Three hours later there was absolutely no change, except that the male marmoset had finished all the grapes and meal-worms. By then my secretary had arrived and, as I had a lot of letters to answer, I made her bring a chair and sit down beside me in front of the marmoset cage while I dictated. I think the visitors to the zoo that day must have thought it slightly eccentric that a man should be dictating letters while keeping his eyes fixed hypnotically on a cageful of marmosets. Then, about midday, someone arrived whom I had to see. I was away from the cage for approximately ten minutes, and on my return the father marmoset was busy washing two tiny scraps of fur that were clinging to him vigorously. I could quite cheerfully have strangled the female marmoset; after all my patient waiting, she went and gave birth during the short period I happened to be away.
Still, I could watch the father looking after the babies, and I had to be content with that. He handled the twins with great care and devotion, generally carrying them slung one on each hip, like a couple of panniers on a donkey. His fur was so thick and the babies so small that most of the time they were completely hidden; then, suddenly, from the depths of his fur, a tiny face the size of a large hazelnut would appear, and two bright eyes would regard you gravely. At feeding time the father would go and hang on the wire close alongside the mother, and the babies would pass from one to the other. Then, their thirst quenched, they would scramble back onto father again. The father was extremely proud of his babies, and was always working himself up into a state of panic over their welfare. As the twins grew older, they became more venturesome, and would leave the safety of their father’s fur to make excursions along the nearby branches, while their parents eyed them with pride as well as a little anxiety. If you approached too near the cage when the twins were on one of their voyages of exploration, the father would get wildly agitated, convinced that you had evil designs on his precious offspring. His fur would stand on end, like an angry cat’s, and he would chitter loud and shrill instructions to the twins, which were generally ignored as they grew older. This would reduce him to an even worse state of mind and, screaming with rage and fear, he would dive through the branches, grab the twins, and sling them into place, one on each hip; then, muttering dark things to himself -presumably about the disobedience of the modern generation—he would potter off to have a light snack to restore his nerves, casting dark glances at you over his shoulder. Watching the marmoset family was an enchanting experience, more like watching a troupe of strange little fur-covered leprechauns than monkeys.
Naturally, the biggest thrill comes when you succeed in breeding some creature which you know from the start is going to be extremely difficult. During my visit to West Africa 1 had managed to acquire some Fernand’s skinks, probably one of the most beautiful of the lizard family, for their big, heavy bodies were covered with a mosaic work of highly polished scales in lemon yellow, black, white, and vivid cherry red. By the time the zoo in Jersey was established I had only two of these magnificent creatures left, but they were fine, healthy specimens, and they settled down well in the reptile house. Sexing most reptiles is well-nigh impossible, so I did not know if these skinks were a true pair or not, but I did know that, even if by some remote chance they were, the chances of breeding them were a million to one. The reason for this was that reptiles, by and large, lay the most difficult eggs to hatch in captivity. Tortoises, for example, lay hard-shelled eggs which they bury in earth or sand. But, as I have already mentioned, if you do not get the temperature and humidity just right in the cage, the eggs will either become mildewed or dry up. A lot of lizards, on the other hand, lay eggs with a soft, parchment-like shell, which makes matters a bit more difficult, for they are even more sensitive to moisture and temperature.
Knowing all this, I viewed with mixed feelings the clutch of a dozen eggs which the female Fernand’s skink laid one morning in the earth at the bottom of her cage. They were white, oval eggs, each about the size of a sugared almond, and the female (as happens among some of the skinks) stood guard over them and would attack your hand quite fearlessly should you put it near the eggs. Among most lizards the female walks off, having laid her batch, and forgets all about it; in the case of some of the skinks, however, the female guards the nest, and lying on top of the soil in which the eggs are buried, urinates over the nest at intervals to maintain the right moisture content in order to keep the delicate shells from shrivelling up in the heat. Our female skink appeared to know what she was doing, and so all we could do was sit back and await developments, without any great hope that the eggs would hatch. As week after week passed, our hopes sank lower and lower, until, eventually, I dug down to the nest, expecting to find every egg shrivelled up. To my surprise, however, I found that only four eggs had done so; the rest were still plump and soft, though discoloured, of course. I removed the four shriveled ones and carefully opened one with a scalpel. I found a dead but well-developed embryo. This was encouraging, for it proved at least that the eggs were fertile. So we sat back to wait again.
Then, one morning, I was down in the reptile house, seeing about some matter, and as I passed the skinks’ cage I happened to glance inside. As usual, the cage looked empty, as the parent skinks spent a lot of their time buried in the soil at the bottom. I was just about to turn away when a movement among the dry leaves and moss attracted my attention. I peered more closely and suddenly, from around the edge of a large leaf, I saw a minute pink and black head peering at me. I could hardly believe my eyes, and stood stock still and stared as this tiny replica of the parents slowly crept out from behind the leaf. It was about an inch and a half long, with all the rich colouring of the adult, but so slender, fragile, and glossy that it resembled one of those ornamental brooches that women wear on the lapels of their coats.
I decided that, if one had hatched, there might be others, and I wanted to remove them as quickly as possible for, although the female had been an exemplary mother till now, it was quite possible that either she or the male might eat the youngsters. We prepared a small aquarium and very carefully caught the baby skink and put him into it. Then we set to work and stripped the skinks’ cage. This was a prolonged job, for each leaf, each piece of wood, each tuft of grass had to be checked and double-checked, to make sure there was no baby skink curled up in it. When the last leaf had been examined, we had four baby Fernand’s skinks running around in the aquarium. When you consider the chances of any of the eggs hatching at all, to have four out of twelve was, I thought, no mean feat. The only thing that marred our delight at this event was that the baby skinks had decided to hatch at the beginning of the winter, and as they could feed only off minute things the job of finding them enough food was going to be difficult. Tiny meal-worms were, of course, our standby, but all our friends with gardens rallied round, and would come up to the zoo once or twice a week, bearing biscuit tins full of woodlice, earwigs, tiny snails, and other morsels that gave the babies the so necessary variety in diet. Thus the tiny reptiles thrived and grew. At the time of writing, they are about six inches long, and as handsome as their parents. I hope it will not be long before they start laying eggs, so that we can try to rear a second generation in captivity.
There are, of course, some animals which could only with the greatest difficulty be prevented from breeding in captivity, and among these are the coatimundis. These little South American animals are about the size of a small dog, with long, ringed tails which they generally carry pointing straight up in the air. They have short, rather bowed legs, which give them a bear-like rolling gait; and long, rubbery, tip-tilted noses which are forever whiffling to and fro, investigating every nook and cranny in search of food. They come in two colours: a brindled greenish brown, and a rich chestnut. Martha and Mathias, the pair I had brought back from Argentina, were of the brindled kind.