many different kinds. The one we have is called Henrietta, and she is a hairy armadillo which 1 caught down in Patagonia, at the southern end of South America. The countryside is very flat in Patagonia, and is covered with prickly thorn scrub and giant thistles, which can grow to a height of nine feet. The armadillos live in burrows that they dig in this prickly undergrowth, and only come out at night to hunt around for their food. So, the best way of catching armadillos is to hunt them at night, with the aid of a dog. You also carry with you a powerful flashlight and a spade, for if you do not catch up with the armadillo in time, and he bolts into his burrow, the only way of getting him is to dig him out.

We set off this particular moonlit evening, and we had walked a considerable distance across the plain, when we came to a great patch of giant thistles. Here our dog got very excited and started to run to and fro, sniffing at the ground and growling to himself. We waited to see what would happen. Presently the dog picked up the scent and rushed off' into the thick tangle of thistles, and we followed as fast as we could, pushing our way through the thick stems, and getting well pricked in the process. The thistles were so tall we could not see where we were going, and all we could do was to follow the

Hairy Armadillo

crackling noise of the dog and his faint barks ahead of us. Suddenly we came out in a clearing in the center of the thistle patch, a big area of grass surrounded by a thick hedge of thistles. We were just in time to see our dog racing across the grass, hotly pursuing an armadillo, which was scuttling along at full speed, looking like some strange clockwork toy in the moonlight. We could see that the armadillo was heading for a hole, and we rushed forward to try to catch it before it disappeared into the earth, but we were just too late, for as we arrived at the hole the armadillo disappeared down it.

But then, to our surprise, it suddenly shot out again, and it was closely followed by a very indignant skunk. The skunk put up his tail and squirted his evil-smelling scent at us—and all of us, includ­ing the armadillo and the dog, ran away as fast as we could. The only one who did not escape without getting sprayed was the dog, and in a minute he was rolling and whining in the grass as he tried to rub the foul smell from his body. Luckily, the armadillo, out of breath by this time, did not run far but took refuge in a clump of thistles, where we managed to surround and catch her. But then we had to call off the hunt, for the poor dog, reeking to high heaven, had decided that getting mixed up with skunks was not his idea of a good hunt, and had gone off home. And we ail (still smelling a bit) followed him back to the ranch, carrying in triumph Henrietta the hairy armadillo.

Quokka

Australia is a country that probably has more peculiar animals living in it than any other part of the world. One of the curious things about most Australian animals is that they carry their young in a sort of pocket or pouch, as, for example, the kangaroo does. The creatures we have in the zoo to represent the great group of these pouched animals are the tiny and charming quokkas, or short­tailed paddymelons. They are really like a pigmy kangaroo, about the size of a large rabbit. The babies are born very tiny and help­less, but nevertheless manage to find their way up into the mother's pouch, in which they live for about four months. By this time they are almost half the size of their mother, and her pouch bulges with the fat baby inside, and frequently you can see his little head poking out as the mother hops about. Quokkas are found in Western Australia, but, unfortunately, are getting very rare in the wild state and the Australian Government, very wisely, has allowed a certain number to be caught and sent to zoos in different parts of the world so that they can be bred in captivity. In this way, even if the quokka disappeared in the wild state, it would not be lost forever. We are very proud of our quokkas, and even prouder of the fact that they have had two babies since they have been with us.

Crested Porcupine

The rodents or gnawing animals are a huge family whose mem­bers are found in nearly every type of climate and country in the world. Some of them, like the house mouse and the brown rat, are among man’s worst enemies, for not only do they destroy vast amounts of food each year, but they can also carry diseases. One of the largest of the rodents, and one that is quite harmless to man, is the crested porcupine. They are large and rather handsome beasts, with their long black and white quills that—when they are alarmed or excited—stand out like the war bonnet of an Indian. The one we have we call Delilah, and she is a great character. When you go into the cage with her, she gets very indignant, and rushes round and round in circles, snorting loudly, growling like a lion, rattling her quills like castanets, and generally tries to persuade you that she is a very fearsome creature. Actually, she is not nearly as bad as she likes to make out, but we have to be careful, because her two-foot long quills could do you a lot of damage if you got a legful of them. Porcupines do not throw their quills, as a lot of people believe.

What they do, when attacked by an enemy is turn their back to him, wait until he comes close enough, and then, with lightning speed, they back into him. The quills are only very loosely planted in the porcupine’s skin, and having jabbed them well into the enemy, the porcupine walks off and leaves her quills sticking into him, like a pincushion. Sometimes it has been known that quite large animals, even leopards, have been killed in a fight with a porcupine by its quills, and the quills can be responsible for turning lions into man-eaters, for if they try to kill a porcupine and get the quills in their paws, the points generally break off in the pad. This causes a nasty poisoned wound, and the lion then finds it impossible to hunt fast-moving creatures like antelope and zebra, and he takes to hunt­ing man, who is a much easier victim to catch.

Among the most delightful of the smaller rodents are the squirrels, and one of the most attractive is the little North American flying squirrel. They do not, of course, actually fly like a bird, but float through the air like a glider. Running from wrist to ankle on each side of their body is a wide flap of skin. When the squirrel wants to get from one tree to another, he runs up the trunk as high as he can, and then jumps into the air. As he jumps, he stretches out his arms and legs, which pulls the two flaps of skin tight, like a pair of wings, and then he glides down to the next tree. We have a small colony of flying squirrels, and among them is one called Christo­pher. I gave him to my wife as a Christmas present one year, and

Flying

Squirrel

he arrived three days before Christmas, sitting in a small box full of cotton wool and looking at us with large, black, frightened eyes. As flying squirrels only come out at night, we thought we would keep Christopher's cage in the bedroom to begin with, so that we could watch him when we lay in bed, and so that he would get tame more quickly. Well, on the second day Christopher had gnawed a large hole in the back of his cage and had escaped. After a long hunt I found that he had taken up residence behind the wardrobe. As he seemed quite happy there, we left him, and each evening we would put his food on the dressing table, and as soon as we were in bed we would see his little face poking out from behind the wardrobe, to make sure that we really were in bed. Then he would scuttle up to the top of the wardrobe, launch himself into the air and glide down to the dressing table as gracefully as a paper dart. He would sit there, squeaking excitedly to himself, while he examined his food, and then, taking a tidbit, he would climb up on top of the cupboard again to eat it. We really gave him too much food, and we knew he was storing some of it, because in the morning there was never any­thing left on the dressing-table. But we could not discover where he was storing it. Then came New Year’s Eve, and I was invited to a party for which I had to wear my dinner jacket. I went to the drawer of the dressing-table in which I kept my dress shirts, and then discovered where Christopher had been storing his food. My brand- new cummerbund (which I had never worn) had been carefully chewed into bits, and these had been used to construct several little nests, one on the front of each of my clean dress shirts. In these nests had been stored seventy-two hazel nuts, five walnuts, fourteen pieces of bread, six dead mealworms, fifty-two bits of apple and twenty grapes. The apple and the grapes had, of course, gone all squishy and had left complicated patterns of brown juice stains across the fronts of each shirt. This was really too much, and so (in spite of Christopher's indignant squeaks) I caught him and put him in a strong cage which he could not gnaw through. In future he would have to store his food in his own bedroom.

Our local Jersey red squirrel, Jinny, is very much the same as the red squirrels found in England, except that she is slightly smaller and darker. Some people were felling some trees one day, and when one of the trees came crashing down they found to their dismay that there was a squirrel's nest, or drey, in the upper branches. Investigating it, they found Jinny inside. She was very young then, with her eyes only just open. They brought her to us, and we set to work, feeding her with a fountain-pen filler. She soon grew very tame, and if her meal was a bit late in arriving she would sit in her cage and “chuck, chuck, chuck” at us until she got her milk. As she grew older, of course, she started to eat fruit and nuts, and it was then that we discovered what a greedy squirrel she was. She would always accept food, even if she was full, and she would take it to the back of the cage, put it on the ground, and then cover it over with sawdust. About this time we acquired Zoot, the thirteen-lined ground squirrel. As he was quite a baby, we thought that he would like to live in the same cage with Jinny. They settled down very well, and seemed to get very fond of one another. But Zoot had a habit that Jinny did not appreciate. He would sit and watch her when she buried her little stores of food under the sawdust, and as soon as she had moved away Zoot would go and dig everything up and carry it to a different part of the cage and bury it himself. Then when Jinny was feeling peckish, she would come down to her food store and find it gone. She would have to search all over the cage to find it and re-bury it again. Zoot would watch her, and as soon as she left he would dig it up and take it somewhere else for re­burial. Poor Jinny, although she was very fond of Zoot, this habit of his nearly drove her mad.

Jersey Red Squirrel

Thirteen-line Ground Squirrel

Among the birds I think the owl family is probably my favorite.

I love their great eyes, their solemn expressions, and the beautiful, noiseless way they drift through the night, as quietly as snowflakes. One of the most handsome of the owls is the barn owl. which is found quite commonly in the United States and England. Their large dark eyes are framed by a heart-shaped ruff of short, crisp, lacy feathers, and when they are asleep or meditating they draw themselves up so that they become very tall and slim, and then they half close their eyes, and the whole effect is very extraordinary, for they look like some strange Chinese ivory carving. 1 have been particularly fond of barn owls ever since 1 had one as a pet. some years ago. I called him Og. for reasons which I cannot remember, and he soon grew very tame. He lived in the attic of our house, where I also kept a tame kestrel and a sea gull with a broken wing. Whenever I went into the room and called Og's name, he would answer by clattering his beak like a castanet. bob up and down once or twice, as if bowing to me. and then fly silently onto my shoulder and sit there nibbling my ear gently. In the evenings I would go for walks through the fields and woods nearby, and Og would accompany

Barn Owl

me, flying from tree to tree on great, pale wings, and occasionally floating down to land on my shoulder.

Then one evening I lost Og. I walked for miles, calling to him, but he had completely disappeared. After several weeks I had given him up completely; I thought that he must have been shot, or killed by a cat. One evening 1 was passing an old tumbled-down barn, and from inside it I heard a weird shriek, rather like the noise of someone tearing a sheet in half. I went into the bam and climbed up a rickety ladder to the loft. As I stuck my head through the trapdoor there was another shriek, and peering in the gloom I saw Og, sitting there looking very pleased with himself. Next to him sat a female barn owl, and just near them were two babies, fat and fluffy. They all stared at me with great eyes, and I called to Og softly. He bobbed up and down and clicked his beak, but he would not come and talk to me, so, not wanting to disturb his family, I left them. But, not long after, I saw Og and his wife, followed by their two youngsters, hawking over the moonlit fields, like a troupe of huge moths. They circled round me for half an hour or so, and then flew off into the dark wood, and I never saw them again.

Woody, the Woodford’s owl, comes from West Africa, and I got him out there when I was collecting animals. He was not more than a few days old, and seemed to consist of nothing but a great bundle of white fluff with two staring dark eyes. Now, there is a curious thing about the feeding of both baby and adult owls. Whatever they catch, if it is a rat or a mouse or a bird, they eat the whole thing, bones, fur, feathers and everything. Then, in a little while, they bring up what is called a casting, an egg-shaped pellet, the out­side of which is all the fur or feathers of their food, and packed neatly inside the casting are all the bones and other indigestible bits of their prey. In order to keep owls healthy you have to give them plenty of this roughage with their food so that they can produce cast­ings, otherwise they soon become sick and die. When I got Woody,

I was staying in a place where I could not obtain any roughage for him, just plain meat, and I worried a great deal about this, for I was afraid that he might die. One day I had an idea: I would use cotton wool. Every mealtime, I perched Woody on my knee and fed him scraps of meat, each one wrapped in a coating of cotton wool. Woody did not seem to mind a bit, and he gobbled down the meat and the cotton wool, uttering faint excited squeaking noises to himself, closing his eyes tightly when he swallowed. Then I would

Woodford's Owl

put him back in his cage. and. after a time when I looked in. there he would be. standing very upright in his white Huffy coat, sur­rounded by nice white cotton wool castings, looking for all the world like a little snowman who had been thoroughly snowballed.

I think that most people like parrots, because they are amused that birds can imitate the human voice so accurately. Probably the best talking parrot is the african gray, a handsome ashy-gray bird with a wonderful scarlet tail. We have quite a number of these birds in the zoo, but my favorite one is Charles, because I got him myself, when he was quite young, out in West Africa. At first Charles could not talk, but only made the usual baby parrot's noises, strange wheezings and bubblings and shrill squawks. As he grew older, of course, he soon learnt a few simple words, like “hello" and “Pretty Charles." Before his wing feathers grew he used to use his beak and his feet to get about, and at mealtimes he would waddle across the ground, and then try to climb up the table leg so that he could help himself 10 tidbits from my plate. As the table leg was shiny, he sometimes had difficulty in doing this, and I taught him to say. "Help Charles, help Charles,” until I put my finger down and lifted him up on it. After a few months Charles had developed into a lovely parrot, and his vocabulary had increased.

Then, one day, we were staying in a small bungalow on the out­skirts of an African village, and when night fell Charles chose for himself a nice spot on the veranda rail to roost, and went to sleep.

As he seemed quite happy there. I left him and went to bed. In the middle of the night I was awakened by Charles’s voice, shouting from the veranda outside: “Hello, hello, hello, pretty Charles, pretty Charles, help Charles, help Charles, help Charles, pretty Charles.” he was crying, over and over again. I was very puzzled, for Charles had never talked during the night before. I left my bed and looked out of the window to see what he was up to. There, in the bright moonlight, I saw that Charles had got down from the veranda rail, and was shuffling along towards the door into the house as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, shouting all the time: “Help Charles, pretty Charles, hello, hello, pretty Charles, help Charles.” Then I saw the reason, for at the end of the veranda, stalking him carefully, was a large mangy village cat. The cat was gathering itself to spring, when I grabbed one of my shoes and flung it. The shoe missed, of course, but the cat gave a startled leap and then fled

African Gray Pan

Guiana

Dragon

into the night. I went outside, picked up Charles and took him into my bedroom, where he spent the rest of the night perched on the head of my bed, muttering “Pretty Charles,” to himself. Whenever I look at Charles now, I remember how funny and pathetic he looked, running along in the moonlight, using every word and phrase he knew in a desperate attempt to call me to save him from the terrifying menace of the cat.

Now I would like to tell you about some of the reptiles I have in the zoo. A lot of people don’t like reptiles, but I find them extraor­dinary and interesting creatures, and some of them are very beautiful as well.

First of all, there is the guiana (ge-AH-na) dragon, and he is such an impressive lizard that you feel he thoroughly deserves his name. He is a rich reddish color, the shade of polished mahogany, and the big scales on his back resemble the scales on the back of a crocodile. However, you feel, when you see him, that he must be a very good- tempered dragon, for his mouth is shaped in such a way that he looks as though he is smiling all the time. The Guiana dragon has very curious teeth, for instead of being pointed like most of the lizard family, they are shoe-box shaped, with flat tops, rather like an elephant's teeth. This is because the dragon has a special diet, and he has had to develop special teeth to cope with it. In the South American forests where he lives, the dragon never moves far from water, and it is in the water that he finds his food. Sometimes dur­ing the day, but mainly at night, he makes his way to a stream, plunges into the water, and then moves along the bottom, rooting up the sand and mud with his nose, hunting for the fresh-water mussels that live there, and searching in the damp undergrowth that over­hangs the stream for any fat snails. When he has found a snail or a mussel, he mumbles it around in his mouth until it is in the right position, and then scrunches it up between his powerful flat teeth. We call the dragon George, and sometimes late at night we go down to the reptile house with a tinful of big snails for him. George is generally asleep, and we wake, him up by pulling his tail very gently. Then we empty the snails into his pond, and George plunges into the water and grabs at them. He sits there, his head just above the water, scrunching them up with a sound like somebody eating potato chips with his mouth open. George is certainly a friendly Dragon, but his table manners leave a lot to be desired.

Horned

Lizard

I think one of the most fantastic looking of all lizards is the horned lizard, that is found in the hot desert areas of North America.

They always look to me like the sort of creatures you would expect to find on Mars, with their strange, flattened, bun-shaped bodies, covered with knobs and spikes, and the extraordinary horns on their heads, that look as though they ought to be wireless masts, or walkie-talkie sets. Horned lizards can move very fast, skimming over the surface of the sand like stones on ice, and then suddenly they will stop, scrape at the sand with their feet, and before your very eyes will disappear, so that only the horns on top of their heads are showing above the surface.

They feed mainly on tiny insects, and they are especially fond of ants. It is most amusing, when we put a tinful of ants in their cage, to watch them standing there, ants running all round and over them, and the lizards lapping them up with their pink tongues, rather as a cat laps at a saucer of milk. But probably the most peculiar thing about the homed lizards is their way of defending themselves. Behind the eyes there are two little glands, and by a remarkable process, when the lizard is frightened, it manages to shoot up its blood pressure. From out of the two little glands squirt two little jets of blood. This so surprises the homed lizard's enemies that they generally leave it alone. Fortunately, our homed lizards are so tame that the last thing they would think of doing when you pick them up is to spit blood at you: they are more interested to find out if you have brought them some juicy ants to eat.

On the whole I am very fond of the toad family. I have always found them to be quiet, well-mannered creatures with nice char­acteristics, and no desire to harm you in any way. However, there comes a time when even a long-suffering creature like a toad is apt to turn on you, and the results can be unexpected.

The horned toad is found in South America, and is, un­doubtedly, the most spectacular of all the toads. Its enormous mouth, the strange little pointed spikes over its eyes, and the creamy- yellow skin patterned in red, black and jade green, put it definitely in a class of its own. Horned toads spend most of their lives buried in the moist soil of the forest floor, with just their backs and eyes showing. As their backs are so beautifully patterned with green, they are extremely difficult to see, and so any creature walking along the

Homed Toad

forest floor (even such large things as mice) fall easy victim. Before they know what is happening, they are seized in the toad’s great mouth, and, after a couple of gulps, they have disappeared.

When I was collecting animals in Paraguay, in South America, I found that the local people were very afraid of these horned toads, because they thought they were poisonous, and they refused to catch any for me. One day, however, I caught one myself, and thought that I would show the hunters how harmless they were. When the hunters were all assembled, I annoyed the toad by tapping on its nose with my finger. The toad grew more and more angry, puffing himself up and uttering fearsome gurking noises. Then he opened his great mouth, and to the hunters’ astonishment I thrust my thumb into it. That, I thought, ought to teach them that the toad was harmless.

Then, just as the hunters were all looking very impressed, the toad suddenly shut his mouth with a snap, and trapped the end of my thumb. I had never thought that a toad could bite so hard: it was just like having your finger jammed in a door, and the pain was terrific. I could not show that it was hurting me, with the hunters still there, and I had to wait until they had left before trying to get my thumb out, and all the time it was aching badly. At last the hunters went, and then I tried to get the toad off my thumb, but he simply hung on like a bulldog. Eventually, after about ten minutes, I had to put my hand in the bushes, so that the toad would think he had a good chance of escape, and then he let go and tried to hop off rapidly. I soon caught him and put him back in his cage, much to his annoyance, but it was the last time I let a horned toad bite me, because my thumb-nail turned black, and for a week it was extremely painful.

I have introduced you to only a few of the animals 1 have in my zoo, but I hope you have enjoyed meeting them. And, when you visit them, I hope that the stories I have told you about them will make you feel—as I do—that they are not just animals in cages but old friends.