Gerald Durrell - Island Zoo

Jersey Red Squirrel

Thirteen-line Ground Squirrel

Among the birds I think the owl family is probably my favorite.

I love their great eyes, their solemn expressions, and the beautiful, noiseless way they drift through the night, as quietly as snowflakes. One of the most handsome of the owls is the barn owl. which is found quite commonly in the United States and England. Their large dark eyes are framed by a heart-shaped ruff of short, crisp, lacy feathers, and when they are asleep or meditating they draw themselves up so that they become very tall and slim, and then they half close their eyes, and the whole effect is very extraordinary, for they look like some strange Chinese ivory carving. 1 have been particularly fond of barn owls ever since 1 had one as a pet. some years ago. I called him Og. for reasons which I cannot remember, and he soon grew very tame. He lived in the attic of our house, where I also kept a tame kestrel and a sea gull with a broken wing. Whenever I went into the room and called Og's name, he would answer by clattering his beak like a castanet. bob up and down once or twice, as if bowing to me. and then fly silently onto my shoulder and sit there nibbling my ear gently. In the evenings I would go for walks through the fields and woods nearby, and Og would accompany

Barn Owl

me, flying from tree to tree on great, pale wings, and occasionally floating down to land on my shoulder.

Then one evening I lost Og. I walked for miles, calling to him, but he had completely disappeared. After several weeks I had given him up completely; I thought that he must have been shot, or killed by a cat. One evening 1 was passing an old tumbled-down barn, and from inside it I heard a weird shriek, rather like the noise of someone tearing a sheet in half. I went into the bam and climbed up a rickety ladder to the loft. As I stuck my head through the trapdoor there was another shriek, and peering in the gloom I saw Og, sitting there looking very pleased with himself. Next to him sat a female barn owl, and just near them were two babies, fat and fluffy. They all stared at me with great eyes, and I called to Og softly. He bobbed up and down and clicked his beak, but he would not come and talk to me, so, not wanting to disturb his family, I left them. But, not long after, I saw Og and his wife, followed by their two youngsters, hawking over the moonlit fields, like a troupe of huge moths. They circled round me for half an hour or so, and then flew off into the dark wood, and I never saw them again.

Woody, the Woodford’s owl, comes from West Africa, and I got him out there when I was collecting animals. He was not more than a few days old, and seemed to consist of nothing but a great bundle of white fluff with two staring dark eyes. Now, there is a curious thing about the feeding of both baby and adult owls. Whatever they catch, if it is a rat or a mouse or a bird, they eat the whole thing, bones, fur, feathers and everything. Then, in a little while, they bring up what is called a casting, an egg-shaped pellet, the out­side of which is all the fur or feathers of their food, and packed neatly inside the casting are all the bones and other indigestible bits of their prey. In order to keep owls healthy you have to give them plenty of this roughage with their food so that they can produce cast­ings, otherwise they soon become sick and die. When I got Woody,

I was staying in a place where I could not obtain any roughage for him, just plain meat, and I worried a great deal about this, for I was afraid that he might die. One day I had an idea: I would use cotton wool. Every mealtime, I perched Woody on my knee and fed him scraps of meat, each one wrapped in a coating of cotton wool. Woody did not seem to mind a bit, and he gobbled down the meat and the cotton wool, uttering faint excited squeaking noises to himself, closing his eyes tightly when he swallowed. Then I would

Woodford's Owl

put him back in his cage. and. after a time when I looked in. there he would be. standing very upright in his white Huffy coat, sur­rounded by nice white cotton wool castings, looking for all the world like a little snowman who had been thoroughly snowballed.

I think that most people like parrots, because they are amused that birds can imitate the human voice so accurately. Probably the best talking parrot is the african gray, a handsome ashy-gray bird with a wonderful scarlet tail. We have quite a number of these birds in the zoo, but my favorite one is Charles, because I got him myself, when he was quite young, out in West Africa. At first Charles could not talk, but only made the usual baby parrot's noises, strange wheezings and bubblings and shrill squawks. As he grew older, of course, he soon learnt a few simple words, like “hello" and “Pretty Charles." Before his wing feathers grew he used to use his beak and his feet to get about, and at mealtimes he would waddle across the ground, and then try to climb up the table leg so that he could help himself 10 tidbits from my plate. As the table leg was shiny, he sometimes had difficulty in doing this, and I taught him to say. "Help Charles, help Charles,” until I put my finger down and lifted him up on it. After a few months Charles had developed into a lovely parrot, and his vocabulary had increased.

Then, one day, we were staying in a small bungalow on the out­skirts of an African village, and when night fell Charles chose for himself a nice spot on the veranda rail to roost, and went to sleep.

As he seemed quite happy there. I left him and went to bed. In the middle of the night I was awakened by Charles’s voice, shouting from the veranda outside: “Hello, hello, hello, pretty Charles, pretty Charles, help Charles, help Charles, help Charles, pretty Charles.” he was crying, over and over again. I was very puzzled, for Charles had never talked during the night before. I left my bed and looked out of the window to see what he was up to. There, in the bright moonlight, I saw that Charles had got down from the veranda rail, and was shuffling along towards the door into the house as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, shouting all the time: “Help Charles, pretty Charles, hello, hello, pretty Charles, help Charles.” Then I saw the reason, for at the end of the veranda, stalking him carefully, was a large mangy village cat. The cat was gathering itself to spring, when I grabbed one of my shoes and flung it. The shoe missed, of course, but the cat gave a startled leap and then fled

African Gray Pan

Guiana

Dragon

into the night. I went outside, picked up Charles and took him into my bedroom, where he spent the rest of the night perched on the head of my bed, muttering “Pretty Charles,” to himself. Whenever I look at Charles now, I remember how funny and pathetic he looked, running along in the moonlight, using every word and phrase he knew in a desperate attempt to call me to save him from the terrifying menace of the cat.