Island Zoo Read online

  Island Zoo

  Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  ISLAND ZOO

  Photographs by W. SUSCHITZKY

  The animals a famous collector couldn't part with

  This book is for

  CAROLINE SMITH

  who has introduced me to such rare animals.as the Moo-ha-ha, the Dab-dab, and the Mouse-chew

  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.