They crouched in the straw, locked in each other’s arms; to each the other was the one recognizable and understandable thing in a horrifying world. They both looked healthy, apart from their distended tummies, but they were so young I knew the chances of their survival were risky. The sight of them, however, clutching each other and staring at me with such obvious terror, decided me, and (knowing that I should never hear the end of it) I sat down and wrote out a cheque.
That evening I telephoned the zoo to tell Jacquie that all was well and that I had managed to buy not only the crowned pigeons she wanted, but also two pairs of very nice pheasants. On hearing this, both Catha and Jacquie said that I should not be allowed to go animal shopping by myself and I had no sense of economy and why was I buying pheasants when I knew the zoo could not afford them, to which I replied that they were rare pheasants and that was sufficient excuse. I then carelessly mentioned that I had also bought something else.
What, they inquired suspiciously, had I bought?
“A pair of orang-utans,” I said airily.
“Orang-utans?” said Jacquie. “You must be mad. How much did they cost? Where are we going to keep them? You must be out of your mind.”
Catha, on being told the news, agreed with her. I explained that the orang-utans were so tiny that they would practically fit in your pocket and that I could not possibly leave them just to die in a dealer’s shop in Holland.
“You’ll love them when you see them,” I said hopefully, to which Jacquie’s answer was a derisive snort.
“Well,” she said, philosophically, “if you have bought them, you have bought them, and I suggest you come back as quickly as possible before you spend any more money.”
“I am returning tomorrow,” I replied.
So the following day I sent the crowned pigeons and the pheasants off by air and travelled myself by sea with my two waifs. They were suspicious and timid, although the female was more inclined to be trusting than the male, but after a few hours of coaxing they did take titbits from my hand. I decided after much deliberation to call the male Oscar and the female Bali, since it had some vague connotation with the area of the world from which they originated. Little was I to know that this would cause Jeremy to perpetrate a revolting pun that when Oscar was wild, this made Bali high.
I had decided to travel by sea with them because, first of all, I never travel by air if I can possibly avoid it. I am convinced that every aeroplane pilot who flies me has just been released from a hospital, suffering from acute angina pectoris. Also I felt the trip would be more leisurely and would give me a chance to establish some sort of contact with my charges. As regards the latter, I was perfectly correct; Bali had begun to respond quite well and Oscar had bitten me twice by the time I arrived.
As I anticipated, as soon as I returned to the zoo with my two bald-headed, pot-bellied, red-haired waifs, everyone immediately fell in love with them. They were crooned over and placed in a special cage which had been prepared in advance, and hardly a moment of the day passed without someone or other going to peer at them and give them some delicacy. It was a month before they showed signs of recovering their self-confidence and began to realize that we were not the ogres they thought. Then their personalities blossomed forth and they very soon became two of the most popular inmates of the zoo. I think it was their bald heads, their strange slant eyes, and their Buddha-like figures that made them so hilariously funny to watch as they indulged in the most astonishing wrestling matches that I have ever seen. Owing to the fact that their hind legs can, it seems, swivel round and round on the ball-and-socket joint of the hip in a completely unanatomical manner, these wrestling matches had to be seen to be believed. Gasping and giving hoarse chuckles, the two would roll over and over in the straw, banging their great pot-bellies together, and so inextricably entwine their arms and legs that you began to wonder how they would ever disentangle themselves. Occasionally, if Oscar became too rough, Bali would protest, in a reedy high-pitched squeak which was barely audible and quite ridiculous from an animal of that size.
They grew at an astonishing rate and very soon had to be moved into a new cage. Here Jeremy had designed and had had constructed for them a special piece of furniture for their edification. It was like a long iron ladder slung from the ceiling. This gave them masses of handholds, and they enjoyed it thoroughly; they took so much exercise on this that their tummies soon reduced to a more normal size.
In character they were totally different. Oscar was a real toughy; he was a terrible coward, but never lost an opportunity for creating a bit of mischief if he could. He was definitely the more intelligent of the pair and showed his inventive genius on more than one occasion. In their cage is a recessed window; we had boarded over the window-ledge to form a platform on which they could sit, and leading up to it is an iron-runged ladder. Oscar decided (for some reason best known to himself) that it would be a good idea to remove all the boards from the window-sill. He tried standing on them and tugging, but his weight defeated his object. After considerable thought, he worked out a method of dislodging the planks which is one of the most intelligent things I have seen done by an ape. He found out that the top rung of the iron ladder lay some two inches below the overlap of the shelf. If he could slide something into this gap and press it downwards, it would act as a lever, using the top rung of the ladder as fulcrum; and what better tool for his purpose than his stainless-steel dish? By the time we had found out that we had a tool-using ape in our midst, Oscar had pried up six of the boards and was enjoying himself hugely.
It is unfortunate that, like many apes, Oscar and Bali have developed some rather revolting characteristics, one of which is the drinking of each other’s urine. It sounds frightful, but they are such enchanting animals and do it in such a way that you can only feel amused to see Oscar sitting up on his iron ladder, urinating copiously while Bali sits below with open mouth to receive the nectar, and then savours it with all the air of a connoisseur. She puts her head on one side, rolling the liquid round her mouth as if trying to make up her mind from which vineyard it came and in what year it was bottled. They also, unfortunately, enjoy eating their own excreta. As far as I know, these habits in apes apply only to specimens in captivity. In the wild state apes are on the move all the time and to a greater or lesser extent are arboreal, so that their urine and faeces drop to the forest floor below, and therefore they are not tempted to test their edibility. Once they start this habit in captivity, it is virtually impossible to break them of it. It does not appear to do them any harm, except, of course, that if they do happen to be infected with any internal parasites (of which you are endeavouring to cure them), they are constantly reinfecting themselves and each other by this means.
Other new arrivals of great importance from the point of view of conservation were a pair of tuataras from New Zealand. These astonishing reptiles at one time had a wide range but were exterminated on the mainland, and are now found only in a few scattered groups of small islands off the coast of New Zealand. They are rigidly protected by the New Zealand Government and only occasionally is the odd specimen exported for some zoo. On a brief visit I paid to that country, I explained to the authorities the work I was trying to do in Jersey and they—somewhat unwisely—asked me if there was any member of the New Zealand fauna which I would particularly like to have. Resisting the impulse to say ‘everything’ and thus appear greedy, I said that I was very interested in tuataras. The minister concerned said that he was sure they could see their way to letting me have one, to which I replied that I was not interested in having one, although this seemed like looking a gift-horse in the mouth. I explained that my idea was to build up breeding colonies, and it was difficult to say the least, to form a breeding colony with only one animal. Could I, perhaps, have a pair? After due deliberation, the authorities decided that they would let me have a true pair of tuataras. This was indeed a triumph, for as far as I know we are the only zoo in the world to have been allowed to have a true pair of these rare reptiles.