Gavin Maxwell

by Botting, Douglas;

  Gavin untied the sack, and out of it stepped a small otter quite unlike any he had ever seen before – a creature like a small medievally-conceived dragon, with short, close fur like a chocolate-brown mole and a black button-nose like a koala bear. The animal shook itself, and Gavin picked it up and began stroking it and talking to it soothingly. So Mijbil (named after a tubby sheikh he had encountered in the marshes) entered Gavin’s life, and suddenly he had a raison d’être, something on which to lavish his affection. Mijbil, familiarly known as Mij, was to become in a sense Gavin’s home and destiny, and there was to be no more talk about wandering among the pastoral tribes. Now his life began an entirely new phase, characterised by what he was to call ‘a thraldom to otters, an otter fixation’.

  When Gavin Young caught up with Wilfred Thesiger in the marshes he asked him about this unusual man he had met playing with an otter in the Consulate-General in Basra. ‘Wilfred told me what a curious person he was, and how neurotic and disturbed,’ he recalled.

  Wilfred had formed a not terribly high opinion of Gavin, he found him too squeamish and sentimental – though later he came to quite like Gavin as human company, and recognised he was a serious ornithologist, even if he was, by Wilfred’s Olympian standards, an indifferent explorer. Wilfred’s Marsh Arabs were enigmatic about Gavin, too, and confused by his temperament. Gavin was a moody person, easily moved to tears or fury, and he was a nervous, sensitive man with a very shy manner, always flashing a quick grin or a laugh or an angry look, and the Arabs complained they couldn’t get on his wavelength. In his ideal life-plan Gavin might have quite liked to have been someone like Wilfred Thesiger. But in Wilfred Gavin encountered the archetypal hardened Victorian explorer, making serious maps, studying languages, collecting plants and insects, living exactly as the natives did with no concessions to comfort whatsoever. That sort of life required tremendous organisation and serious intent and Gavin found it too hot a pace to serve as a model he could aspire to. Gavin the man expected something more romantic than that.

  Gavin stayed on in Basra with his new-found animal companion. For the first twenty-four hours Mijbil kept himself aloof, sleeping on the floor as far as possible from Gavin’s bed. The main problem was food. The patient and hospitable Consul-General, Mark Kerr-Pears, sent out a servant to buy fish in the market, but Gavin was advised by Robert Angorly that the fish the servant had bought had been caught with the use of digitalis poison, and would be dangerous for a small otter to eat. Angorly offered to procure fresh fish that had been caught with nets, and every day thereafter he brought half a dozen small red fish from the Tigris for Mijbil to eat.

  For a fortnight Gavin and his otter stayed on at the Consulate-General. Most of this time was spent in getting to know each other. On the second night Mijbil came on to Gavin’s bed in the small hours and slept in the crook of his knees until the servant brought tea in the morning. From then on the young otter began to take an interest in his surroundings and to accept Gavin in a relationship of dependence. Very soon Mijbil discovered the thrills of a modern bathroom and a bath full of sloshing water. Once, when he escaped from Gavin’s room, Gavin spotted him scuttling down the corridor to the bathroom, and when he caught up with him was amazed to see that the otter had already discovered how to manipulate the chromium taps with his paws to produce a full flow of water – evidence of a higher level of intelligence than Gavin had previously guessed. Gavin was astonished at Mijbil’s aptitude for play and the virtuoso dexterity with which he could juggle small objects, lying on his back and rolling two or more marbles between the palms of his paws for minutes on end.

  He began to learn an otter’s ways and an otter’s language. Mijbil, he discovered, uttered a wide range of sounds, each sound conveying a different meaning. The simplest was the call note – a short, anxious, penetrating call between a whistle and a chirp. Then there was the query – a ‘Hah!’ uttered as a loud, harsh whisper – which Mijbil made if he entered a room and wanted to know if there was anyone there. Another distinct sound was a musical bubbling call interspersed with chirps, signifying excitement and anticipated fun, as when waiting for a walk or a bath; while a high, snarling, screaming wail was an unequivocal indication of anger, though this was rarely followed by anything more significant than a nip. But Mijbil’s main means of vocal communication was the chirp, in all its numerous permutations, from a continuous chitter to the single querulous note. Gavin found him an extraordinarily intelligent, excitable, affectionate, good-humoured and engaging companion, of whom he was to become fonder than almost any human being.

  Gavin’s plan was to take Mijbil back to Britain with him and install him eventually in the watery world of his Highland home at Sandaig. In those days there were no controls on the importation of endangered species, so his problems were practical rather than legal. Even so, he dreaded the prospect of escorting the inquisitive and irrepressible Mijbil to Britain by air. A Trans-World flight was booked to Paris, and an Air France connection of dubious certainty from Paris to London that evening. Trans-World required that Mij should be carried as personal baggage in a box not more than eighteen inches square. Since he was just over a foot long at the time, with a tail measuring another foot in length, this posed a problem, which was never properly solved. A zinc-lined box was constructed with two compartments, one for sleeping, the other a lavatory. To accustom Mijbil to it, Gavin put him in the box an hour before he was due to leave the Consulate-General for the airport, and left him there while he went away for a hurried meal.

  When he returned he found a horrific sight. Blood was trickling from the airholes and the hinges of the lid, and inside lay an exhausted, bloodstained Mij, his mouth, nose and paws scratched and torn in his efforts to tear his way through the zinc lining of the hated cage. It was after nine in the evening before Gavin had removed the last of the jagged metal from inside the box, and there were only ten minutes left before the flight. Forcing the otter back into his torture chamber, Gavin slammed the lid down and jumped into the waiting car. By the time they reached the airport, after a nightmare drive, Mij had torn one of the hinges of the lid clean out of the wood, and Gavin knew that before long he would break out completely.

  Desperately late, harassed and dishevelled, Gavin boarded the waiting plane. The other passengers were already seated and stared oddly at the late arrival as he searched for his seat, clutching a briefcase stuffed with old newspapers and stale fish, and a shattered wooden box from which issued diabolical menagerie noises. Gavin took his place next to a soignée and elegantly dressed middle-aged American woman, laid the box with the otter at his feet and the briefcase with the fish on his lap, and fastened his safety belt.

  Within a few minutes the plane was flying westwards over the marshes that had been Mijbil’s home, their dark waters glinting in the moonlight. Next stop was Cairo. Gavin took the newspapers out of his briefcase and laid them at his feet. Next he took out the fish and rang for the air hostess. A little shrilly, and none too coherently, he asked her if she could keep his fish in a cool-box. The hostess – ‘the very queen of her kind’ – took the ill-wrapped fish ‘as though I were travelling royalty depositing a jewel case with her for safe keeping’. Perhaps, she suggested to Gavin, his pet might feel happier sitting on his knee. Gratefully, Gavin bent down and opened the lid.

  Mijbil shot out like a rocket and disappeared at high speed down the aisle. Gavin heard a commotion behind him, shrieks and squawks from his fellow passengers and a woman standing on her seat crying out, ‘A rat! A rat!’ He rose from his seat and set off in hot pursuit towards the back of the plane, and tried to catch the fugitive otter with a flying tackle, only to find himself clutching an Indian lady’s foot, with his face covered in curry. It was the curry that persuaded his fellow passengers that it was a clown rather than a lunatic they had in their midst. Gavin returned to his seat while the turmoil of flight and pursuit passed up and down the aircraft behind him. Then he heard at his feet a distressed chitter of recognition, and Mij
jumped up on to his knee.

  ‘In all the strange world of the aircraft I was the only familiar thing to be found, and in that first spontaneous return was sown the seed of the absolute trust that he accorded me for the rest of his life,’ Gavin wrote. For an hour or two Mij slept peacefully on Gavin’s knees, and whenever he grew restless Gavin rang for fish and water. But as they were nearing Cairo the otter sprang into a frenzy of intense activity. First he tore the newspapers at Gavin’s feet into shreds, then shovelled out all the fine wood-shavings in his box, with all four paws working in a frenzy. Finally, he turned his attention to the travel bag of the American lady in the seat next to Gavin, unzipping it without a moment’s thought and throwing the contents in a chaotic heap on the cabin floor. Fortunately the woman was asleep, and Gavin was able to cram the articles back into her bag before she woke at Cairo.

  It was in rain-drenched Paris that Gavin’s troubles really began. Mijbil had to be nailed back in his coffin-like box for the transfer to Orly airport on the other side of the city. Worse, airline regulations for the flight to London required that he would have to fly as freight in the cargo hold of the aircraft. Worse still, the plane diverted to Amsterdam, and it seemed the luggage of the London-bound passengers was either lost or left behind in Paris. By now Gavin had not slept for thirty-six hours, and he was fractious and overwrought. In such a state of mind he could be a fearsome proposition for anyone who earned his wrath, and he threatened to sue Air France and to broadcast their inefficiency throughout the world if his precious animal was not found.

  Eventually it was announced that the London-bound baggage was on board a British aircraft which was about to take off. Gavin’s great fear now was that Mijbil would succumb to travel shock, a kind of voluntary death that kills many wild animals in transit. When he took a look inside the cargo hold of the waiting aircraft, he saw Mijbil’s box in a corner, but from it there issued not a sound.

  In the early hours of the next morning they arrived at last in London, where Gavin was confronted by a Customs officer every bit as cantankerous and bellicose as himself. The official scrutinised Gavin’s list of the purchases he had made in Iraq – two uncured otter skins, a Marsh Arab’s dagger, three cushion covers woven by the Beni Lam tribe, and a live otter.

  ‘You have with you a live otter?’ the official demanded.

  ‘I doubt very much whether he is still alive,’ Gavin replied, ‘but he was when he was in Paris.’

  ‘If the animal is dead,’ the official intoned drily, ‘there will be no duty payable on the uncured skin; if it is alive it is, of course, subject to the quarantine regulations.’

  Gavin vehemently objected. He had checked this out himself in Iraq, he said. There were no quarantine regulations applicable to the otter. Since he had now cleared his luggage, he proposed to leave with it, and if the Customs officer tried to detain him he would hold him legally responsible for the death of a valuable animal.

  The battle might have gone on for ever had not the Customs officer been relieved by a more conciliatory colleague. Within three minutes Mijbil’s box and the rest of Gavin’s baggage had been loaded into a waiting hire-car and they were speeding through the darkened streets towards the studio at Avonmore Road and the completion of a horrendous journey. From inside the box Gavin was gratified to hear faint chittering sounds and the rustle of wood shavings that indicated Mijbil was still alive. He had probably survived the journey from Paris by going into the self-protective trance-like state by which many wild animals attempt to escape the unbearable reality of adverse circumstances – ‘back, for all one may know, among the familiar scenes of his Tigris swamps, or perhaps in a negative, imageless world where the medulla had taken over respiration and the forebrain rested in a state bordering upon catalepsy’.

  When they reached the studio flat and Gavin closed the door behind them, he experienced a moment of deep satisfaction. In spite of everything, he had brought back a live otter cub from Iraq to London. He prised open the lid of the box, and Mijbil climbed out to greet him with frenzied affection.

  SIXTEEN

  Mijbil in London

  I think I could turn and live with animals …

  I stand and look at them long and long.

  They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

  They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

  They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God …

  WALT WHITMAN, Song of Myself

  Mij was tired after his long ordeal – but not that tired. He had not been out of his box for a minute before he began to explore his new home with alarming enthusiasm, and the moment Gavin went into the kitchen to find food for him he heard the first crash of breaking china in the room behind him. It was blindingly clear that Gavin’s cluttered studio-flat would require considerable modification if it was to contain the two of them in any kind of harmony. Living with an otter, Gavin realised, was going to be a demanding and full-time business. Quite apart from their tireless inquisitiveness and exuberance, otters that had been reared by human beings required almost constant human company, affection and play. Without them they quickly became unhappy and tiresome. For the first few weeks in London, therefore, Gavin was preoccupied with making his home otter-proof – ‘like a cross between a monkey-house and a furniture repository’ – while creating for Mij an environment in which he felt secure and at ease. Routine, he knew, was the key, for as soon as routine was broken a new element came into play – the fear of the unknown which is basic to the behaviour of all animals, including man.

  One day Gavin was given a salutary reminder that Mijbil was essentially a wild animal and not – no matter how much he enjoyed playing with rubber balls and marbles – a conventional pet. Mij had been catching eels in the bath, and brought one in to eat in the studio. Gavin knew that it is folly to deprive a wild animal of its prey, but when Mij decided to take the half-eaten eel up to Gavin’s bed in the gallery, he decided enough was enough. Putting on three pairs of gloves – the outer pair well-padded flying gauntlets – he caught up with Mij halfway up the stairs and bent down to pick up the eel. Mij emitted a high humming noise that should have served as a warning to Gavin, and as he lifted the eel Mij bit him just once, and let go. The canines of the otter’s upper and lower jaws had passed clean through the gloves and the tissue and bones of Gavin’s hand and met in the middle with an audible crunch. Two bones were broken. Mijbil rolled on his back, squirming with apology.

  Sometimes Gavin took Mij out into the streets of London for a walk on a lead. The reactions of passers-by were many and various. None, it seemed, had ever set eyes on an otter before, and their guesses as to the animal’s identity were often far from the mark. Otters belong to a group of animals called Mustelids that includes the badger, marten, mink, mongoose, polecat, weasel and stoat; astuter Londoners rang the changes on these species, and threw in beaver, bear cub, baby seal, squirrel, newt, walrus, and even brontosaurus for good measure; none, it seemed, ever guessed otter. One day Gavin was assailed by a navvy digging a hole in the street, who spoke for all when he called out: ‘’Ere, mister – what’s that supposed to be?’

  It was a good question. Mijbil was an otter, Gavin knew that much; but what kind of otter? The scant scientific literature available indicated that the only known otter species in the Iraq marshes was the Persian sub-species of the common Eurasian otter, Lutra lutra. Gavin’s first otter, the tiny Chahala, clearly belonged to this species; Mijbil, Gavin was sure, did not. Mij’s fur was shorter, sleeker and darker, the colour of plain chocolate; and the underside of his tail was flat like a ruler, unlike those of Chahala and other European otters. Of the two otter skins Gavin had brought back from the Marshes, one resembled Chahala, the other Mij. Gavin was puzzled, and phoned the British Museum (Natural History). That afternoon an expert taxonomist from the Zoology Department, Robert Hayman, came round to look at Mij and the otter skins. He, too, was puzzled, and took the two skins away with him in order to c
ompare them with others in the Museum’s collection. In due course Gavin was summoned to the Museum and shown cabinets full of otter skins from all over Asia – all of them sub-species of Lutrogale perspicillata, the Indian smooth-coated otter that ranged all over eastern Asia from India and Burma through Indo-China to Sumatra and Borneo, though none had ever been recorded west of Sind, in India, and none resembled either Mij or the darker of Gavin’s two skins in colour. It was Robert Hayman’s opinion that Mij must belong to a race of otter hitherto unknown to science, and he proposed that he should be designated after his owner and bear Gavin’s name – Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli.

  Gavin was inordinately proud to have joined the ranks of those who had had exotic creatures named after them – Steller’s eider, Humboldt’s woolly monkey, Meinertzhagen’s forest hog, Grant’s gazelle, Père David’s deer – and felt, in some measure, that he now wore the halo of creator. ‘I had realised a far-off childish fantasy,’ he wrote later, ‘and there was a Maxwell’s otter … So Mij and all his race became Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli.’

  To have a species named after you is indeed a kind of immortality – though among professional scientific naturalists, who regard new species as two a penny, it is generally considered the hallmark of the amateur to glory in the fact. On his death-bed Gavin was to declare the discovery of Maxwell’s otter to be the greatest achievement of his life and his most abiding monument. Only one person dissented from this judgement, and that was the man who had actually found Mijbil – Wilfred Thesiger. ‘I found this otter at the tumulus village of Daub, some twelve miles north-west of Ezra’s Tomb,’ he told me. ‘Gavin wasn’t there at the time so I sent the otter to him in Basra. He’d had no hand in getting it and frankly I found it rather odd when he had it named after himself – if it was going to be named after anybody it should have been named after me. Gavin owed everything to his trip with me in the marshes. The marshes gave him the otter, the otter gave him Ring of Bright Water, and without that he would never have been heard of again.’