We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed T

by Benjamin Mee

  One of the main attractions for me in buying the zoo had been the prospect of conducting scientific research and writing about it in journals, books, and magazines. And this little sliver of science, carefully folded and put in my pocket next to the pencil that would soon be scribbling on it, reminded me that that was still possible—once we’d resolved that pesky matter of getting a £500,000 loan, spending it in the right way to get a zoo license, the license being granted in time, and then enough people coming through the door for the zoo to be able to support the interest payments on that loan. Piece of cake. Then I could think about research projects.

  Another very welcome piece of scientific material, which came my way a few weeks later, was the Australian Regional Association of Zoological Parks (ARAZP) husbandry manual for the species Prionailurus viverrinus, or fishing cats. As an act of enormous faith in us, subject to getting our license of course, another zoo, Port Lympne, had offered us a breeding pair of these incredibly feisty, medium-size cats. Standing up to thirty-three inches tall and weighing over thirty pounds, they are taller than a whippet and heavier than a Staffordshire bull terrier, and far more dangerous than either. Classed as a “hazardous” animal to keep, in their native Asia they have been known to “fight off packs of dogs, carry off babies, and even kill a leopard.” And, according to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), they are “Near Threatened.” Though only one category away from “Least Concern,” this is also one category away from “Vulnerable,” which would put it on the IUCN’s Red List of endangered animals. Without sustained active conservation measures it is extremely rare for animals to move back down this list to where they are no longer under threat. What tends to happen is that they move up the list to Endangered, on to Critically Endangered, and then inexorably onward toward Extinct. Going, going, gone.

  But there is hope. Conservation measures do work: in 2006, the number of species that moved up the list into a more critical category was 172, but 139 moved down to an improved status. And there is one other vital category for zoos: Extinct in Wild. Animals have been known to come back from this category, which nudges full-on, irrevocable Extinct, and even head right down the list and back out into the wild to Least Concern. It is an unusual but growing trend, and thanks to pioneers like Gerald Durrell, the zoological community is now increasingly focusing on captive breeding programs. These don’t always lead to reintroduction to the wild; generally, creatures go extinct because there is no longer enough of their preferred version of the wild left to sustain them. But captive breeding does inform conservation measures in remaining natural habitats, also increasingly undertaken by zoos, by revealing the specific requirements that animals need to breed. Knowing exactly what conditions you are aiming for, rather than things you think they might need, can make that all-important difference between Critically Endangered and Extinct.

  Fishing cats are quite tricky because they are so aggressive. The male sometimes kills the female, which is not a good way to continue a species. What prompts them to do this is not known, though as lovers’ tiffs go, it is maladaptive in the extreme. But fishing cats have been bred successfully at Port Lympne and in Australia (hence the Australian husbandry guide—the European Endangered Species Program [EEP] is still drawing theirs up), several other places around the world, and with luck, at Dartmoor Zoological Park, before long. As their habitat shrinks, due to the encroachment of agriculture in northern India, Burma, Thailand, and Sumatra, if they do move up the Red List, at least there will be diverse seed populations in captivity, should their time come again. At least there will still be fishing cats.

  This was scientific work that was directly applicable to what we were trying to achieve on the ground—it was even a license requirement that we launch projects such as these—and I avidly absorbed the entire document. The recommended minimum size for their enclosures, for instance, is 40 square meters. The Australians had provided 85. We could give them

  160. Why not? We had the space. Better to look after fewer species well than cram in a load of disparate unhappy animals to pander to decreasing public attention spans. Besides, fishing cats are gorgeous, eye-catching creatures who warrant a sanctuary in their own right. Their markings are like a big tabby crossed with a leopard, on a background of golden greenish fur, and they sit by the side of streams intently until some hapless fish passes below, when they dive in headfirst and snatch it up in their jaws. Other cats, like tigers and jaguars, will go into water, but fishing cats specialize in it, wading around like fools even when they are not hunting, apparently indifferent to the fact that cats don’t do that. I was delighted we were getting something so exotic and worthwhile, and though this was a project for the (not too distant) future, I kept the husbandry manual on my desk where I could see it, as a morale booster.

  Another happy by-product of being given this paper was that it led me to discover, firsthand, what happens When Porcupines Go Bad. I always delight in being humbled by animals, something for which, happily, this job provides ample opportunities. One night I couldn’t sleep because I’d had a “brain wave” about the fishing cats. The husbandry requirements told me that, among other things, these rare little beasts like to live with running water. Their wetland habitat, being reduced across Asia, is often converted to paddy fields: water based, but not moving water. Our site is awash with water running off Dartmoor, and there are several places where natural rivers seed, sometimes running into one of the two lakes or the two moated enclosures, but often just creating boggy ground in underused areas. With these rivers formalized into proper waterways, they could be made into features, and even be a source (on a small scale, for lighting perhaps) of hydroelectric power. They would also benefit the fishing cats, whose enclosure could be built to follow the contours of a living stream.

  I had a hunch where the best place for this would be, in what I still liked to call the giraffe field, but is now “the small cats field,” where it borders the walk-in enclosure containing the flamingo lake. This is where Owen wanted the mangrove swamp for his birds, and the husbandry guide informed me that fishing cats also love mangroves, which are, I’d discovered, themselves “Threatened,” according to the IUCN. At this crux between enclosures, a natural spring bursts out from boggy ground to babble into the lake amidst a thicket of brambles and overgrown exotic plants. It was for this thicket that I set out at three in the morning wearing a headlamp and carrying a notebook, to do a feasibility study for a snaking fishing-cat enclosure, ending in a continuation of Owen’s mangroves for his birds in the flamingo lake (obviously the mangroves for the birds and the cats would need to be segregated, or the tenure of the birds, and indeed the birds themselves, would be short lived).

  After an hour or so of getting my feet wet and my arms scratched, I retired, satisfied that this was an ideal place to work back from to instigate a small river, which could in turn run through a futuristic, twenty-first-century fishing-cat enclosure. I stood in the field and sketched a few ideas by the light of the headlamp, and stretched and yawned, knowing that now I could sleep. But I thought I might make a sedentary detour to the top corner of the walk-in, where the porcupines live (another enclosure in need of revamping, but adequate and some way down the list). I had been in with the porcupines a few times with several different keepers, most recently with Steve, the curator, helping to haul some huge pieces of fresh wood on which these glorified rodents like to gnaw, to keep their constantly growing beaverlike incisors in check. Every time, in daylight, Mr. and Mrs. Porcupine, as they are known, had kept to themselves and stayed in their house while their enclosure was cleaned or revamped, their natural shyness and nocturnal lifestyle keeping them indoors, so that the door never needed to be secured during our forays into their backyard.

  I nonchalantly vaulted over the fence to collect some of their many fallen quills littering the ground, which often rotted into the earth before they could be salvaged. Porcupine quills are particularly lovely objects, almost like politically ac
ceptable, harvestable ivory. Some are twelve inches long, narrow with perfectly symmetrical bands of cream and brown, others as small as three inches, fat as a pen in the middle and virtually monochromatic. No two are the same, except that each one ends in an exceptionally sharp point, with a small barb that leaves it sticking into your skin, as I had previously discovered from cleaning them too carelessly under the tap. They are sometimes used for the tops of fishing floats, or by calligraphers to mount nibs, or just a handful in a jar as decoration. They were once sold in the park shop until health and safety fears prevented it, but I was collecting them because, if you get one the right size, the blunt end that used to attach to the porcupine’s skin makes a particularly good stylus for a modern mobile phone. I’d lost my original stylus and broken the last quill I’d used for the job, which I’d collected from the enclosure, cleaned up, and cut down to size.

  Now it was my turn to be cut down to size. As I rummaged nonchalantly in the dirt, Mr. Porcupine came bustling out of his house, his bristling quills shimmering in the lamplight. I was surprised at how active he seemed, but unflustered, as I had been in the enclosure several times before without incident. But that was in daylight, when Mr. Porcupine had better things to do, like snuggle up (carefully, I presume) asleep with Mrs. Porcupine. Now I was on his patch, in his garden, on his time, and he didn’t like it. As he paced up and down I gave him more space, with the result that he soon had me herded into a corner. At which point he turned his back to me at a distance of about three yards, then reversed at high speed, brandishing his motile array of beautiful barbs like a lethal Red Indian headdress. I just had time to register the extent of his displeasure, and the unacceptable consequences of staying where I was, before it was time to act, and I found myself scrambling backward in the dark, over the fence, and falling heavily on my rear into a patch of nettles on the other side. The nettles went up my sweater and stung me comprehensively before I could scrabble myself away. Ouch, ouch, OUCH. I stood up and laughed with new esteem for this pint-sized animal pincushion. I had been totally trounced by what is technically an elaborate rodent. Mr. Porcupine, one; Mr. Zoo Director, nil. Respect.

  “TOURETTE TONY”

  I was introduced to Tony perhaps a week after Katherine died, while I was walking around the park with the children. This was before Katherine’s funeral, and everyone was giving me lots of space, but a couple of people from the film crew who had shad-owed me since before the purchase, and who were booked to stay until after the opening day (should it ever arrive) came over tentatively and said that there was someone, if I felt up to it, I ought to meet. We’d hired a digger, a full-size JCB excavator, and the operator, Tony, who had been on site for about a week, had been making a good impression with everybody. The zookeepers liked him, the maintenance guys liked him, the film crew liked him, and he could handle the digger like it was an extension of himself. Clearing huge swathes of scrub and rubble with deft efficiency, then moving it into apparently inaccessible areas with the grace of a ballerina, and without damaging anything, deploying the vast half-ton bucket on the mechanical dinosaur arm to carry out a procedure delicate enough to make a heart surgeon miss a beat. So he could handle a digger. He could also handle people, and by now, people issues were beginning to surface.

  The new crew wasn’t getting on that well with the old crew, whom they regarded with suspicion as potential collaborators in the alleged transgressions of the old regime, rumors about which were rife in the zoo world. None of the new people had ever worked in a place like this, which was pretty Wild West compared to the pristine, regimented environments through whose ranks they had progressed. But Tony had. During his seventeen years as a hired digger hand, Tony had worked in much worse, and was making no secret about wanting a full-time job with us. And we needed a head of maintenance. John was multi-skilled and able to fabricate or repair pretty well anything on a shoestring, but by his own admission, paperwork was not his strong point. We had to have someone in charge who could cope with the order forms, file receipts, and manage a budget, which goes with running a busy maintenance department in a modern zoo. I spoke to John, who said, “If that bloke wants a job I’d vouch for him and be more than happy to work under him,” which seemed positive. Tony was also a trained mechanic, welder, marksman, and an assistant Olympic archery coach, keen to set up lessons at the park should there be a demand. Having not been around, I asked various people what they thought, and it was unanimous. Everyone wanted Tony, and I did too. The film crew asked if they could film me from a distance talking to him and taking him on, so I conducted an informal interview next to the JCB to sound him out, making sure that his approach to handling people fitted in with our needs, then took him on with a shake of the hand. Immediately Tony became an invaluable member of the team, cheering people up, nudging them along, and using his technical skills with great efficiency.

  And after he started, it transpired that Tony had another special skill: swearing. From my time working on building sites many years ago I’d noticed that prolific swearing was basically the dialect in which the building trade operates. It’s even in the terminology. Cement is shite; nothing is “not straight,” it’s pissed. Swear words are even used as fillers when people can’t think of what else to say, as in an example I remember from my first day on a bricklaying training course. The man working next to me asked, “Can you pass the, er, fucking, the, er, fucking, the fucking hammer?” That seemed about par for the course: roughly one in three or four words was a profanity of some sort. Tony, as a senior veteran of the game and former soldier, had got his average swear rate up to one in two on occasion, though he sometimes lapsed back to one in three.

  Tony’s speech is not just littered but positively crowded out with expletives, but if you accept that and listen carefully there is an almost poetic quality to some of his utterances. Once he cornered me to share his concerns that our advertising strategy needed to be wider than the medium of print. What he actually said was “Not every fucker reads the fucking paper. I was in the fucking paper the other day, I thought, fuck me every cunt’s going to be taking the piss. Fuck me if only one fucker did. I thought, fucking hell.” Not quite Guild of Poetry, perhaps, but pithy nevertheless. He was christened “Tourette Tony” (or sometimes simply “Fucking Tony,” to distinguish him from “Kiosk Tony,” who came later), and appointed himself “Chairman of the DZP Tourette Club.”

  Before Katherine died, I would be out there, listening to everybody, trying to build bridges, trying to make sure that everybody got talking again. After Katherine died, I was out there again, eventually, watching from close up but at what seemed like an extreme distance, not even able to muster the energy for contempt at the pathetic bickering, which daily demonstrated that even Milo and Ella exhibited more self-awareness. There was so much to do, and such a clear, straight line in which to proceed, and to squander so much energy on such petty issues seemed like a crime. Everybody with any business experience that I spoke to assured me that “staff” were always a big headache, but in my acutely distanced state, this seemed to me ultimately like a crime against the animals. Yet, in any kind of crisis, all pettiness was put to one side and everybody pulled together with resolute, practical professionalism.

  Like the day they came to get the two jaguars, and it very nearly all went wrong.

  One day early on, it was time to move the two female jaguars. This was a momentous occasion for us, because it was something I had agreed to with Peter Wearden at the council and Mike Thomas, and I knew that the entire zoo community was watching. It could never have happened under the old regime, and though it was a difficult bullet for us to bite, the two beautiful jaguars were going to a purpose-built big-cat park, where they would live in a brand-new enclosure, owned and run by a senior member of BIAZA. We were paying our dues. The jags would be better off, and we would be better off without the constant risk of their escaping. According to what people said, we may even get some zebras in return, somewhere down the line. And when
it was over, the keepers would get to demolish the much-hated, dilapidated wooden house for the jags, which they had been wanting to do for so long.

  It had been mooted by one or two people that we could actually sell the jags, worth several thousand pounds each, to a private collector who could hold them perfectly legally, with the right facilities, under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act. Much as we needed the money, we also wanted to do the right thing. Under such scrutiny, now was not the time to deviate from the script. I was also looking forward to seeing how another team from an established mainstream zoo, Thrigby Hall, in Norwich, would operate—and initially, I was not disappointed.

  An immaculate, anonymous white van arrived, exactly like a plumber might use (though these guys arrived when they said they would), and two unbelievably grizzled rangers emerged from it, clad entirely in green, apart from old brown boots, the mandatory dog-eared Indiana Jones hats, and leather pouches on their belts. Their weather-beaten faces and clothing made them seem a part of the woodland around the jag house, almost as if they were covered in moss, or a wren might fly out of one of their beards. Like Bob Lawrence, who had come down from the Midlands to dart Sovereign for us, these two looked like they’d seen it all before and could cope with anything.

  So we were surprised when they produced wooden crates from the back of the van, which didn’t look quite up to the specifications for holding jaguars. Rob, as head keeper, raised this with them. “Don’t you worry, we’ve moved countless jags in these crates,” they assured us. One of the boxes was newer than the other, made from heavy-duty marine plywood, and this was deployed first. Positioned inside the jag house against the solid steel gate into the enclosure, it was nailed in place with big battens to prevent it moving should the first jag not enter cleanly, or begin to struggle. Kelly called her with the usual promise of food in the house, the gate was raised, the cat jumped in, and the door of the box was shut behind her. As simple as that. There were no windows in this box, but a heavy-gauge mesh door to provide light. We carried the box down to the van and loaded it in like removal men carrying a tea chest of crockery—easy does it, but no problem at all. The only difference was that you really had to concentrate on keeping your fingers away from the mesh on the door, or they’d be ripped off and eaten in an instant.