An Alligator in the Bathroom...And Other Stories

by Carter Langdale

  ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ Kate screamed at me. ‘Ruined our so-called holiday and drowned my brother!’ But I was on my way. Crashing through the undergrowth I wasn’t making any ground at all on my disappearing son, then the river took a bend away and back and I could cross the neck of it and get in the water ready to snatch him up as he came by.

  He was okay, not frightened but, obviously, soaked to the skin. We hadn’t brought much in the way of spare clothes because – as Kate was quick to point out – I’d said there wasn’t enough room in the van, and by the time we got back to our campsite the boy was shivering, teeth chattering, gooseflesh all over. We stripped him off, towelled him, wrapped him in what we could – my jacket, Kate’s jumper – and I set about lighting a fire. Kate went off in search of wood and, after too long, we had a good fire going with Carter’s clothes drying around it on sticks.

  They were steaming away well when the Agister turned up on horseback. He did not mince his words as he told me about the regulations concerning camping and lighting fires, and was launching into the general principles of parental duty of care when I interrupted him. The lad had fallen in the river while trying to catch minnows, and we weren’t camping. We were only here for the day and we’d be moving on as soon as we could.

  Kate said nothing. Her face told of a thousand silent words, many of which I suspected were being stored ready for recounting to Carol when we reached home.

  13

  RESCUING THE RESCUER

  Covering for other inspectors – on holiday, off sick or temporarily not at post – was part of normal life, and it did sometimes mean operating in parts of Yorkshire that I otherwise wouldn’t go to. One such territory went into a coalmining area, and an emergency call had me racing to the scene as fast as I could.

  I happened to be in the local animal home when the call came in, not far away, and Beryl, the home’s manager, came with me. There were some puzzling elements about the message, which said that a dog was stuck in some tarry stuff and was slowly sinking. Why, we asked each other as we drove, did someone not pull it out? Why did the caller just describe the scene and not do anything about it?

  Through the village, past the colliery now working again after the miners’ strike, we came to what you might call industrial archaeology, ramshackle buildings half fallen down, rusting ancient machinery and the remnants, we assumed, of some old part of the enterprise no longer in use. Part of the leftovers was a big trough, an open metal tank about the size of a cricket pitch, full of filthy-looking black sludge and, standing in the sludge, whimpering in fear and pain, was a black and white dog, a collie cross of some kind, and it was up to its stomach in this muck.

  What Beryl and I couldn’t understand was why there were three blokes watching it, showing some concern but not making any move to help the poor animal.

  ‘What’s up with you lot?’ I said. ‘Are you going to stand there?’

  ‘Sorry, pal,’ said one. ‘Nobody’s going to get mixed up with that stuff. Burn worse than fire, that will.’

  ‘Caustic waste, mate,’ said another. ‘That’s what they call it. Nowt to be made from it, no good for owt, and they won’t pay to get rid, so it gets left.’

  ‘But what about the dog?’ I said.

  ‘Aye, I know. Another pit accident.’

  The animal was about four feet from the edge of this trough and obviously most thoroughly stuck and, equally obviously, in great pain and desperate need of rescue. In my anxiety I didn’t connect what the men had said with the suffering of the dog, far more than being unable to move. In fact it was being burned alive but all I could think about was somehow getting it out of there.

  I couldn’t see my grasper being any use so I had to try to get hold of it myself. Leaning over I could just reach it but not get a proper grip, and its fur and skin came away in my hand. Beryl was trying to help too but not getting anywhere and the dog was no nearer, still sinking and utterly consumed by pain, which it was bearing in that stoical way that dogs have, and which brings tears to my eyes as I write this.

  At last I realised what was happening, bloody fool that I was. There was no possibility of euthanasia by correct method, which was to inject pentobarbitone sodium into a vein, as there was no way of reaching a vein in these circumstances, much less raising same for the needle. The other way is intraperitoneal injection, which is a straight jab into the body cavity. This method is not so instantaneous as vein injection but I tried to counteract that by giving the dog maybe three times the approved dose.

  We watched the dog die – quickly, thank goodness – and that was that. Nothing to be gained by trying to retrieve the body, especially as we were now finding out why the last half-hour of its life had been so miserable, and why the three blokes had refused to help. Our arms and hands were coming up in blisters, the skin red and peeling, the sensation, as the man said, like burning in fire.

  We ran to the van, where there was always a tub of water, and gave ourselves a shower. On a hot day I only had a short-sleeved shirt and Beryl a thin blouse, which had protected us to an extent but would not be requiring laundering any more.

  We drove to the colliery office and told them to get that tank covered over and sealed before some child fell into it and, gently nursing our blisters, went back to normal work.

  Somebody must have been impressed because the local paper ran the story, which came to the notice of the great powers above, who gave me and Beryl the RSPCA Bronze Medal – for ‘Gallantry’ rather than for thinking first and acting second.

  Well, I make no apologies for that. It’s always been animals before everything, and it’s an attitude that has got me into trouble occasionally. Or often, Carol might say.

  Dog in caustic tank was a one-off, thank the Lord, but dog underground was a frequent occurrence and, usually, a heart-sinker because the outcome was rarely a success. Small dogs will get themselves into badger setts, fox earths and any other hole big enough. They get stuck, they can’t turn round, they catch their collar on a root, they panic, they go further in, and we end up being able to do nothing. If we do try to dig them out, there is always the real danger of tunnels collapsing, burying the dog alive. Probably the worst places of all are old quarries, where rock falls are the danger and digging is the hardest work.

  Four o’clock in the morning, phone rang, woman in tears, distraught with worry, her dog lost down a hole in a quarry. If that was the case, I thought as I got dressed and drove to her house as the sun came up, how did she know where it was, and why at four o’clock?

  She was standing at her door when I arrived, face red with weeping, and insisted on taking me right away to the place. There was a field beyond her back garden, and beyond that a limestone quarry, not a big one and, from the amount of trees and other vegetation growing there, long since disused. She’d been following the dog, she said, and had seen it go in that hole, there, yesterday afternoon.

  ‘Following it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I had to, she wouldn’t take any notice of me, just kept going.’

  A cup of tea was in order and she could tell me the whole tale. The dog – see photographs all along the mantelpiece of a rather podgy Jack Russell bitch – was prone to phantom pregnancies and had been known to go off looking for a secret place to have the non-existent pups. This latest occasion had been much worse than before, with the dog digging up the carpet, pulling tea-towels off the kitchen rail and dragging the woman’s smalls from the laundry basket into corners to make a bed. She’d taken her to the vet but that hadn’t done any good; then yesterday she’d happened to look out of the window as little Mavis (Mavis? Oh well. Makes a change from Buster) finished digging a tunnel under the garden fence and disappeared.

  She’d run after her, calling, but she paid no attention, and she was just in time to see the dog go down the hole. Pleading with Mavis over and over again to come out, she’d sat by the hole until dark. Then she couldn’t sleep for worry and, well, that was that.

/>   I explained that the best thing to do was to wait forty-eight hours. There were two reasons for this. The dog might come out of its own accord, and I couldn’t expect any help from the fire brigade until forty-eight hours had gone by. That was their rule. Cats up trees, dogs down holes, forty-eight hours before they’d turn out. I wanted the brigade, not because I expected them to quarry limestone for me, not yet anyway, but because they were the ones who had an endoscope among their kit – very expensive technology in those days, widely available at low cost now – and we in the RSPCA did not. With an endoscope, you can search down a hole and see what’s happening, or not, through the video link.

  This lady didn’t seem all that impressed by my advice. I decided against saying that two days down a hole without food might slim Mavis down and make her escape that bit easier.

  The problem in such cases was to try to persuade the owner that waiting was the best thing. The owner wanted action, and we had very little in the way of answers. Priority of course was to get some idea of where the dog was, but even if you could hear her barking or whining, sound travelling underground through tunnels and holes could never give you an accurate position. The iron rods and stethoscope I used when trying to find Her Ladyship’s Westie were only any good in soft ground for a few feet down, so they were useless here.

  Next morning, we sat by the hole for two hours and heard nothing. I had the woman’s word that this was the right hole but I really needed some confirmation. With much else to do, I left her at her post, asking her to make a note of what, when and if she heard anything, and I’d be back later.

  By mid-afternoon there were three messages from her, saying she’d heard the dog and would I come quick and, when I did get there, I too heard a very unhappy little whine but nothing like enough noise to permit an educated guess at how far in the dog might be.

  Once more I explained that we had to wait, and I’d be back in the morning. She rang later, offering me any amount of money and telling me she’d heard Mavis barking. No money, thank you, although you can always make a donation to the RSPCA, and I’ll be there first thing, I said, with a colleague to help. She started to turn nasty, saying I was incompetent and didn’t care, and she was going to get the press on to it. I could hear her husband telling her to calm down, and he took the phone to say he’d the day off work so would be there to help us on the morrow.

  The best thing always is to dig down towards the place you think the dog might be. In a limestone quarry this was not an option, nor was there a good spot to get a mechanical digger in – these are dangerous things anyway, increasing the likelihood of a rockfall.

  Our only mode of attack was to follow the dog into the hole, making it bigger, hoping that we’d reach the animal before the going got too tough. My pal and neighbouring RSPCA inspector Dan turned up with pick and shovel and, with husband, we set to. Two hours’ hard labour got us four yards.

  A week and a day was my record for a dog rescue, when we moved enough earth to make a Stone Age burial mound. This time, I was fairly confident, it could not take as long as that before we won or lost, and by the time we stopped for our lunch break, we’d made another four yards. Now we could all hear the dog quite clearly and, we thought, not very far away. Perhaps we could get a sight of Mavis if we crawled into the tunnel with a torch. I say ‘we’, but it was me down the hole while Dan shouted encouragement and gave me helpful hints his grandfather had given him about digging coal in a confined space.

  His singing the tune from The Great Escape didn’t improve matters either, because that was exactly how I felt, trying to move along a tunnel too small for me, peering through the darkness with a small head-torch, and passing any loose bits of rock backwards. Every so often I stopped to listen, and I could hear Mavis and call her name, knowing that she’d hear me.

  Two things happened at once. I got stuck, wedged in by my shoulders, and the general cloud of dust in my torch beam turned into a shower.

  I tried to push myself back but couldn’t move. The shower of dust became a downpour, with small stones and earth mixed in. I shouted for Dan but my voice was lost in the storm. Not for the first time, I knew that an animal rescue was going to do for me. In my panic, all I could think about was what Carol would be saying at this moment, telling me what an idiot I was to risk everything for a fat little Jack Russell.

  As the fall became more insistent, somehow my struggles worked and I wriggled back, to freedom I thought, but I was stuck again. This time Dan heard me and got far enough in to grab hold of one leg. The rocks and earth were hitting me hard, and if I wasn’t a difficult enough job on my own to be pulled backwards by one leg, the extra weight of all the stuff on top of me made it harder still.

  Dan, great friend that he was, got me far enough for the husband to grab the other leg, and together they retrieved a shaking, half-suffocated RSPCA man from the small avalanche that now blocked up the tunnel.

  Over a cup of tea back at the house, I started burbling about getting a mechanical digger tomorrow but I was told to shut up and go home by Dan. He would take over now.

  Carol and I had just finished our supper when the phone rang. It was the woman, crying again but this time tears of joy. Our avalanche must have opened up a route elsewhere and Mavis had come out, trotted home, and barked at the door to be let in as if nothing had happened.

  14

  WHERE FERRETS FEAR TO TREAD

  I must emphasise, and I cannot stress this enough, that the following story has nothing whatever to do with the UK National Ferret Welfare Society, nor any of its members or affiliated groups. Nothing in the story is connected with any of the many current ferret rescues and sanctuaries – in fact, the whole episode is entirely separate, distant and distinct from anything at all to do with anyone respectably associated with ferrets.

  It all happened before the NFWS was founded, and before there were any ferret rescuers – in Yorkshire at any rate – and it was this very lack that started me off. I’d been a ferret fan since youth, when I first kept one, and I’d studied them a little. They are a variety of polecat, bred over the years for rabbiting and ratting but a polecat nonetheless, Putorius foetidus. Both of those words mean stinking, and our word ferret comes from a Latin word for thief, so you can’t say ferrets have had a very promising classification.

  Other people may worry about them being smelly, and their inclination to bite, but there’s no such thing as the perfect friendship. What I worried about, as an RSPCA inspector, was the rotten care that most ferrets seemed to get. Far and away their main reason for being kept was to hunt rabbits, yet almost everyone I came across was feeding his (and it was almost exclusively men and boys) ferrets on bread and milk, and usually the standard white sliced bread, nutritionally valueless to polecats. No one seemed to make the connection between the ferret’s instinct to pursue rabbits and the rabbit’s instinct to run in terror, with the possibility of some raw meat in the ferret’s feed dish.

  It needn’t be much, or expensive. Ferrets don’t eat large amounts. They eat little and often. What about a bit of ox liver? Any kind of raw meat would have done. Or hard-boiled egg, pieces of chicken carcass from Sunday lunch, that sliced-off steak fat that someone left on the plate, that cold lump of yesterday’s pork crackling that nobody wants – all fit in with the high-protein, high-fat, low-fibre intake that’s natural to ferrets. You can get proprietary ferret food now. You couldn’t then.

  Apart from general poor health, one consequence of the white sliced diet was loose bowels. Ferrets are very clean animals. Their ancestral wild polecats will not defecate anywhere near where they live, and ferrets on a proper regime in a spacious cage will do the next best thing, which is to keep a small corner for a latrine. Bread and milk made ferrets scour, tidiness was not possible, and many owners came to accept a filthy cage as the normal thing.

  Then having fed their animals on the most inappropriate grub, owners would expect them to be fighting fit, ready to dive down any hole or, much worse, to go
ratting. Here the deal often was for the ferret to scare the rat into open ground – say, the floor of a barn – where a terrier would pounce and kill it. Some rats, however, would not run, and a big rat standing its ground against a vegetarian ferret may well come out on top.

  My RSPCA phone never rang about a ferret but, out on other business, I knew if there was a ferret nearby. Putorius foetidus has a pretty powerful smell anyway; when being kept in the usual bad way, the smell reached across and called me. I’d sometimes just deliver a lecture and, sometimes, the owner was grateful. He’d had no idea he was doing anything wrong, just following everybody else.

  Sometimes again, I’d end up taking the ferret away, which could make life very difficult. Other wild animals in my little zoo and care home didn’t always take kindly to having a fiery polecat among them, and nobody at that time seemed to keep ferrets purely as pets, so a small ad in the classifieds seldom produced the desired result.

  I tried to do something about this situation but, with no real resources, my drop in the ocean was a batch of leaflets, under the rather grand heading of The North Yorkshire Ferret Welfare Society, of which I was chairman, hon sec, treasurer and membership. The leaflets outlined a proper diet, cleaning routine and so on, and I handed them out at every opportunity. Quite how this came to the notice of two men from Huddersfield I don’t know, but they wanted to talk to me with a view, they said, to setting up an all-Yorkshire Society for the Protection of Ferrets.

  We met at a service station on the M62. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t these two. One was Frank, who looked exactly like Benny Hill’s character Fred Scuttle, with the milk-bottle-bottom glasses, and he talked like him too except with a broad West Yorkshire accent. The other was introduced by his nickname, Yogi, and looked like a half-Mexican version of Lee Van Cleef, with droopy moustache and long straggly hair. He had that mean kind of look that could have got him a part in any spaghetti western, as long as he didn’t have to say anything because he too was as Huddersfield as they come.