Beasts in My Belfry Read online

  We walked along the narrow, twisting path through the elder bushes and came eventually to the tall, barred fence that surrounded the lions’ cage. This was some two acres in extent, built on the slope of the hill and thickly overgrown with bushes and trees. Moving along the barrier rail, Jesse and I came to a spot where this undergrowth curved back to form a dell, and here an area of long, lush grass surrounded a pool. Lying there, grouped picturesquely under a gnarled and twisted thorn tree, lay the lions. Albert, the male, lay in the pale sunlight, wrapped up in his mane, meditating. Beside him lay Nan and Jill, his golden, butter-fat wives, both fast asleep, their soup-plate paws twitching gently. Jesse shouted their names and rattled a stick along the wire, wanting them to come over and be introduced. Albert merely turned his head for a brief moment, gave us a withering look and returned to his meditations; Nan and Jill did not even stir. They did not look fierce and wild to me; in fact, they looked overweight, lazy and slightly superior. Jesse took up a stance with his feet apart as though on the deck of a rolling ship, sucked his teeth vigorously and fixed me with his fierce blue stare.

  ‘Now, you listen on me, son,’ he said. ‘You listen on me and you won’t go wrong. That there wombat, them foxes and them racoons, you can go in with them, see? But don’t you try no tricks with these others or they’ll have you. They may look tame but they’re not, see?’

  He sucked his teeth again and surveyed me to see whether I had absorbed this lesson. I assured him that I had not the slightest intention of taking any chances with anything until I had got to know them. I felt – but did not say so – that it would be rather infra dig to be eaten by a lion to whom you had not, so to speak, been properly introduced.

  ‘Well, you listen on me, son,’ said Jesse again, nodding portentously, ‘and I’ll learn you.’

  My first few days were fully occupied with the learning process, memorising the routine work of feeding, cleaning and other daily chores, but this routine work was fairly basic and once I had mastered it I had more opportunity for watching the animals in our care and trying to learn something about them. Both Jesse and Joe were vastly amused at the fact that I carried an enormous notebook in my pocket and would – at the slightest provocation – whip it out and make an entry.

  ‘Bloody Sherlock Holmes,’ was Jesse’s description of me, ‘always writing frigging things down.’

  Joe would attempt to pull my leg by describing long and complicated actions that he had just seen the animal performing but he would always let his imagination get the better of him and I could soon spot the deception.

  Naturally enough, I started my researches on the lions. Being, for the first time in my life, on an intimate footing with these beasts, I decided to read up all I could about them and see how it tallied with my own observations. I discovered, not altogether to my surprise, that there is probably no other animal (except some purely mythological creatures) that has been endowed with so many imaginary virtues. Ever since someone in a moment of unzoological enthusiasm named it the King of Beasts, writers have vied with each other to produce proof of the lion’s right to this title. This particularly applied, I found, to the ancient writers who were unanimous in praising Felix leo for its sweetness of character, sagacity, courage and sportsmanship; thus, I suppose, it was a foregone conclusion that it should be adopted as a national emblem by that modest and retiring race, the English. I had not been working with Albert and his wives for any length of time before I discovered that lions were not all that the old writers cracked them up to be.

  In Pliny’s Natural History, published round about 1674, I found the following delightful account of the King of Beasts:

  The Lion alone of all wild beasts is gentle to those who humble themselves unto him, and will not touch any such upon their submission, but spareth what creatures soever lieth prostrate before him.

  As fell and furious as hee is otherwhiles, yet hee dischargeth his rage upon man, before that hee setteth upon women, and never preyeth upon babes unlesse it be for extreme hunger.

  After knowing Albert for only three days I realised that this description did not fit him. He was, to be sure, as fell and furious as he could possibly be, but I do not think he had an ounce of mercy in his makeup. Anyone who had attempted to ‘lie prostrate’ in front of him would have received a bite in the back of the neck for his pains.

  Another ancient writer I perused was Purchase, and he informed me, with all the assurance of one who has never seen a lion, that ‘the Lyons in cold places are more gentle, and in hotter more fierce.’ When I first read this it gave me a certain hope that I would be able to get on friendly terms with Albert for, just after my arrival at Whipsnade, the weather had turned cold and an icy wind roared across the downs, making the misshapen elder bushes creak and groan and shudder against each other. In this type of weather, according to Purchase, Albert and his wives should be gambolling around like friendly kittens.

  On my second morning my faith in Purchase was rudely shattered. I was walking past the lions’ cage, bent double against the wind and blue with cold, on my way back to the shelter and warmth of ‘The Haven’. Albert had concealed himself in a thick bed of grass and nettles in the curve of the cage near the path. He had, I am sure, seen me pass earlier and had decided that he would surprise me on my return journey. He waited until I was opposite and then he suddenly jumped out against the bars with a hair-raising cough of wrath. Then he squatted on his haunches and glared at me, his yellow eyes full of ferocious amusement at my sudden panic. He decided that this was a good joke and repeated it later the same day. Again he had the pleasure of watching me leap in the air like a startled stag, but this time he was gratified to observe me drop the bucket I was carrying, trip over it, and fall heavily into a bed of particularly luxuriant nettles. I discovered afterwards that cold weather, instead of making Albert gentle, infected him with a dreadful skitishness, and he would spend his time hiding behind bushes and leaping out at unsuspecting old ladies as they passed. I presume that this exercise improved his circulation when there was a nip in the air.

  I continued to read Pliny and Purchase on lions, but with a more discriminating eye. After a hectic day being jumped out at by Albert I found that their lions had a nice, soothing fairy-tale quality about them that made them much more endearing than the real lions I was looking after. I particularly liked the travellers’ stories of their meetings with lions in the wilds, all of which underlined the intelligence and amiability of the animals’ character. Pliny relates how Mentor the Syracusian met a lion in Syria that appeared to be irresistibly drawn to him, bouncing round him like a spirited lamb and licking his footprints with every sign of affection. Eventually, Mentor discovered that this touching display of affection was brought on by a large thorn in the animal’s foot which it wanted him to remove.

  Lions in those days seemed to be remarkably careless, for Pliny records another story by one Elpis which stretched even my credulity to breaking point. Elpis had hardly set foot in Africa when he was accosted by a lion with open jaws. Not unnaturally, he fled to the nearest tree (calling upon Bacchus to preserve him) and stayed ensconced in the upper branches for some considerable time while the lion, still open-mouthed, wandered about below trying by various signs to show the dull-witted fellow what was wrong. Obviously, Elpis had not read much contemporary travel literature or he would have realised at once that the lion had a thorn or something it wanted him to remove. It was quite some time before it dawned on him that, however fierce a lion might be, it would not walk about with its mouth permanently open in that curious fashion. So he cautiously descended from the tree and found that the lion, true to form, had a bone wedged in its mouth. Elpis removed this at once and without, apparently, much difficulty. The lion was so overcome with joy and gratitude that it immediately appointed itself chief butcher to its rescuer’s ship, and for the whole time that they were anchored in that region it provided the ship’s company with fresh venison daily.

  Albert and his wives, unl
ike their ancestors, seemed to be remarkably healthy and, to my relief, they never got thorns in their paws which they expected us to remove. They had prodigious appetites, in spite of being so fat, and would squabble and snarl over their meat as though they had not been fed for weeks. Albert would snatch the biggest joint and carry it off into the bushes and hide it. Then he would hastily return to see if he could pinch the joints belonging to either of his wives. To watch him cuff his wife out of the way while he stole her meat was a striking illustration of the lion’s noble character.

  Once a week we had to trap up Albert and his wives so that we could enter the cage and clean up the bones and other signs of their tenancy. Built into the side of the enclosure was a large, iron-barred trap with a sliding door, and we had to get all three lions securely locked up in this before we could get on with the work. This trapping was a tedious performance, the monotony of which was only relieved by its ridiculousness. To trap Albert and his wives, who were, needless to say, uncooperative in the extreme, you had to be very cunning and combine this with the ability to look innocent and run fast. The first requisite for successful trapping was that Albert should be very hungry; he would then prowl along the bars, his little eyes glinting, his mane shaggy with ferocity. We would arrive at the trap, looking radiantly innocent, and place our various spades, buckets, brushes and forks on the path. Then we would produce a large, gory joint of meat and place it in a position where Albert could both see and smell it. He would greet this manoeuvre with a series of wicked, chuckling snarls, deep in the scarf of his mane. Then we would raise the sliding door at the end of the trap and stand about, all talking loudly, as if there was no thought further from our minds than the trapping of lions. I must explain, in defence of Albert’s intelligence, that he was not fooled by all this for one minute, but it had become a sort of ritual which had to be respected or the whole procedure would become disorganised.

  When sufficient time had passed and Albert had studied the joint and pondered its possibilities, we would put it inside the trap. Leaning on the barrier rail, we would indulge in autosuggestion. The following remarks would be made with complete lack of tone and interest: ‘How about it, Alb? Hungry boy? Come on, then, come on. There’s a good lad. Have some meat, then. Come on, then. Come on. Come on . . . We would repeat this endlessly, like a part song, and the whole performance was made doubly ridiculous by the fact that Albert understood none of it.

  Having exhausted our encouraging remarks, we would reach a deadlock; we would glare at Albert and he would glare back at us. All through this Nan and Jill would be prowling in the background, obviously impatient but doing nothing, for tradition demanded that their lord and master should take the lead. Albert would now give the impression of having gone into a trance. During these spells of waiting I would while away the time by attempting to find an answer to that much disputed question of whether or not the human eye has any power over the mere beast. I would stare with intense concentration into Albert’s little yellow eyes, and he would stare back unblinkingly. The only effect it ever had was to make me feel a trifle uncomfortable.

  Generally, after about ten minutes, Albert would still show no signs of entering the trap and so we would be forced to try another ruse. Leaving the meat in the trap, we would saunter off down the path until Albert thought we were too far away to be dangerous. Then he would make a sudden dash into the trap, grab the meat, and endeavour to escape with it before we had time to rush down the path and slam the door on him. More often than not, the iron door clanged down some two inches behind his retreating tail and we would be left standing there foolishly while he carried his trophy off to some secluded spot to settle down and enjoy it. This, of course, would put an end to our trapping and we would be forced to wait twenty-four hours until Albert felt peckish again. With the other animals on the section, we had to go through much the same business to get them trapped up, but they never gave us as much trouble as the lions. Albert had a genius for being annoying.

  If, however, we did get the lions safely locked up in the trap, we had to make our way round to a small door in the opposite side of the cage. Once we had entered the enclosure we had to shut and lock this door behind us. It was a feeling I never really relished, for it meant that we were shut in a two-acre cage, surrounded by a barred fence some sixteen feet high, with no means of escape should the lions, by some magical means, get out of the trap. On one occasion Joe and I entered the cage and, as usual, separated and worked our way through the bushes, picking up the gnawed white bones from last week’s meals. Soon we lost sight of each other in the thick undergrowth; I could hear Joe whistling and an occasional clang as he dropped a bone into his bucket. I was working my way along a narrow path between great bramble bushes which must have been a favourite haunt of Albert’s for I could see his great paw marks in the soft clay of the path and, here and there, a tuft of hair from his mane which had caught on a thorn. I was musing over the big paw marks and thinking what a vicious and sultry character Albert was, when suddenly he roared. Now the traps were some distance away through the trees, on my left, yet I could have sworn that the roar came from directly in front of me. Without waiting to find out exactly where Albert was, I made my way with all speed to the exit gate. Joe and I arrived at the gate simultaneously.

  ‘Is he out?’ I inquired when we were safely outside the cage. ‘I don’t know,’ said Joe, ‘I didn’t wait to see.’

  We went round to the other side of the enclosure and found the lions still locked up in the trap, but Albert had a humorous glint in his eyes that made me think.

  This incident was my first experience of the so-called ventriloquial powers of the lion. Many writers assert that a lion can throw his roar so that it appears to come from two or three different directions at once. This is not quite as impossible as it sounds, for many species of birds and insects have the most astonishing ventriloquial powers. In some cases you can actually watch the creature making the sound and yet the sound itself appears to come from several feet, or even yards, away. Obviously, if the lion possessed this power it would be immensely useful to him; he would be able to panic herds of game at night so that, in their tenor they might run towards their hunter instead of away from him. Judging by that morning’s experience it certainly seemed as though Albert could throw his roar; he had been about the same distance away from Joe as from me, yet both of us were sure that the roar had come from close by.

  Some time after this experience I had another and equally startling example of Albert’s voice throwing. I was coming back from some village festivities late one night and I decided to take a short-cut through the park. My path took me along the side of the lion cage and as I hurried along through the rustling elders Albert gave a sudden snarling grunt that brought me to a standstill. The sound was difficult to place, although I knew the direction from which it must have come. It had a certain earth-trembling quality that made it seem as though it was vibrating up through the soles of my feet. To judge by the sound, Albert might have been inside or outside his cage. It was not very pleasant, and only my devotion to natural history prevented me from running like a hare. With considerable temerity, I walked up to the barrier rail and peered into the gloom, but I could not see anything and there was no moon to help me. The bushes were black and still. As I moved along the side of the cage I knew that I was being followed; I could almost feel the eager eyes fixed on me, but the tawny bodies made no sound and the great paws did not snap a single twig as a guide to their whereabouts. As I started up the hillside, away from the cage, there came a great sniff, full of scorn and derision.

  Some people refuse to believe that a lion can throw his voice deliberately They maintain that all he does is to hold his mouth close to the ground when roaring, so that the sound is blurred and it is impossible to tell from which direction it is coming. Now, in order to find out if this was true I tried very hard to be present when Albert was roaring, but with little success. Time after time I would walk hopefully past his cag
e thinking that he might roar while I was there to see, but every time he remained stubbornly silent. Sometimes, when I heard him start up, I would treat the visitors to the sight of a keeper running madly along the path through the trees as though some escaped beast were at my heels. But every time, when I arrived panting at the barrier rail, I would find that Albert had either finished or else had thought better of it and had relapsed into silence after two or three coughs. However, I was more than compensated for this by the magnificent sounds he would produce when I could hear, but not see, him.

  He always seemed to choose the late afternoon to burst into song. He would start, quite suddenly, with two or three preliminary ‘Aroom’ noises, with long pauses in between, as if he were making sure of the right note. Then he would launch into the full song: the ‘Arooms’ would become throaty and rich and the pause between each shorter and shorter, until they ran together in a terrific crescendo of sound. It would rasp out, faster and faster, then start to slow down: then, just as suddenly as it began, it would stop. It is difficult to describe the frightening possibilities that were snarled at you when the sound reached its zenith. Considered dispassionately, the song resembled, more than anything else, someone sawing wood on a gigantic echoing barrel. First there would be the slow strokes of the saw; then they would get faster and faster as the steel bit into the wood; then the strokes would get slow again, as an indication that the sawing was nearly done; then, silence. And at that moment I always waited to hear the thud of the piece of wood hitting the ground.

  After some weeks’ association with Albert I decided that he did not in any way measure up to the popular estimation of what a lion should be. He was sulky, blustery and devoid of any finer feelings whatsoever. His small, golden eyes always had in them an expression of baffled rage; it seemed that he was trying to uphold his race’s reputation for fierceness but could not remember why. There was always a faintly puzzled look about him, as though he were wondering whether it was necessary to behave in this way. When he was not prowling about in a filthy temper he was indulging in his ‘joke’ of jumping out suddenly at unsuspecting passers-by and getting a sardonic pleasure out of their panic. At mealtimes he would behave in the reprehensible manner I have described and then, gorged with his own meat and his ill-gotten gains, he would sprawl in the long grass and belch. I tried very hard, but I could not find a single endearing quality in Albert.