Gerald Durrell - Island Zoo

Ever since I was quite small I have wanted to have my own zoo. When I grew up I traveled all over the world, catching wild animals for other people’s zoos, and I found it heartbreaking to have to part with a creature that I had spent six months looking after and brought back from some strange part of the world.

Well, eventually I managed to save enough money to start my own zoo. I came to Jersey, in the Channel Isles, which are owned by Great Britain but are quite close to France. There I found a lovely old manor house with beautiful grounds, the perfect setting for my animals.

1 have tried to make my zoo different from other zoos in a number of ways. For example, we try to get creatures that other zoos do not have, and we try to keep them as tame as possible, so that they are always ready to show themselves to the visitors. Another thing we are trying to do, which I think is very important, is to save various kinds of birds, animals and reptiles from becoming extinct. All over the world many different kinds of animal might disappear altogether as the forests are cut down, roads and towns built, and the land ploughed up for farms. This is a great pity, for many of these creatures are beautiful and interesting, and it would be a terrible thing if they were to vanish for ever. In my zoo, we are attempting to gather together some of these rare animals, so that they can live comfortably, well fed, protected from their enemies, able to rear their young in peace.

A great number of the creatures in my zoo I have collected my­self, going out to the countries where they are found, watching them in the wild state, trapping them and taming them, and finally bringing them back to live in Jersey. Many of the animals whose photographs appear in this book are very old friends of mine, and I have stories to tell about most of them, which I hope will make you feel you know them all a little bit better, not only as animals, but as friends.

The monkey family is one of my favorite animal families, because it contains so many interesting creatures, ranging from Man himself, right down to the marmosets and a number of other small creatures that do not look as though they are related to the monkeys in any way at ail when you first look at them. Next to man, the most intelligent of the monkey family are the apes, and the most important of the apes is the gorilla.

Our baby gorilla is called N’pongo, and he came to us from the deep forests of the French Cameroons in West Africa. We think he is just over a year old. When he is fully grown he will be six feet in height and weight about 280 pounds. But even now, although he is so young, he is terribly strong. When we take him out of his cage, he generally does not want to go back. Then, unless we tempt him back inside with a bowl of milk, he will simply cling onto a tree or the railings, screaming loudly, and it takes two people to push him back into his cage.

When N’pongo first arrived at the zoo his cage was not quite ready for him, and for a week he lived in the house with us. It was very interesting to see the way he soon settled down, and after the first day he carried on as though he had been born in a house instead of the forest. He would loll about on the sofa most of the time, occa­sionally getting down to go to the bookcase, where he would care­fully pull a book out of the shelf, tuck it under his arm, and then return to the sofa, where he would sit and carefully turn the pages of the book, looking exactly as if he was reading. He preferred books with colored pictures in them, of course, and then he would stare at the picture for a long time, and then bend down very carefully and lick it with the tip of his tongue to see what it tasted like.

One of his favorite toys was a big colored ball we bought for him. Sometimes he would throw this round the room and chase it, sometimes he would just sit on it.. But then he invented a special game of his own to play with the ball. He would lie on top of it, and, by making “swimming” movements with his little arms and legs, he would roll round and round the room. All the time he was doing this he would giggle away to himself, obviously enjoying the tickling sensation as the ball rolled round and round under his fat tummy. Sometimes he would laugh so much that he would roll right over the ball, and bang his head on the floor. Then he would sit there, looking very mournful, rubbing his head with his hands, and gazing at the ball rather reproachfully. Occasionally, if he

Gorilla

banged his head hard, he would get angry with the ball and hit it with his hand, for he obviously thought that the ball was responsible for his hurting himself.

Another of his favorite games was with a big, highly colored shawl that I had given him the day he arrived. He was very fond of this shawl and always walked about, trailing it after him, wherever he went. But, when he got excited; he would put the shawl right over his head, and gallop round the room, bumping into the chairs and sofa, and clutching at our legs when we passed, trying to pre­tend he was some fearsome monster. Then, when he was tired, he would lie down in the middle of the floor, the shawl right over him, and we would pretend we couldn't see him. We would call his name, and look all over the room, while he lay under his shawl very quietly. At last I would lift up the corner of the shawl and, with a shout of surprise, discover him. He would jump up, giggling loudly, and start to run round and round the room again, very pleased with the trick that he thought he had played on us.

It was very amusing the first time that I showed N’pongo a mirror. It was a big mirror and I put it down on the floor so that he could see all of himself reflected in it. He approached it very care­fully, and then sat down about a foot away and stared and stared at his reflection. Then he leaned forward very cautiously and licked the mirror. Then he banged at it with his hand, and of course his reflection did the same. He sat and thought about this for a bit, and decided that the other gorilla was hiding behind a piece of glass and taking an unfair advantage of him, so very solemnly he walked round to the back of the mirror to see where this other ape was. Finding nothing there, he walked back to the front of the mirror again and sat down, watching his reflection and pondering on the problem. Then, still sitting in front of the mirror, he leaned forward and, keeping a stern eye on his reflection to see it did not move, stretched his arm round the back of the mirror, feeling with his hand to try if he could catch this other gorilla he was sure was behind the mirror.

Gorillas, in the wild state, live in family parties, father gorilla, three or four of his wives, and various children of different ages. During the day they wander through the forest, feeding on vegeta­tion and fruit, and then, when night comes, they choose a suitable tree to sleep in. Father gorilla, being so heavy and big, cannot climb up. so he collects some bushes and makes himself a com­fortable nest at the bottom of the tree, sitting with his back to the trunk. His wives and children swarm up into the branches above and make themselves nice, comfortable, springy nests to sleep in. by twisting and interweaving the branches and creepers together. These nests are beautifully made, and in some of them have been found real granny knots, where the gorillas have tied the branches together.