Menagerie Manor

When we landed at the airport I took N’Pongo out of his crate and we drove to the zoo with him sitting on my lap, taking a great interest in the cows we passed, and occasionally turning round so that he could peer up into my face. When we arrived I carried him up to our flat, for his cage was not quite ready and I had decided that he would have to spend a couple of days in our guest-room. His grave, courteous ma

N’Pongo, of course, did not leave the guest-room in the condition that he found it, but this was only to be expected. Although his ma

One of the things which particularly interested me about him was his different approach to a problem or a situation. If, for example, a baby chimpanzee is used to being brought out of its cage, on being reincarcerated it will carry on like one of the more loquacious heroines in a Greek tragedy, tearing its hair, rolling with rage on the floor, screaming at the top of its voice, and drumming its heels on every available bit of woodwork. N’Pongo was quite otherwise. Although deploring it, he would accept the necessity of being locked up again in his cage. He would try his best to divert you from this course of action, but when he realized that it had become inevitable he would submit with good grace. His only protest would be a couple of sharp and faintly peevish screams as he saw you disappear, whereas the average chimpanzee of his age and with his background would have gone on having hysterics for a considerable length of time. Owing to his attractive appearance and disposition, his good ma

Within twelve months N’Pongo had almost doubled his size, and I felt it was now time to try, by fair means or foul, to obtain a mate for him. Unless they lack finances, I have no use for zoos that acquire animals purely for exhibition and make no effort to provide them with a mate; this applies particularly to apes. The problem does not arise while they are young, for they accept the human beings around them as their adopted, if slightly eccentric, family. Then comes the time when they are so powerful that you do not, if you have any intelligence, treat them in the same intimate way. When a gorilla or chimpanzee or an orang-utan at the age of three or four pulls your legs from under you, or jumps from a considerable height onto the back of your neck, it tests your stamina to the full and is done because you are the only companion with whom he can play. If he is left on his own, and is a nice-natured ape, he will try to play the same games with you when he is eleven or twelve; this means a broken leg or a broken neck. So if this friendly, exuberant animal is kept on his own and deprived of both the company of his own kind and that of human beings, you can hardly be surprised if he turns into a morose and melancholy creature. Not wanting to see N’Pongo degenerate into one of those magnificent but sad and lonely anthropoids that I have seen in many zoos (including some that had ample resources for providing a mate), I thought the time had come to try to procure a wife for N’Pongo, even though I knew that our funds would probably not stretch that far.

I telephoned the dealer from whom we had gotten N’Pongo and asked him about the possibilities of obtaining a female gorilla. He told me he had just been offered one, a year or so younger than N’Pongo, but now, owing to the political situation in Africa, the price had increased and he was asking fifteen hundred pounds. There followed two days of soul­searching. I knew we could not afford that amount of money in a lump sum, but we might be able to do it if it were spread over a period. Once again I telephoned the dealer and asked him whether he would consider letting us have the animal on instalment terms. To his credit and to my relief he agreed and said that his representative would bring her over to Jersey in a week’s time.

The whole zoo waited for that day with bated breath. I, prompted by a slightly acrimonious conversation with my bank manger, spent the week by having a collecting box made, over which hung the notice: ‘We have bought Nandy on the instalment plan. Please help us to keep up the instalments.’ So Nandy arrived, crouched in a crate that I would have considered small for a squirrel. She, like N’Pongo, appeared to be in perfect condition: her fur was glossy, she was fat, and her skin had a sheen like satin, but at first sight of her it was her eyes that impressed me most. N’Pongo’s eyes, as 1 have said, were small and deep set, calculating and full of humour. Nandy’s eyes were large and lustrous, and when she looked sideways she showed the whites of them; but they were frightened eyes that did not look at you squarely. They were the eyes of an animal that had little experience of human beings, but even that limited experience had given her no reason to trust or respect them. When we released her from her cage, I could see the reason; right across the top of her skull was a scar which must have measured six or seven inches in length. Obviously, when she was being caught, some over-enthusiastic and intrepid human being had given her a blow with a machete which had split her scalp like a razor slash. It must have been a glancing blow or her skull would have been split in two. With such an introduction to the human race, you could hardly blame Nandy for being a little antisocial. This great slash was by now completely healed, and there was only the long white scar to be seen through the hair of her head, which reminded me of the curious imitative and quite u