We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed T

by Benjamin Mee

  Even in his sleep, something like Sovereign—in particular he, in fact—is scary. Your brain is telling you to keep back. It may be a trap (you almost suspected this cat had hid an antidote pill inside his mouth like some secret agent). What if he just springs up? I feel it every time, that I am not supposed to be close to an animal like this. But he was genuinely out, and the only thing to remember was that it was a light dose, for safety’s sake—his safety, not ours—and that jerky movements and loud noises could trigger an adrenaline response in him that might, conceivably, counteract the drug. Which you don’t want. So the atmosphere of total silence—radios and phones off, only essential commands whispered—greatly adds to the tension of the occasion. As we successfully maneuvered him onto a blanket and manhandled him out of his house, I noticed that in our efforts not to jostle our lethal patient, I had somehow ended up with the head end, while the other three porters were carrying the rear legs. Not only was my end much heavier, it’s much scarier, too. His head is as big as a medium-size Halloween pumpkin festooned with real fangs, the most prominent being his two two-inch canines designed for puncturing skulls. I’d just noticed the proximity of my delicate seeming wrist to these gaping jaws (remember the jag has the most powerful jaws of all the big cats), when the vet’s phone went off. As the ringtone (a Kylie Minogue track, incongruously) boomed and echoed in the narrow concrete corridor, the vet did a pantomime horror retreat to turn it off, and hissed over to me, “Put the blanket over his head.” I gladly complied, but had little faith that this flimsy material would do much to lessen the sound, or protect my wrist, particularly with Kylie singing her little lungs out trying to wake him up.

  But he didn’t wake up, and we got him into the crate, and the van, and his new quarters without a further hitch. It was a great moment. Our new equipment worked perfectly, the new team performed impeccably, and we had successfully transferred a very dangerous animal without incident. We could now get on with the license requirement of renovating his enclosure and relining his leaking moat, which meant more demolition work for me, and more welding, fence work, and rendering for people with better skills.

  Unfortunately, the next move did not go quite so well. This time it was for the much-anticipated relocation of Tammy the tiger, who, you may remember, had been fighting with and had needed to be separated from her sister for about five years, since they both had hormone-changing contraceptive injections. After tireless efforts from all the keepers, eventually a home was found for her in France, and a date set for her transportation. The procedures were run through as before, and minor adjustments made to the plan from small lessons learned. The Frenchies arrived the night before, ready for an early start, and we spent an enjoyable evening in the local pub getting to know each other. I had been looking forward to speaking a bit of French, perhaps to translate some crucial information at a critical time, but these vain hopes receded quickly when it emerged that both of them spoke English as well as I did.

  On the morning of the move, the first little thing to go wrong was that the van couldn’t get as close to the tiger house as we had liked. It was further up a long steep slope than the jag house, and that slope was now covered with road planings, which don’t give much purchase for an empty two-wheel drive van trying to reverse. No problem, the vet was confident that she would be out long enough for us to carry her the extra fifty yards to get her safely inside, so we carried on. Tammy was less canny than Sovereign and easier to dart, but she made some hellishly frightening noises after she was hit. After the requisite time, a delegation went in to have a look, and it was deemed she needed another dose, so we waited again. After the vet flicked her ears for a bit, he decided she wasn’t going anywhere, and we maneuvered this considerable animal onto another blanket (we still hadn’t been able to afford a stretcher). Six of us carried Tammy— again, under a code of silence—watched over by John on firearms with the big gun, which could kill her with a single shot should things go wrong. And then, go wrong they did.

  Halfway down the path, which is about three meters wide, with lions on one side and tigers on the other, Tammy woke up. The first sign was her tail, which started moving and then wrapped itself tightly around someone’s leg. Then she just stood up, right out in the open, scattering people like gunfire in a shopping center—or, indeed, a big cat in a crowd of people. She was incredibly groggy and could barely stand, but she was still a big girl, upright and on the wrong side of the wire. People evaporated from the scene over the stand-off barriers backward—not too close to the lions though, because they were suddenly very vocal in their objections to seeing Tammy so close (Duncan’s policy of putting the other cats away during these procedures had been overlooked, with potentially volatile consequences). I noticed that several people had somehow managed to climb the observation tower, despite the bottom six feet of rungs of the ladder having been removed to make it inaccessible. But mainly I noticed Tammy, less than three yards away, standing, then slowly wheeling round to face me. I decided to stay still. Her eyes were glazed, but I knew that they are hypersensitive to tracking movement, and could easily be triggered by signs of a prey animal in front of her (i.e., me), trying to escape. I didn’t have to look to my right to know that John would have raised the rifle ready to fire, and I did my best to remain utterly motionless. There are people who claim to be able to withdraw their aura inward and become almost invisible, certainly less noticeable, an idea I had previously thought was ridiculous. But under the circumstances, I was willing to give it a try. In fact my brain did it for me, because I was not afraid. I was beyond fear, to total calm, as if something even more primitive than the fight-or-flight response had been triggered, and my body knew I couldn’t be trusted with the release of that much adrenaline; perhaps it would cause me to move, or some sensitivity in the tiger would pick up the increased electromagnetic activity from so close. I concentrated on seeming like part of the stand-off barrier I was leaning against, or maybe a tree, or some other inert and routine stimulus. It seemed to work, because Tammy’s glazed gaze swept across me without registering, and she wobbled slowly off down the path towards the van.

  John, as firearms officer, was responsible for everybody’s safety, and he would have been within his rights to kill Tammy the moment he had a clear shot. I was half-expecting this, though my perception of the situation on a second-by-second basis was that there had as yet been no need. And he didn’t. John held his nerve, as I knew he would, and maintained eye contact communications with Steve the curator and the vet, who fed back that he should hold off. Everyone held their nerve. Tammy staggered a few more paces, then lay down, unfortunately right next to the dart gun, which was the only means of administering more anaesthetic. There followed a tense few moments as the vet prepared a dart and Steve crept towards Tammy, covered by John, to retrieve the dart gun. With animal stealth—it doesn’t get more animal than this—he moved to within four feet of her, conscious that as the seconds ticked by, the drugs were wearing off. Without the dart gun we would have no choice but to shoot to kill as she became livelier. Steve reached the gun, tiptoed over to the vet, and gave Tammy another dose.

  Now we had to wait again for it to take effect, this time out in the open, a stark period which could have been a minute or twenty, but was probably nearer five. By the time Tammy was declared under (again), my adrenaline had kicked in. But we desperately needed her in the crate in the van, and no amount of fear could prevent that happening. I remember feeling decidedly uncomfortable as we hauled this incredibly dangerous thing, the trigger of so many primal fears, who had already demonstrated that she could wake up, into the crate. Once again I had the head end—though not alone this time—and I didn’t like it. Tammy’s head is bigger than a very big watermelon, and though the move only took about thirty seconds, I was constantly expecting her to show signs of life with disastrous consequences. As soon as I had pushed her head clear of the crate door, which slid down and bolted her to safety, I felt the anger rising. Anger that I, and
all the staff, had been put through this.

  The lessons learned immediately were that a move can’t go ahead unless the vehicle—ideally a four-wheel-drive—is right next to the animal’s house; and other animals in the area should also be shut away, every time. Then Anna, our Zoo Collection Manager, and Steve began investigating that most salient question: why had Tammy been able to stand up? Exhaustive enquiries to about thirty zoo vets and other professionals revealed a universal consensus on the drug of choice to sedate big cats during these procedures. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the one the vet used. He had chosen a horse tranquilizer, which can work, but is thought less reliable. And so it had proved. Anna and Steve lobbied hard (though they didn’t have to) that in future, all major moves and medical procedures should be managed by an external specialist organization, the International Zoo Veterinary Group (IZVG), a freelance organization that does only exotic animals. What they don’t know about zoo animals, nobody knows. Obviously, they were decidedly more expensive, but this was not a consideration, and I agreed wholeheartedly. The next move we were going to attempt, when the vet room was ready, was transferring three big predators in one day for long-overdue dental procedures, and we couldn’t afford for any part of it to go wrong. Regardless of the cost, we were going to use the IZVG.

  In the meantime, on the back of so many other unsettling incidents, this one was probably irrevocably formative. Duncan and I discovered that we were no longer fully relaxed out in the open, particularly around here. Once, we were up at the reservoir for the zoo, a misnomer since it really is just a big manhole cover at the highest point in the park, above the bore hole that supplies the water at the rate of about four thousand liters a day. Unfortunately, it leaks, which means that every ten days to three weeks the water pressure drops, so that the otters’ supply dries up, one of the artificial ponds starts to drain (through another as yet unidentified leak), and the pressure in the restaurant drops below what is needed to keep it running. But far more important to me, at eight in the morning when you tend to find out about it, is that the shower doesn’t work. The shower, as described before, is not a haven of luxury even when it does work. A yellowed, fractured plastic upright coffin installed in a shower-wide, partitioned room directly in front of the only window, the mechanism is fine (though festooned with live mains wires immediately behind it), and once you are in it, when it is working, this can often seem like the best part of the day—a short period of time in touch with our aquatic roots, almost guaranteed not to be interrupted. Almost. Milo and Ella still regard you as fair game in the shower, and I have also been called out from it a few times to attend to various emergency meetings, but generally, this imperfect sanctuary is as good as it gets. Until it doesn’t work. When it fails to deliver hot water, or even any water at all, the denial-tinted spectacles come off and you see it for what it is: a miserable piece of shit that we can’t afford to replace yet. Like a TV or laptop that suddenly doesn’t work and is no longer a conduit to the center of the universe, but just a shoddy plastic box.

  What you have to do when the water dries up is go into the woods behind the wolves and above the bears to the reservoir, armed with two yard-long wrenches, and tinker with some heavy duty valves to bleed the system. Early in the morning, before school, this can only be described as a bummer, so we try to pre-empt it, which is how Duncan and I found ourselves up there one Sunday evening, chatting about the day’s events, relaxed as we tried to remember the exact sequence of things to turn and pipes to connect to each other. Suddenly there was a large animal rustling around less than twenty feet away, and we both spun around, gripping our wrenches and ready for mortal combat. Both our stances were wide, ready to fight or flee, and we cast wide-eyed glances around looking for good trees to climb in the nanoseconds before we assessed what we were up against. It was a cow, on the other side of the fence. At the edges of the park, we forget, other people have large animals like cows, horses, and sheep, that are not about to rip your limbs off and eat them. But you can’t be too careful, and it took us a few moments to relax and get back to the job in hand.

  Another time I was out in the open crossing a carefully assessed empty field belonging to a neighbor, when a plastic bag reared up out of the long grass and sent me into a similar spasm of panic. But the scarier moments are at night. The first time was while collecting wood for the fire, in what I’d vaguely remembered was a virtually empty enclosure containing some ground-based birds, the biggest of which was a turkey, who was sometimes aggressive but not insurmountable. I looked up from my bow sawing to see several sets of mammalian eyes reflected in my headlamp, all small and narrowly spaced, indicating little animals. But if they were little cats, I had a big problem. Then I remembered that we don’t have any little cats, apart from Jilly, the elderly serval whose enclosure was some distance away, and that these were in fact the innocuous miniature muntjac deer who were desperately more afraid of me that I should be of them. Even so, my rattled reasoning told me, they have little spiky antlers, and I was careful not to upset them as I completed my foray for fallen wood.

  The most recent occasion of nocturnal fear was while walking the dog, Leon (more on him later). Out in the corner of the giraffe (all right, small cats) field, which backs on to the pumas, on a clear but moonless night, I heard something big moving very slowly toward me. The dog was busy some distance away, but my anxiety was based on the fact that the female pumas were in season and calling out with their giant, strangulated miaoww, which is thought, along with their pheromone incentive, to draw young male pumas from the moor. And that was the direction this animal was coming from. I hesitated, hoping that the idiot dog would pick up on it, and, ideally, challenge it and be eaten by it rather than me. But he remained oblivious, selfishly snuffling around the many animal scents of the long grass a hundred yards away rather than volunteering to sacrifice his life for me. There was a firm breeze coming from behind me, so I knew the animal knew exactly where and what I was, and still it slowly crunched through the undergrowth in my direction. Finally I cracked and snapped on my headlamp, half-expecting to see a fleeing puma and partly dreading the other alternative, that it wouldn’t flee. The eyes that stared back at me were wide spaced and didn’t flee. They didn’t do anything, which I gradually drew comfort from, because predators tend to make snap decisions. Taking my time, and finally enlisting Leon as moral—and potentially sacrificial—support, I moved toward it. As I did so, it gradually became clear that this was another harmless, dumb-assed cow, newly introduced to this normally empty field, stalking me because it presumably thought that I was the farmer, breaking the habit of a lifetime by bringing it food at 3 AM.

  These sorts of incidents, though actually quite exciting, serve to reinforce the sense that to live here is to exist in a state of perpetual impending emergency. For the time being, though, most of the emergencies were false alarms, or at least manageable, all made more bearable by the influx of money from the NFU. Now the sensation was more like riding the rapids on the way to a waterfall, as the money flowed out and the deadline of the inspection for our license loomed inexorably nearer.

  With the vast amount to be done, we were working at a frantic pace, and every problem that came up seemed to require an expensive solution. The van, an old transit that had done a remarkable 260,000 miles, suddenly gave out when a strut from the chassis snapped and punctured the floor in the back. There’s no coming back from that, so a gleaming new (well, with only 80,000 miles on the clock) replacement was bought. The dumper, a giant yellow monster with the wrong engine and a gearbox that looked like it had come from prehistory, blew up one day, necessitating further outlay. These two vehicles are the backbone of the operation, used for fetching and distributing food for the animals and materials of all kinds throughout the park.

  The new dumper, on hire, was enormously popular, mainly because it actually worked, and did a great deal to improve not just the work rate but also morale. But the cost of everything loomed into focus sharply and
again made me miss Katherine, because I knew her budget-management skills would have saved us money, but she would also have brought a sense of control that in her absence, seemed to be slipping away. However, it was a one-way journey we were on, and most of the problems we faced, for once, really could be solved by throwing money at them. I was just acutely aware that once the money was spent, there wasn’t going to be any more. And if we failed to get the park open with it, the level of disaster would be unthinkable. Probably many animals would die, and many people (including those who had left good jobs to work for us) would be unemployed. And the family assets, which my parents had worked so hard all their lives to build up, would be in tatters.

  “But at least no one’s shooting at us,” my mum would say. Brought up in Sheffield during the war, as a child she had endured nightly air raids, culminating in one where she emerged from the cellar to find that the family house, indeed the whole street, had been destroyed. The family simply walked to their nearest relative’s house, an aunty seven miles away, past the rows of bodies laid out on the roads until they could be dealt with. These sorts of experiences gave my mum’s generation a profound grip on reality, and though she had spent the last thirty or so years in relative suburban opulence and didn’t relish the grim living conditions and constant stress of gambling everything on a crazy venture that was in no way dead certain, Mum knew from direct personal experience that things could be considerably worse.