Gerald Durrell: Menagerie Manor

In his second year Leo decided, after mature reflection, that it was a lion’s duty to roar. He was not awfully sure how to go about it, so he would retire to quiet corners of his cage and practice softly to himself, for he was rather shy of this new accomplishment and would stop immediately and pretend it had nothing to do with him if you came in view. When he was satisfied that the timbre was right and his breath control perfect, he treated us to his first concert. It was a wonderful moonlight night when he started, and we were all delighted that Leo was, at last, a proper lion. A lion roaring sounds just like someone sawing wood on a gigantic, echoing barrel. The first coughs or rasps are quick and fairly close together, and you can imagine the saw biting into the wood; then the coughs slow down and become more drawn out and suddenly stop, and you instinctively wait to hear the thud of the sawn­off piece hitting the ground. The trouble was that Leo was so proud of his accomplishment that he could not wait until nightfall to give us the benefit of his vocal chords. He started roaring earlier and earlier each evening, and would keep it up solidly all night, with five-minute intervals for meditation between each roar. Sometimes, when he was in particularly good voice, you could imagine that he was sitting on the end of your bed, serenading you. We all began to be somewhat jaded. We found that if we opened the bedroom window and shouted, “Leo, shut up,” this had the effect of silencing him for half an hour, but at the end of that time he would decide that you had not really meant it and would start all over again. It was a very trying time for all concerned. Now Leo has learned to roar with a certain amount of discretion, but even so there are nights—especially at full moon—when the only thing to do is to put the pillow over your head and curse the day you ever decided you wanted a zoo.

We also obtained in our first year two South African penguins, called Dilly and Dally. I hasten to add that they were not christened by us, but arrived with these revolting names stencilled on their crate. We had prepared a pool for them in the shade of some trees bordering the main drive, and here they seemed quite content. Trumpy, of course, spent twenty-four hours in their pen with them, and seemed faintly disgruntled that the pool was too deep for him to join Dilly and Dally in it. After settling them in, he took a great fancy to the penguins and paid them a visit every morning, when he would stand outside the wire making his curious booming cry, while Dilly and Dally would point their beaks skywards and bray to the heavens, like a couple of demented donkeys.

I am not quite sure when the rift in this happy friendship appeared, or for what reason, but one morning we saw Trumpy fly over into the penguin enclosure and proceed to beat up Dilly and Dally in the most ferocious manner. He flew at them, wings out, feathers bristling, pecking and scratching, until the two penguins (who were twice his size) were forced to take refuge in the pool. Trumpy stood on the edge of the pond and cackled triumphantly at them. We chased Trumpy out of the enclosure and scolded him, whereupon he shuffled his feathers carelessly and stalked off nonchalantly. After that we had to watch him, for he took advantage of every opportunity to fly over the wire and attack poor Dilly and Dally, who, at the sight of him, would flop hysterically into the water. One morning he did this once too often. He must have flown over very early, before anyone was about, intent on giving the penguins a bashing, but they had grown tired of these constant assaults, and rounded on him. One of them, with a lucky peck, must have caught him off balance and knocked him into the pool, from which—with his water-logged feathers—he could not climb out. This was the penguins’ triumph, and as Trumpy floundered helplessly they circled round, pecking at him viciously with their razor-sharp beaks. When he was found, he was still floating in the pond, bleeding profusely from a number of pecks, and with just enough strength to keep his head above water. We rushed him into the house, dried him, and anointed his wounds, but he was a very sick and exhausted bird, and black depression settled on the zoo, for we all thought he would die. The next day there was no change, and I felt it was touch and go. As I was sipping my early morning tea on the third day, I suddenly heard, to my amazement, a familiar thrumming cry. I slipped out of bed and looked out the window. There, by the lavender hedge in the courtyard, was Trumpy, a slightly battered and tattered trumpeter who limped a little, but still with the same regal air of being the owner of the property. I saluted him out of the window, and he cocked a bright eye at me. Then he shuffled his torn feathering to adjust it to his liking, gave his loud, cackling laugh, and stalked off towards his beat in the mammal house.

Another new arrival that caused us a certain amount of trouble, one way or another, was Delilah, a large female African crested porcupine. She arrived up at the airport in a crate that looked suitable for a couple of rhinoceroses. Why she had been shipped like this became obvious when we peered into the crate, for even in that short air journey she had succeeded in nearly demolishing one side with her great yellow teeth. When she saw us looking into the crate, she uttered a series of such fearsome roars and gurks that one would have been pardoned for thinking it contained a pride of starving lions. She stamped her feet petulantly on the floor of the crate, and rattled and clattered her long black and white quills like a crackle of musketry. It was quite obvious that Delilah was going to be a personality to be reckoned with.

On our return to the zoo we had to chivy her out of her rapidly disintegrating crate and into a temporary cage, while her permanent home was under construction. During this process she endeared herself to at least one member of the staff by backing sharply into his legs. The experience of having several hundred extremely sharp porcupine quills stabbed into your shins is not exactly exhilarating. By the time Delilah was installed in her temporary home there were several more casualties, and the ground was littered with quills, for Delilah, like all porcupines, shed her quills with gay abandon at the slightest provocation.

The old fable of a porcupine being able to shoot its quills out like arrows is quite untrue. The quills, some of them fourteen inches long, are planted very loosely in the skin of the back, and when the animal is harried by an enemy it backs rapidly into the adversary (for all the quills point backwards), jabs the quills into him as deeply as possible, and then rushes forward. This action drives the quills into the enemy and pulls them loose from the porcupine’s skin, so the enemy is left looking like a weird sort of pincushion. This action is performed so rapidly that in the heat of battle, as it were, you are quite apt to get the impression that the porcupine has shot its adversary full of quills. This delightful action Delilah used to indulge in with great frequency, and therefore at feeding and cleaning times you had to be prepared to drop everything and leap high and wide at a moment’s notice.

Porcupines are, of course, rodents, and the giant crested species—since it spreads from Africa into parts of Europe—has the distinction of being the largest European rodent, bigger even than the beaver. It is also the largest of the porcupines, for, although there are many different species scattered about the world, none of them comes anywhere near the size of the crested one. In North and South America the porcupines are, to a large extent, arboreal, and the South American kind even have prehensile tails to assist them in climbing. The other porcupines found in Africa and Asia are fairly small, terrestial species which generally have fairly long tails ending in a bunch of soft spines like the head of a brush, and this they rattle vigorously in moments of stress. Without doubt the great crested porcupine, as well as being the biggest, is the most impressive and handsome member of the family.