Menagerie Manor

by Gerald Durrell

  Delilah cropped up in a programme which I did on adaptation. I thought she would be a very good example of the way an animal protects itself, and certainly she showed this off to advantage. When we came to put her into the crate, she charged wildly in all directions, backing into us and the wood-work, and leaving spines embedded in the sides of the crate and in the ends of the brushes. She gurked and roared and rattled her quills throughout the trip to Bristol, and the studio hands, who unloaded her on arrival there, were for some considerable time under the impression that I had brought a fully grown leopard with me. Then we had to transfer Delilah from her travelling box and into the special studio cage that had been built for her. This took half an hour and by the time we had achieved it Delilah had stuck so many quills into so much of the studio scenery that I began to wonder whether she would be completely bald for her debut on television. During the actual transmission she behaved, to my amazement, perfectly, doing all the things that I wanted: she gurked fearsomely, she stamped her feet and rattled her quills like castanets, as though she were a born television star. By the end of the show I was feeling quite friendly towards her and beginning to think that I might well have misjudged her. Then came the moment of inducing her out of the studio cage back into her travelling crate. It took eight of us threequarters of an hour. One stagehand received a sharp stab in the calf of his leg; two pieces of scenery were irretrievably damaged, and the entire set was pierced so full of porcupine quills it looked as though we had been fighting off a Red Indian attack. I was thankful to get a by then quill-less Delilah back to the Zoo and into her own cage again.

  I suppose that the terrible things that occur tend to live in one’s memory more vividly than the pleasant happenings, and so I look back on the television shows I have done with animals rather in the way that one remembers a nasty series of accidents. There is, however, one incident on which I look back with extreme pleasure, and that was the occasion when the BBC wanted our young gorilla N’Pongo to take part in a programme. They even went to the unprecedented lengths of chartering a small plane to fly us over to Bristol. They also sent a camera man to cover the trip with his camera - a timid individual who confessed to me that he did not like flying, as it made him sick. We took off in brilliant sunshine, and almost immediately dived into black cloud filled to capacity with air pockets. N’Pongo, sitting back in his seat, like a seasoned traveller, thoroughly enjoyed everything. He accepted six lumps of barley sugar to counteract the popping in his ears, peered with interest and excitement out of the window, and when the air pockets began, he fetched out the sick-bag and put it on his head. The poor photographer had become progressively greener, while attempting to film N’Pongo’s antics, but when he put the bag on his head this reminder acted in a devastating way, and he dived for his own receptacle and treated it in the way for which it was designed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE COLD-BLOODED COHORT

  Dear Mr Durrell,

  At a garden fête the other day a lizard was found in the ice-cream container...

  I know that it is a confession of acute and depraved eccentricity, but nevertheless I must admit that I am very fond of reptiles. They are not, I grant you, over-burdened with intelligence. You do not get the same reaction from them that you would from a mammal, or even a bird, but still I like them. They are bizarre, colourful, and in many cases graceful so what more could you want?

  Now, the majority of people will confess to you (as though it is something quite unique) that they have an instinctive loathing for snakes, and with much eye-rolling and grimacing they will give you many different reasons for their fear ranging from the sublime (‘it’s instinctive’) to the ridiculous (‘they’re all sort of slimy’). I have been, at one time or another, bored by so many snake complex admissions that as soon as the subject of reptiles crops up in conversation with anyone, I want to run away and hide. Ask the average person their views on snakes and they will, within the space of ten minutes, talk more nonsense than a brace of politicians.

  To begin with, it is not ‘natural’ for human beings to fear snakes. You might just as well say that they were naturally afraid of being run over by a bus. Most people, however are convinced they are born with a built-in anti-snake feeling. This can be quite simply disproved by handing a harmless snake to a child who is too young to have had its head filled with a lot of nonsense about these creatures; the child will hold the reptile and play with it quite happily and without a trace of fear. I remember once putting this point to a woman who had been gurgling on about her snake phobia for what seemed like years.

  She was most indignant.

  ‘I’ve never been taught to fear snakes, I’ve always been like it,’ she said, haughtily, and then added in triumph, ‘and my mother was like it, too.’

  Faced with such logic, what could one reply?

  People’s fears of snakes seem to be based on a series of misconceptions. The most common one is the conviction that all these creatures are poisonous. In actual fact, the nonpoisonous ones outnumber the poisonous ones by about ten to one. Another very popular idea is that these reptiles are slimy to touch, whereas snakes are dry and cold, and feel no different from a pair of snakeskin shoes or a crocodile-skin handbag. Yet people will insist that they cannot touch a snake because of it sliminess, and think nothing of handling a wet cake of soap.

  Our Reptile House is fairly small, but we have a pretty good cross-section of reptiles and amphibia on show. I derive a lot of innocent amusement out of going in there when it is crowded and listening to the general public airing its ignorance with an assurance that is breathtaking. For instance, the snake’s tongue: this is purely a scent organ with which the creature smells – hence the way it is flicked rapidly in and out of the mouth; it is also used as a feeler, in the same way that a cat uses its whiskers. The snake experts, however, who visit the Reptile House, know better.

  ‘Cor, Em,’ they’ll shout excitedly, ‘come and look at this snake’s sting... coo, wouldn’t like to be stung by that.’

  And Em will hurry over and peer horrified at the innocent grass snake, and then give a delicious shudder. All reptiles can, of course, spend long periods completely immobile, when even their breathing is difficult to detect, unless you look closely. The classic remark was delivered by a man who, having peered into several cages in which the reptiles lay unmoving, turned to his wife with an air of one who has been swindled, and hissed:

  ‘They’re stuffed, Milly.’

  A snake moving along the ground or through the branches of a tree is one of the most graceful sights in the world, and when you consider that the creature is walking with its ribs the whole thing becomes even more remarkable. If you watch a moving snake carefully, you can sometimes see the ribs moving beneath the skin as the snake draws itself along. The creature’s unblinking stare (another thing to which people object) is not due to the fact that the snake is trying to hypnotise you, but simply that it has no eyelids. The eye is covered with a fine, transparent scale, like a watch-glass. This is very clearly noticed when a snake sheds its skin, which they all do periodically. The skin comes loose around the lips, and then, by rubbing itself against rocks or branches, the snake gradually peels off its old skin. If you examine this shed skin, you can see that the eye scales have been shed as well.

  All snakes are adapted for feeding in the same way, but their methods of obtaining their food vary. The non-poisonous ones and the constrictors (like the pythons) grab their prey with their mouths, and then try to throw two or three coils of their body round the victims as rapidly as possible, thus holding and crushing at the same time. The poisonous one, on the other hand, bites its victim and then waits for the poison to take effect, which is generally very soon. Once the prey has undergone its last convulsions, then it can be eaten. The poison fangs, of course, are in the upper jaw, and usually near the front of the mouth. When not in use, they fold back against the gum, like the blade of a pen-knife; as the snake opens its mouth to strike, they dro
p down into position. The fangs are hollow, similar to a hypodermic needle, or else they have a deep groove running down the back. The poison sac, to which they are connected, lies above the gum. As the snake bites, the poison is forced out and trickles down the groove or hollow in the fang and so into the wound. However, whatever the method of attack, once the prey is dead, the swallowing process is the same in all snakes. The lower jaw is jointed to the upper one in such a way that it can be dislocated at will, and, of course, the skin of the mouth, throat and body is extremely elastic, and so this allows the snake to swallow a creature considerably larger than its own head. Once the food is in the stomach, the slow process of digestion starts. Any portions of the animal that are impossible to assimilate, such as hair, are regurgitated in the form of pellets at a later date. On one occasion a large python was killed, and in its stomach were found four round balls of hair, the size of tennis balls and very hard. On being cut open, each one was found to contain the hoof of a wild pig. These sharp hooves could have damaged the lining of the python’s stomach, and so each one had been carefully covered with a thick smooth layer of hair.

  In the majority of zoos nowadays they feed dead creatures to the snakes. This is not because it is better for the snakes, or that they prefer it, but simply due to misplaced kindness on the part of the general public, who imagine that a white rat or a rabbit suffers terribly when put into a cage with a snake. That this is nonsense I have proved to my complete satisfaction, for I have seen, in a Continental zoo, a rabbit perched on the back of a python (obviously not hungry), cleaning its whiskers with tremendous sangfroid. The Director of the zoo told me that if white rats were fed to the snakes, it was imperative they should be removed if they were not eaten straight away, otherwise they proceeded to gnaw holes in the snake’s body.

  While snakes are passive and rather expressionless beasts, lizards can display considerable intelligence and character. One such reptile we had was a mastigure, which I christened Dandy, owing to his great partiality for dandelion flowers. One must, I think, face the fact that mastigures are not the most attractive of lizards, and Dandy was a particularly unattractive member of his species. Nevertheless, his eager personality made him a likeable creature. He had a blunt, rounded head; a fat, flattened body; and a heavy tail covered with short, sharp spikes. His neck was rather long and thin, and this made him look as though he had been put together out of bits of two totally unrelated species. His colour could only be described as a rich, dirty brown. Dandy, as I say, had a liking for dandelion flowers, which amounted to an obsession. He had only to see you approaching the Reptile House with something yellow in your hands, and he would immediately rush to the front of his cage and scrabble wildly against the glass. If it was a dandelion flower you were carrying, you had only to slide back the glass front of his cage and he would gallop out on to your arm, panting with emotion; and then, dosing his eyes, he would stretch out his long neck and, like a child waiting to have a sweet popped into its mouth, would open his jaws. If you pushed the flower into his mouth, he would munch away in ecstasy, the petals dangling outside his mouth and making him look as though he had a bright yellow military moustache. He was the only lizard I have known that would genuinely play with you. If he was lying on the sand, and you let your hand creep slowly towards him, as though you were stalking him, he would watch you, his eyes bright, his head on one side. As soon as you were close enough, he would suddenly whip his tail round, give you a gentle bang on the hand with it, and then scuttle away to a new position and you were then expected to repeat the whole performance. That this was real play I have no doubt, for the blows he dealt you with his tail were very gentle, whereas I have seen him bash other lizards with it and not only send them flying, but draw blood.

  Not long after we had Dandy, we had trouble with teguexins. These are large, handsome and very intelligent lizards from South America. They can grow to about three and a half feet in length, and their skin is very beautifully patterned in yellow and black. They are very quick-witted, belligerent creatures, and the female we had was quite the most vicious in the Reptile House. Tegus, as they are called for short, have three methods of attack, all of which they employ – together or separately – very cheerfully and without any provocation at all. They will either bite, scratch with their well developed claws, or lash you with their tails. Our female preferred to start hostilities with her tail. As you opened her cage she would regard you with obvious dislike and mistrust, inflate her throat and start to hiss, and at the same time curve her body into a half-moon shape like a bow. Once your hand came near enough, she would suddenly straighten out, and her tail would lash round like a stockwhip. If she found that this method of defence did not deter you, she would run forward and try to grab you with her mouth. If she succeeded, she would hang on with the tenacity of a bulldog, at the same time bringing up reinforcements in the shape of her sharp, curved hind claws, which could tear chunks off you. I did not think this tegu’s character was an exception. After a fair amount of experience with tegus in their natural state, I had come to the conclusion that they were by far the most evilly disposed of the lizards, and were, moreover, so fast and intelligent that they were a force to be reckoned with when in captivity. We were always suffering at the hands, or rather the tail of our female tegu, and so it was with somewhat mixed feelings that we discovered her lying dead in her cage one morning. I was puzzled by her sudden death, for she had appeared to be in the very pink of fighting condition, having bitten me vigorously only a couple of days previously. So I decided to do a rough post-mortem and try to find a due as to the cause. To my astonishment, on opening the stomach, I found a huge mass of whitish substance, not unlike soft fish roe, which I took to be a gigantic growth of some sort. Wanting to find out more about this mysterious growth, I shipped the body off for a more detailed and expert post-mortem, and awaited the results with interest. When they came through, they were terse and to the point: the mass of white substance had not been a growth, but a large quantity of pure fat. The lizard had died of heart trouble brought on by this fatty condition, and it was suggested that we fed less abundantly in future. On reflection, it was plain, for in the wild state tegus are very active creatures. Therefore, if you confine them in a limited area and give them a rich and continuous food supply, they are bound to become over-fat. I vowed that the next tegus we obtained would be treated very differently.

  Our chance came not long afterwards, when a dealer offered us a pair. On arrival they turned out to be wonderful specimens, well marked and with glossy skins: the male with a great, heavy head and fleshy jowls; the female with a longer, more slender head. Contrary to our expectations, they did not prove to be typical tegus at all. Instead of being fierce and unhandleable, they were as tame as kittens, and liked nothing so much as to lie in your arms, being gently rocked, and drowse off to sleep. If you went and stood by their cage, they would make the most frantic and flattering efforts to climb through the glass and into your arms. Apart from these bursts of social activity, they showed little desire to do anything very much, except to lie around in abandoned attitudes, gazing benignly at any human beings who happened to be around in the Reptile House. As a result of all this feverish activity, of course, they grew fatter and fatter, and, viewing their increasing girth with alarm, we decided that something would have to be done, or we would have another couple of heart failures on our hands. The answer was exercise; so, every morning, John would let them both out to wander round the Reptile House, while he did his work. To begin with – for the first two or three days – this worked like a charm, and the tegus, breathing heavily, pottered about the Reptile House floor for a couple of hours each morning. Then, however, they discovered that by climbing over a low barrier they could get into the tortoise pen, over which hung an infra-red light. So, each morning when they were let out, they would rush short-windedly over to the tortoise pen, climb in and settle themselves under the infra-red light and go to sleep. The only answer to this was to cut down
on their food, and consequently they were dieted as rigorously as a couple of dowager duchesses at a health resort. Needless to say, they took a very poor view of this, and would gaze plaintively through the glass as they watched the other inmates of the Reptile House enjoying such delicades as raw egg, mincemeat, dead rats and chopped fruit. We hardened our hearts, though, and continued with the diet, and within a very short time they had regained their sylph-like figures, and were much more active as a result. Now we let them eat what they like, but at the least sign of corpulence back they will go to the diet until their size is respectable again.