Authors: Gerald Durrell
Although I watched the galagos playing in their cage every evening and marvelled at their speed and graceful movements, I never realized quite how fast they could be until the night that one of
them escaped.
They had finished their food, and I was removing the empty plates from the cage, when one of the little animals suddenly ran through the door, up my arms and jumped from my shoulder on to the
roof of the cage. I made a grab at the end of his tail, but he bounded away like a rubber ball and perched on the very edge of the cage top, watching me. I moved round slowly and carefully, and
made a quick grab at him, but long before my hand was anywhere near him he had launched himself into space. He jumped across a gap of about eight feet and landed as lightly as a feather on one of
the centre poles of the marquee, clinging there as though he had been glued on. I dashed after him and he let me come quite close before moving. Then, without warning, he jumped off the pole,
landed on my shoulder and immediately bounced off again on to the top of another cage. I chased him for about half an hour, and the hotter and more annoyed I became, the more he seemed to enjoy the
whole business.
When I did catch him, it was quite by accident. He had jumped off a pile of old boxes on to the mosquito net over my camp bed, obviously thinking that the net was a firm surface to land on. Of
course, his weight made the net sag and the next minute he was all tangled up in its folds. Before he could wriggle free, I had managed to rush forward and grab him. After that experience, I was
very careful about opening the galagos’ door.
Anyone passing the cage next door to the galagos’, hearing the fearsome noises that came from its interior would have been excused for thinking that there was a pair of
tigers locked in it; or, if not tigers, some equally fierce and noisy animal. Snarls, squeaks, screeches, and grunts combined with snuffles and growls could almost always be heard coming from
inside this cage. All this uproar was made by three little animals a bit smaller than the average guinea-pig, which I had christened the ‘bandits’. They were, in fact, baby kusimanses,
a small animal like a mongoose, and for their size, they were far more nuisance than nearly all the other animals put together.
When they first arrived, they were each about the size of a small rat, and they had only just got their eyes open. Their fur was a bright gingery colour, sticking up in tufts and spikes all over
their bodies, and they had long, pink, indiarubber noses that wiffled this way and that with curiosity.
At first, I had to feed them on milk and this was no easy job, for they drank more milk than any other baby animal I had ever seen; the whole business was made more difficult by the fact that
they were far too small to be able to drink from the feeding bottle I used for the other baby animals. I had to feed them by wrapping a lump of cotton-wool round the end of a stick, dipping it in
milk, and then letting them suck it.
This worked very well in the beginning, because they had no teeth, but as soon as their teeth appeared through the gums they began to be troublesome They were so greedy that they would take hold
of the cotton-wool and hang on to it like bulldogs, refusing to let go to allow me to dip it into the milk again. On many occasions, they bit so hard that the cotton-wool came off the end of the
stick and they would then try to swallow it. Only by putting my finger down their throats and capturing the wool as it was disappearing could I save them from being choked to death. They did not
like having a finger stuck down their throats, as it always made them sick; and, of course, as soon as they had been sick, they would begin to feel hungry again and so we would have to repeat the
whole performance.
As soon as they got their sharp little teeth, they began to feel very brave and venturesome, and they were always only too ready to poke their long noses into somebody else’s business. I
kept them at first in a basket near my bed so that I could feed them more easily during the night. The top for this basket was not too secure and the bandits were always climbing out and trotting
off on tours of inspection around the camp. This worried me, because we had a number of dangerous animals there and the bandits seemed to have no fear, for they would stick their noses into a
monkey’s cage or a snake’s box with equal freedom. They spent their lives in an endless search for food, and everything they came across they would bite, in the hopes that it would turn
out to be something tasty.
On one occasion they had escaped from their basket, without my noticing, and had wandered round by the long line of monkey cages to see if they could find anything nice to eat. I had a monkey at
that time with a very long, silky tail of which she was extremely proud. She used to spend hours every day grooming it, so that it was spotlessly clean and the fur gleaming. She happened to be
sitting in the bottom of her cage, having a sun bath, her lovely tail dangling through the wire, when the bandits appeared on the scene.
One of them found this long, silky tail lying on the ground and, as it did not appear to belong to anyone, and it seemed as though it might be good to eat, he rushed at it and sank his teeth
into it. The other two, seeing what he had found, immediately joined him and laid hold as well. The monkey was terribly frightened and scrambled up to the top of her cage, screaming loudly, but
this did not shake off the bandits; they clung on like a vice and the higher the monkey climbed up the cage, the higher her tail lifted them off the ground, so that when I arrived on the scene,
they were about a foot in the air, revolving slowly round and round, all growling together with their jaws still firmly locked to the monkey’s tail. It took me several minutes to get them to
let go, and then they only did so because I blew clouds of cigarette smoke in their faces, and made them cough.
Not long after this, the bandits did very much the same sort of thing to me. Every morning when I had given them their breakfast, I would let them wander around my bed until my tea arrived. They
would investigate the bed very thoroughly, grunting and squeaking to each other, trotting up and down and sticking their long, pink noses into every fold of the sheets to make sure nothing eatable
was hidden there.
On this particular morning I was lying there half asleep while the bandits scrambled all over the bed and did mountaineering tricks on the blanket. Suddenly I felt an agonizing pain in my foot.
I shot up in bed and discovered that one of the bandits had been nosing round and uncovered my toe. This, he thought, was some delicacy I had concealed for his special benefit.
Greedy, as usual, he had tried to get as much of my toe as possible into his mouth, and was busily chewing at it, uttering delighted grunts when I caught him by the tail and hauled him off. He
was most reluctant to let go: in fact, he seemed extremely annoyed at being disturbed in the middle of what was obviously going to be a wonderful meal.
Eventually, the bandits grew too big to be kept in a basket and I had to move them to a cage. Actually, the real reason was that they had bitten such huge holes in the wickerwork that there was
hardly any basket left to keep them in. They had by this time learnt to feed out of a dish and were eating raw eggs and finely chopped meat mixed up with their milk. I built them a very nice cage
and they thoroughly approved of it. It had a bedroom at one end for them to sleep in, and the rest of the cage was used for feeding and playing in. There were two doors, one at each end of the
cage, leading into the bedroom and playground. I had hoped that once they were settled in this new home, I would have no more trouble with them, but I was very much mistaken. The problem now was to
feed them.
Their cage was on top of a whole pile of others containing various creatures, and so it was quite high off the ground. As soon as they saw me approaching with the food dish, they would all start
screaming as loudly as they could, and would cluster round the door, poking their long, pink noses through the wire. They would be so excited at the idea of a meal, and each one so determined to
get to the food plate first, that as soon as I opened the door of the cage, they would hurl themselves through it, screaming and yelling, knock the plate of food out of my hand and fall to the
ground below with a crash. I let them do this twice, thinking that after the second fall they would have learnt not to rush out the moment the door was opened, but it was no use. They would shoot
out like rockets, the plate would go flying and they would land on the floor snorting and biting wildly.
Then I would have to pick them up, put them back in their cage and go and prepare another plateful of food. When they were as excited as this, you had to be very careful how you picked them up
as well, for they used to bite at anything and everything within reach.
At last I grew tired of having the bandits falling out of their cage at every mealtime, so I invented a rather cunning plan.
I would go to the cage with their food dish as usual, they would cluster round the door, waiting their chance to dash out. Then I would get somebody to go to the other end of the cage and rattle
the door leading to their bedroom. As soon as they heard this, they would think the food dish was being put in there and would scramble off down the cage, screaming and growling, and disappear into
the bedroom. When they were safely out of sight, I had to open the other door; they would realize they had been fooled and come dashing out of their bedroom again. Then, if I had not got my hand
outside, they would probably fasten on to my fingers and hang on for all they were worth.
These little animals probably caused me more trouble and gave me more bites and scratches than any other creatures I have collected. But even so, I could not help getting fond of them. I knew
they did not bite me because they were nasty-tempered, but simply because they became over-excited and mistook me for bits of a meal. I used to get extremely angry with them sometimes and think how
nice it would be if I handed them over to a zoo, for somebody else to be worried and bitten by them. But when at last that time came and I handed them over to the zoo where they were going to live,
I really felt sorry to see them go.
I went and took a last look at them in their big zoo cage, and they appeared so innocent and sweet, trotting round on the sawdust, wiffling their stupid looking noses, that I wondered if perhaps
I had misjudged them. I began to feel very sad at the thought of parting with them. I called them over to the wire to say good-bye and they looked so quiet and good that I poked my finger through
the bars to scratch their heads for the last time. I should really have known better. They changed at once from innocent-looking little animals to the screeching bandits I knew of old, and before I
could remove my finger, they had all fastened on to it, in a bunch.
When I eventually got free, I walked away from the cage, mopping up the blood with my handkerchief and deciding that I was, after all, very glad that somebody else was going to look after them
in the future.
A great many people, both European and African, used to come to the camp site, to have a look round and see all the strange animals that I had collected. Among these varied
creatures, there were, of course, the monkeys, of which we had about fifty different kinds. Sharing even such a big thing as a marquee with many of these lively animals was an exhausting
experience, for fifty monkeys can create an awful lot of trouble when they give their minds to it.
Of all the monkeys we had, there are three that I remember best. These were Footle, the moustached monkey, Weekes, the red-headed mangabey, and, last but not last, Cholmondely, the
chimpanzee.
Footle, when he arrived in the camp, was the smallest monkey I had ever seen, for, with the exception of his long tail, he would fit very comfortably into a teacup, and then leave a certain
amount of room to spare. His fur was a peculiar shade of green, and he had a very nice white shirt front; his head, like those of most baby monkeys, seemed much too big for his body and it was the
same greenish colour, except for his cheeks, which were a bright buttercup yellow. But the most astonishing thing about him was the broad curved band of white fur across his upper lip, which made
him look exactly as though he possessed a big moustache. I had never seen anything quite so ridiculous as this tiny monkey wearing this enormous Santa-Claus–like decoration on his face.
For the first few days, Footle lived in a basket by my bed with other baby animals, and had to be fed with milk from a feeding bottle. The bottle was about twice his size, and he used to fling
himself on it with cries of joy when it arrived, stuff the end into his mouth, and wrap his arms and legs round it firmly, so that I could not take it away before he had finished. He would not even
let me hold the bottle for him, presumably in case I stole any of the contents, and so he would roll about on the bed with it clutched in his arms, looking just as if he were wrestling with an
airship. Sometimes he would be on top, sometimes the bottle, but whether he was on top or underneath, Footle would still suck away at the milk, his moustache jerking up and down with the
effort.
He was a very intelligent little monkey and it was not very long before he had learned to drink his milk out of a saucer but as soon as this had been mastered, his table manners became simply
frightful. I would put him on the table to be fed, and when he saw me approaching with the saucer he would work himself up into a frenzy of impatience, jumping up and down with excitement and
screaming at the top of his voice. Hardly was his meal on the table, than he would without any hesitation dive head first into it. There would be a great shower of milk and he would sit in the
centre of it and duck his head under the surface, only coming up when he could not hold his breath any longer. Occasionally, in his greed, he would wait too long and come up sputtering and sneezing
out milk like a fountain. It used to take me a good half an hour to dry him after every meal, for by the time he had finished, he would look as though he had been bathing in the milk instead of
drinking it.