Gerald Durrell: Menagerie Manor

Rehearsals were now an hour overdue. At last we were underway, and by this time I was in such a state of nerves that the rehearsal was a shambles. I forgot my lines; I called most of the animals by the wrong names; the slightest sound made me jump out of my skin, for fear something had escaped, and to cap it all Lulu, the chimp, urinated copiously, loudly, and with considerable interest in her own achievement, all over my lap. We all retired to lunch with black circles under our eyes, raging headaches, and a grim sense of foreboding. The producer, with a ghastly smile, said she was sure it would be all right, and I, trying to eat what appeared to be fried sawdust, agreed. We went back to the studio to do the recording.

For some technical reason that defeats me, it is too expensive or too complicated to cut portions out of a television tape. So it is exactly like doing a live programme: if you make a mistake, it is permanent. This, of course, does not help to bolster your confidence in yourself; when you are co-starring with a number of irritated and uninhibited creatures like monkeys you start going grey round the temples before you even begin. The red light went on, and with shaking hands I took a deep breath, smiled a tremulous smile at the camera, as if I loved it like a brother, and commenced. To my surprise, the monkeys behaved perfectly. My confidence started to return. The bushbabies were wonderful, and I felt a faint ray of hope. We reached the lorises and they were magnificent. My voice lost its tremulo and, I hoped, took on a firm, manly, authoritative note. I was getting into my stride. Just as I was launching myself with enthusiasm into the protective postures of a potto—believe it or not—the studio manager came over and told me that there had been a breakdown in the recording and we should have to start all over again.

Of course, after an experience like this, one is mental to even try to do any more television. But I had agreed to do five more. They, I must admit, were not quite as trying as the monkey programme, but some of the highlights still live vividly in my memory, and occasionally I awake screaming in the night and have to be comforted by Jacquie. There was, for example, the programme I did on birds. The idea was to assemble as many different species as possible, and show how their beaks were adapted for their varying ways of life. Two of the birds were to be ‘star’ turns, because they did things on order. There was, for instance, Dingle the chough. This member of the crow family is rare in Great Britain now, and we are extremely lucky to have him. They are clad in funereal black feathering, but with scarlet feet and a long, curved scarlet beak. Dingle, who had been hand reared, was absurdly tame. The second ‘star’ was a cockatoo named—with incredible originality by its previous owner—Cocky. Now, this creature would, when requested, put up its amazing crest and shout loudly, a most impressive act. The other birds taking part in the programme did nothing at all; they were, very sensibly, content just to sit there and be themselves. So my only problems were Dingle and Cocky, and I had great faith in both of them.

The programme was to open with me standing there, Dingle perched on my wrist, while I talked about him. During rehearsals this worked perfectly, for if you scratch Dingle’s head he goes into a trance-like state and remains quite still. However, when it came to the actual recording, Dingle decided that he had been scratched enough, and just as the red light went on he launched himself off my wrist and flew up into the rafters of the studio. It took us some time, with the aid of ladders and bribes in the shape of meal-worms, meat, and cheese (of which he is inordinately fond) to retrieve him, whereupon he behaved perfectly and sat so still on my wrist that he appeared to be stuffed. All went smoothly until we came to Cocky. Here I made the mistake of telling my audience what to expect, which is the one thing not to do with animals. So, while five million viewers gaped, expectantly waiting to see Cocky put up his crest and scream, I made desperate attempts to persuade him to do it. This went on for five soul-searing minutes, while Cocky sat on his perch as immobile as a museum specimen. In despair I moved on to the next bird, and as I did so Cocky erected his crest and screamed mockingly.

There was the occasion, also, of the programme devoted to reptiles. Here I felt I was on safer ground, for on the whole they are fairly lethargic creatures and easy to handle. The programme, however, was a chore for me, as I was just in the middle of a bout of influenza, and my presence in the studio was due entirely to the efforts of my doctor, who had pumped me full of the most revolting substances to keep me on my feet for the required time. If you are nervous anyway—which I always am—and your head is buzzing under the influence of various antibiotics, you tend to give a performance closely resembling an early silent film. During the first rehearsals all the technicians realized that I was feeling both lousy and strung-up, and so when it came to a break they each took turns backing me into a corner and trying to restore my morale, with little or no effect. We came to the second rehearsal and I was worse than before. Obviously something had to be done, and somebody was inspired enough to think of the answer. During my discourse on members of the tortoise family, I mentioned how the skeleton of the beast was, as it were, welded into the shell. In order to show this more clearly I had a very fine tortoiseshell and skeleton to demonstrate. The bottom half of the shell was hinged, like a door, and upon opening it all the mysteries and secrets of the tortoise’s anatomy were revealed. Having done my little introduction on the tortoise family, I then opened the underside of the shell and, to my surprise, instead of just finding the skeleton therein, I found a piece of cardboard on which the words ‘No Vacancies’ had been printed. It was a few minutes before order was restored in the studio, but I felt much better, and the rest of the rehearsal went off without a hitch.

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 woodwork, and leaving spines imbedded in the sides of the crate and in the end 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 full-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. By the time we achieved this, 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 perfectly, to my amazement, doing all the things that I wanted: she gurked fearsomely, 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 may 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 three-quarters of an hour. One stage hand 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 an Indian attack. I was thankful to get a by then quill-less Delilah back to the zoo and into her own cage again.