Friday, 27 May 2016

Saturday 14 May 2016

I had a day off today, and while I was away the wildlife obviously realized this was their chance, and one of our monkeys escaped his enclosure.  The funny thing was he escaped his temporary enclosure and went straight back to his long term one with all his mates in!  As we are surrounded by troops of vervet monkey’s it seems comical he didn’t decide to hangout with some of them for a change.  His preference for his mates and his safe enclosure reminded me of something Jacquie Durrell wrote.
Jacquie was married to Gerard Durrell, author of My Family and Other Animals.  In later life Gerald assembled a group to help him catch wild animals in order to set up a zoo.  One of the staff was Jacquie - I can’t remember if she was married to him at the time - but she was not enamored of the idea of the idea of collecting wild animals.  After a couple of months collecting Durrell received a phone call from whoever his employers were telling him war had broken out in his vicinity and a helicopter was being sent to pick him and his staff up. They were to abandon all the animals immediately and head for given coordinates.  Durrell was furious and argued that he had collected a great many animals and they could not just be abandoned.  The situation was very dangerous, however, and to remain would put all his staff in jeopardy. So reluctantly he ordered all the animals be released from their cages and driven back in to the jungle.  The group camped overnight intending to abandon cages and other equipment and head for the coordinates early the next morning.  When they woke the next day, however, they found the majority of the animals had returned to their cages and were sitting by them waiting to be fed.

Gerald and Jacquie Durrell
The statement I found so fascinating related to this.  I think it was in her book ‘Beasts in my Bed’ that Jacqui said she had naively believed when she set out on the trip that all the animals in the wild lived in a sort of paradise. There would be freedom, beauty and an endless and effortless supply of food for all.  She soon found the reality was far from true.  Many of the animals they captured were injured, sick or had infections and were too ill to evade capture. Some had broken limbs which of course they had no way of treating. Some had evaded predators but were left with appalling injuries.  Many were malnourished, some to the point that they were close to death. Some had been rejected by their our group/species and were in very poor condition. I think at that time Jacquie became much more positive to the idea of the positive role zoos could play in caring for animals not able to care for themselves.


 I am not sure if our little Houdini returned to his old enclosure for the company of his buddies, or because he wanted to continue to be fed and cared for.  Perhaps he was afraid of the wild vervets, and it is certainly likely they would have attacked him because he did not belong to their group.  All food for thought though.

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