But I think probably our most complicated veterinary problem occurred when our lioness, Sheba, became pregnant. Everything seemed to be going fine, and she was getting near her time. I had to go into town one day to lunch with some friends, and, as I always do when I leave the zoo, I left the address and the telephone number of the restaurant, so that should there be any emergency they could get in touch with me immediately. I had no sooner finished lunch than I got a telephone call to say that Sheba had started to give birth, but that she had got one youngster half out and half in and, strain though she would, she didn’t seem able to pass it. The cub was obviously dead. I grabbed a taxi, got back to the zoo as quickly as I could, and Jeremy and I reviewed the situation. She had been straining then for two or two and a half hours and, as I said, the cub was limp and dangling and obviously dead, but she was unable to dislodge it and seemed in great distress.
‘What we ought to do,’ said Jeremy, ‘is get her into a small cage. Then perhaps we could help her in some way.’
Unfortunately the den was rather a large one and in order to get her into a smaller cage we would have had to go in with her and drive her. This was a risk I was not prepared to take. I had an idea. I knew that the London Zoo possessed a Capchur gun. This is like a revolver except that it shoots a dart which acts like a hypodermic syringe, penetrating the animal’s flank or whatever part of the body you are aiming at, and giving it an injection which can be an anaesthetic, an antibiotic or something similar. I thought that if I phoned London Zoo there was a chance that they would fly it over to me so that we could use it on Sheba. I went into the house and put in a call to London Zoo.
Needless to say, this was a Saturday. All crises like this seem to happen on a Saturday. When I eventually got through to London Zoo sanitorium they said, yes, indeed, they had a Capchur gun, but that the only person allowed to use it was their chief veterinary officer, Dr Oliver Graham Jones. The police were very strict about it and would not allow it off the premises. Well, I’d known Oliver Graham Jones for a number of years, and I knew that he would bend the law a little if he could. I asked if I could speak to him. They were terribly sorry, they said, but he was at home for the weekend. Well, could they get me his private number? Yes, they could, and they did, and in due course I got Oliver on the telephone. I explained the situation to him and he was most sympathetic.
‘But, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘the first thing is, I can’t send the thing over without police permission, and, secondly, unless you’ve used one of these before they can be extremely dangerous. Unless you get the right charge in the gun, the syringe that it propels, instead of acting purely as a hypodermic, acts more like a rifle bullet and you’re liable to kill your animal rather than cure it. They’re tricky things to handle.’
‘Well, there’s nothing for it, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to try and drive her into a small crate. That’ll mean going in, I suppose, with flaming torches.’
‘Good heavens!’ said Oliver, shocked to the core. ‘You can’t do that! You might all be killed – especially when she’s in that condition. She’s not going to take kindly to that sort of treatment.’
‘Well, there’s nothing else to do, is there?’
Oliver thought for some moments.
‘How long,’ he said, ‘would it take me to get over to Jersey?’
‘It depends on the flights,’ I said, ‘but, possibly, about an hour.’
‘Well, if you can get me a flight I’ll go to the zoo, get the gun, and come over and do the job for you.’
‘That’s marvellous,’ I said, enthusiastically. ‘I’ll get on to our travel agent right away and ring you back.’
Now to add to the complications it was the height of the holiday season and practically every plane was booked by honeymooners or families coming to spend their holidays in Jersey. I got on to our friendly travel agents and explained the situation to them. Could they possibly get me a seat from Heathrow to Jersey on a flight as soon as possible? They said they would ring me back; so for half an hour I paced the room, metaphorically chewing my fingernails. Then the phone rang. It was the travel agents: there was just one seat on a Heathrow flight, leaving at about five-thirty. I told them to phone Heathrow and warn them to expect Dr Oliver Graham Jones. I then phoned Oliver back and told him.
‘Good lord,’ he said, ‘that doesn’t give me very much time. Anyway, I’ll do the best I can.’
‘I’ll be at the airport to meet you.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I only hope to God I don’t get caught in a traffic jam.’
I was at the plane to meet him, and hurried him to the car. Oliver has dark hair and large brown eyes and looks as though he is a successful Harley Street specialist rather than a veterinary surgeon. As we drove to the zoo I told him what had happened so far. The cub was still half-way out, and Sheba was still straining and obviously in great distress. I’d alerted our own two veterinary surgeons, and they had brought up the necessary apparatus because, as Oliver had told me on the phone, we might have to do a Caesarean operation to save her life. When we got to the zoo, our veterinary surgeons were there with all the necessary apparatus. A table had been hurriedly put in the outside of the lion cage and floodlights were rigged up over it. It made a very rough operating theatre but it was the best we could do in the time. Then Oliver had a look at his patient who, exhausted by straining, was lying down in one corner. She snarled rather pathetically at us. ‘Yes,’ said Oliver. ‘We haven’t got much time. It’s a jolly good thing I managed to catch that plane.’
He carefully unpacked the Capchur gun which he had brought with him and loaded the syringe with the necessary anaesthetic. Then, taking careful aim, he fired at Sheba. There was a dull ‘phlunk’ as the dart hit her flank. She gave a small jump and glanced down, but apart from this took no notice at all. Presently, as the dart started to take effect, she got to her feet and staggered a few steps about the den, then lay down again. We got a long pole and prodded her gently. There was no response, so we knew that she must be unconscious. Then we went round to the other side of the den and lifted the sliding door in order to drag her out. I wanted to go in first to rope her legs, but Oliver wouldn’t hear of it. He explained that sometimes in the case of these anaesthetics, although the animal gave all the appearance of being unconscious, it could come round for just a brief enough second to make a nasty mess of you. So he went in first and I followed him. He put a bar of wood in her mouth and tied her muzzle securely round it. This not only helped to keep her mouth open so that she could breathe properly, but also prevented her from biting us should she regain consciousness. We then roped her feet and proceeded to haul her out. She was a tremendous weight and it took six of us to lift her on to the table. Polite as a professional Harley Street specialist, Oliver asked Mr Blampied and Mr Begg if they would like to perform the operation. They, equally politely, said that as he had been kind enough to come so far they thought the honour should go to him. The first thing to be done was to remove the cub. This was a fairly simple process. On examination, it proved to be most peculiar. It was almost as though somebody had put a bicycle pump beneath the skin and had pumped it full of air. Its bones were all flabby and soft, and its face was misshapen because of this gas-forming material inside the skin.
The next thing was carefully to shave the area on the side of her stomach where the incision had to be made. This was done with an electric hair-clipper which Mr Blampied had brought with him for the purpose. The area having been shaved, and Oliver having washed his hands and disinfected them, he was ready to start the operation. It was now fairly late and getting darkish, so we turned on the spotlights that we had arranged above the table. Their glare revealed that, outside the wire of the lion cage, were congregated the entire staff, all determined to watch the operation. I asked Oliver if he would mind if they came inside the cage so that they could get a closer look at what was going on, and Oliver sai
d he would be delighted. So the staff trooped in and formed a semi-circle round the table, and Oliver, as he operated, gave a running commentary on what he was doing.
First he made a longitudinal slit along her side. As soon as he had actually penetrated the stomach itself, it deflated with a hissing noise and the most disgusting stench I have ever smelt in my life poured out. Oliver’s hands moved rapidly and deftly. He enlarged the incision, seeming totally unaware of the stench which had sent one or two members of the staff slightly white, and then carefully dipped his hands into the lioness’s stomach and, one by one, removed two more cubs. They were in exactly the same bloated, blown-up condition as the first one. All three cubs were placed in a bucket for future examination to try to ascertain exactly what the trouble was. Then Oliver had to remove the afterbirth, wash out the interior and sew up the stomach and the skin over it. This was covered with a thick layer of antibiotic powder, and she was injected with penicillin and streptomycin as an additional precaution. At this stage her breathing was shallow but regular. Throughout the operation she had been kept under an ordinary anaesthetic, that is to say with a mask over her mouth and nose, under the control of Mr Blampied.
We slid her carefully off the table on to an improvised stretcher, carried her down and put her in a cage which had been specially prepared for her and which was big enough to allow her to stand up but not to move around, for the one fear was that she would try to get up too quickly and burst her stitches. The important thing was to keep her warm so that she didn’t develop pneumonia, and so she was covered with blankets and hot water bottles were put all round her. Her tongue and mouth which, with the anaesthetic, had naturally grown very dry, had to be moistened with glucose and water at frequent intervals. This meant that Geoff, who was looking after the lions at the time, had to stay up all night replenishing the hot water bottles and keeping her tongue and mouth moist. At one point in the middle of the night, when he thought that she wasn’t warm enough and couldn’t find anything more suitable, he even went and took the eiderdown off his own bed to put over her. The following morning, recovery seemed to be progressing quite normally. We could get a reflex from her eye and she was obviously semi-conscious, but not conscious enough to be able to do anything really serious in the way of attacking us.
The swab, taken from her stomach, was examined at Leeds University, and a very unusual form of gas-forming organism, Clostridium sordellii, was isolated. Apparently, this organism can be picked up from the earth and is reasonably common in cattle, but hitherto hadn’t been found in any member of the cat family.
After the operation had been completed, I had taken our troop of veterinary surgeons up to the flat for a drink, before driving Oliver to his hotel.
‘Tell me,’ he said to me, ‘how many of your staff were present during the operation?’
‘All of them,’ I said. ‘Including the ones that were on day off.’
‘Good lord,’ said Oliver. ‘I wish I had such enthusiasm in London. I doubt if anybody would have turned up if I had been doing an operation like that. And yet you got all your staff to come.’
‘I didn’t get them to come,’ I said. ‘They came of their own accord.’
‘Remarkable,’ said Oliver. ‘Try and keep them like that, won’t you?’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do,’ I said.
And I hope that is what I have done.
When Sheba had fully recovered we decided to keep her separated from Leo for at least six months, because we did not want her to become pregnant again too quickly after so serious an operation. When they were eventually put back together they were very pleased to see each other and in next to no time Sheba was pregnant again. Of course, we watched her with the greatest anxiety, but by this time I had sent to America and managed to obtain a Capchur gun of our own, so we felt that, should anything go wrong we at least wouldn’t have to drag Oliver from London Zoo. Sheba gave birth to two fat, healthy cubs, without any difficulty whatsoever, and we all heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief. But her drama was not yet over. Once the cubs were big enough to be taken from the mother, Sheba became pregnant once more.
As she had just given birth to two cubs quite normally, we felt sure that this next pregnancy would be the same. But when she was ready to have the cubs she picked up the gas-forming organism again, and once more we had to go through the same performance. With the Capchur gun we anaesthetised her, and then Mr Blampied and Tommy Begg did a Caesarean and removed two cubs, both with the same extraordinary blown-up look about them as the first ones had had. Sheba was stitched up, given the usual injections of penicillin and so on, and moved once more into the cage that she had occupied for so long. Everything seemed to be progressing satisfactorily and then, one day, to our horror, she did the one thing that we hoped she would not do and could not guard against. Although the cage was long and narrow it did allow her to stand up and move about slightly. She must have stood up during the night to try and turn round, and in consequence had burst all her stitches.
Once more she had to be knocked out and the wound re-stitched. This was an extremely difficult job, for when the original stitches had burst, they had torn away all the flesh along the edge of the wound, and so, in order to close the gap, one now had to do huge stitches, some four or five inches in width, in order to find sufficient firm skin and flesh to stitch through. When this was over she was given the usual antibiotics and put back in her cage. The following morning she had recovered sufficiently to be able to raise her head and drink a little glucose and water. She was given a further penicillin injection and an Ionalyte drip was set up. But at midday her breathing seemed peculiar and, despite the administration of a heart stimulant, Sheba died. We were, of course, bitterly disappointed, but we felt we had done everything we could to try to save her. This third operation had been just too much for her strength to cope with.
4. Mr and Mrs D
Dear Mr Durrell,
The other day a woodpecker flew into my hall and started to peck a hole in my grandfather clock. Is this an unusual occurrence?
It was, I think, Edgar Wallace who said that if a man had one nickname he was held in some esteem, but if he had two or more he was disliked. As far as I know, Jacquie and I have only one nickname in the zoo, if you can call it that; we are referred to by all the staff as Mr and Mrs D. This, I think, was started by Shep Mallet.
Shep, with his curly hair, blue eyes and wide ingratiating grin, is without doubt the most handsome male member of the staff. He has, in his time, broken more hearts than I care to remember, and practically every girl who has worked in the bird section has succumbed to his charms. In fact, I remember one girl being so deeply in love with him that she went to tell Jeremy that she could no longer bear to work in the zoo unless Shep returned her affections. As this was impossible she felt she would have to leave. As she was in the middle of telling Jeremy this, she suddenly wailed, ‘Oh, Mr Mallinson, I love him so much I think I’m going to be sick!’, rushed out of Jeremy’s office and was sick, promptly, in the corridor. Since Shep’s second name is Juan I’ve often wondered why we never christened him Don Juan, but Shep he became and Shep he remains, and he has all our quite large bird collection in his care.
Birds, on the whole, don’t seem to display the same amount of character as animals do, but we have, at one time and another, had a great number of birds with very distinct personalities of their own. I think, perhaps, the best example of this was Trumpy, the Grey-winged Trumpeter from South America. Grey-winged Trumpeters are birds about the size of a hen with a high domed forehead that indicates great intellect, and large liquid eyes. Trumpy, being quite tame, was allowed the run of the zoo, and one of the things he used to do was to settle in any new arrivals. That is to say, he would go and stand near or, preferably, in the cage of any new arrival for twenty-four hours until he felt it had settled down, and then he would move on somewhere else.
&n
bsp; He took to flying over the fence and bullying the two penguins we had at that time. They stood this as long as they could and then one day they rounded on him and one of them, with a lucky swipe, knocked him into their pond. Trumpy, of course, was not a water bird and so the penguins had him at their mercy. We found him floating on the surface of the water, bleeding badly from several nasty wounds, and really thought that we had lost him. The whole zoo instantly went into mourning. But we patched him up, and the following day Trumpy, minus a few feathers and with a few scars, was his old self again, stalking solemnly round the grounds and greeting everybody.
It was Trumpy who always used to follow the last visitors out, and once he even got on the bus with them to make sure that they were going the right way. Trumpy’s end was as unexpected as could be, and affected Shep very much because he was responsible for it. He was carrying a large and heavy sack of sawdust on his back as he walked into the mammal house. Unbeknownst to him, Trumpy was trotting, as was his habit, close at heel. Shep, without looking round, dropped the sack of sawdust when he reached the appropriate cage; Trumpy was right underneath it and was killed instantly. We were all very upset by this, but we have since procured two more Trumpies and they are allowed the run of the grounds. They haven’t, as yet, developed the personality of the first one, but we hope that they might in time.