As soon as these two had settled down in their new cage in the zoo they started to breed with great enthusiasm. We noticed some interesting facts about this which are worth recording. Normally, Mathias was the dominant one. It was he who went round the cage periodically ‘marking’ with his scent gland so that everyone would know it was his territory. He led Martha rather a dog’s life, pinching all the best bits of food until we were forced to feed them separately. This Victorian male attitude was apparent only when Martha was not pregnant. As soon as she had conceived, the tables were turned. She was now the dominant one, and made poor Mathias’ life hell, attacking him without provocation, driving him away from the food, and generally behaving in a very shrewish fashion. It was only by watching to see which was the dominant one at the moment that we could tell, in the early stages, whether Martha was expecting a litter or not.
Martha’s first litter consisted of four babies, and she was proud of them, and proved to be a very good mother indeed. We were not sure what Mathias’ reactions to the youngsters were going to be, so we had constructed a special shut-off for him, from which he could see and smell the babies without being able to sink his teeth into them, should he be so inclined. It turned out later that Mathias was just as full of pride in them as Martha, but in the early stages we were not taking any risks. Then the great day came when Martha considered the babies old enough to be shown to the world, so she led them out of her den and into the outside cage for a few hours a day. Baby coatis are, in many ways, the most enchanting of young animals. They appear to be all head and nose—high-domed, intellectual-looking foreheads, and noses that are, if anything, twice as rubbery and inquisitive as the adults’. Also, they are natural clowns, forever tumbling about, or sitting on their bottoms in the most human fashion, their hands on their knees. All this, combined with their ridiculous rolling, flat-footed walk, made them quite irresistible. They would play follow-the-leader up the branches in their cage, and when the leader had reached the highest point he would suddenly go into reverse, barging into the one behind who, in his turn, was forced to back into the one behind him, and so on, until they were all descending the branch backwards, trilling and twittering to each other musically. Then they would climb up into the branches and do daring trapeze acts, hanging by their hind paws, or one forepaw, swinging to and fro, trying their best to knock each other off. Although they often fell from quite considerable heights onto the cement floor, they seemed as resilient as India rubber and never hurt themselves.
When they grew a little older and discovered they could squeeze through the wire mesh of the cage, they would escape and play about just inside the barrier rail. Martha would keep an anxious eye on them during these excursions, and should any real or imaginary danger threaten they would come scampering back at her alarm cry, and, panting excitedly, squeeze their fat bodies through the wire mesh and into the safety of the cage. As they grew bolder, they took to playing further and further afield. If there were only a few visitors about, they would go and have wrestling matches on the main drive that sloped down past their cage. In many ways this was a nuisance, for at least twenty times a day some kindly and well-intentioned visitor would come panting up to us with the news that some of our animals were out, and we would have to explain the whole coati set-up.
It was while the babies were playing on the back drive one day that they received a fright which had a salutary effect on them. They had gradually been going further and further from the safety of their cage, and their mother had been growing increasingly anxious. The babies had just learned how to somersault, and were in no mood to listen to their mother’s warnings. It was when they had reached a point quite far from their cage that Jeremy drove down the back drive in the zoo van. Martha uttered her warning cry, and the babies, stopping their game, suddenly saw they were about to be attacked by an enormous roaring monster that was between them and the safety of their home. Panic-stricken, they turned and ran. They galloped flat-footedly down past the baboon cage, past the chimp cage, past the bear cage, without finding anywhere to hide from the monster that pursued them. Suddenly they saw a haven of safety, and the four of them dived for it. The fact that the ladies’ lavatory happened to be empty at that moment was entirely fortuitous. Jeremy, cursing all coatis, slammed on his brakes and got out. He glanced round surreptitiously to make sure there were no female visitors around, and then dived into the ladies’ in pursuit of the babies. Inside, they were nowhere to be seen, and he was just beginning to wonder where on earth they had got to when muffled squeaks from inside one of the cubicles attracted him. He discovered that all four babies had squeezed under the door of one of these compartments. What annoyed Jeremy most of all, though, was that he had to put a penny in the door to get them out.
Still, whatever tribulations they might give you, the babies in the zoo provide tremendous pleasure and satisfaction. The sight of the peccaries playing wild games of catch-as-catch-can with their tiny piglets; the baby coatis rolling and bouncing like a circus troupe; the baby skinks in their miniature world, carefully stalking an earwig almost as big as themselves; the baby marmosets dancing through the branches like little gnomes, hotly pursued by their harassed father: all these things are awfully exciting. After all, there is no point in having a zoo unless you breed the animals in it, for by breeding them you know that they have come to trust you, and that they are content.
7
A GORILLA IN THE GUEST-ROOM
Dear Mr Durrell,
Could you please have our Rhesus monkey? He is growing so big and jumping on us from trees and doing damage and causing so much trouble. Already my mother has been in bed with the doctor three times…
It was towards the end of the second year that I decided that the zoo, not being well-established, must cease to be a mere show-place of animals and start to contribute something towards the conservation of wildlife. I felt that it would be essential gradually to weed out all the commoner animals in the collection and to replace them with rare and threatened species—that is, species which were threatened with extinction in the wild state. The list of these was long and melancholy; in fact—without reptiles—it filled three fat volumes. I was wondering which of this massive list of endangered species we could start with, when the decision was taken out of my hands. An animal dealer telephoned and asked me if I wanted a baby gorilla.
Gorillas have never been exceptionally numerous as a species, and with the state that Africa was in (politically speaking) at that moment it seemed to me that they might well become extinct within the next twenty years. Newly emergent governments are generally far too busy proving themselves to the world for the first few years to worry much about the fate of the wildlife of their country, and history has proved, time and time again, how rapidly a species can be exterminated, even a numerous one. So the gorilla had been high on my list of priorities. I was not convinced, however, that the dealer in question was really expecting a gorilla. In my experience, the average animal dealer can, with difficulty, distinguish between a bird, a reptile, and a mammal, but this is about the extent of his zoological knowledge. I felt that it was more than likely that the baby gorilla would turn out to be a baby chimpanzee. However, I could not afford to turn the offer down, in case it really was a baby gorilla.