It was a devastating error in judgement. Seven hardworking loyal dogs were dead. I hated to think how he was going to tell the other farmers that their valued companions and tools of their trade hadn’t made it. The young farmer was sobbing, and looked in complete shock. As I stared up into his eyes they looked tortured; it was clear this was something he was never going to get over.
As we drove the two survivors back to the clinic for a night of rest and fluids I asked Alastair if he’d like me to call my friends at the SPCA.
‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘that young boy has already paid the price for his actions.’
CHAPTER 22
Gut instinct
Well, hooray for gut instincts! So often we get them, but I was constantly left wondering whether these unsubstantiated feelings should be embraced or ignored.
Though as the years have passed, I would have to note that nine out of ten times our gut instincts are bang on.
On one occasion I got myself in a little trouble with my gut instinct.
On paper the Smiths were perfect: animal mad with lots of love and land on offer and to top it off nicely the wife was a vegetarian! No better home could be expected for our pets-only forever-home criteria; at HUHA our animals for rehoming are not for killing, eating or breeding. Except there was that niggling gut feeling.
When I phoned them to say that we wouldn’t be giving any of HUHA’s sanctuary pigs or cows to them for adoption, but we wished them well, there were tears, tantrums and a late-night abusive phone call. As I arrived at my part-time job at the Wellington vet clinic, I was sat down and told that the Smiths, who happened to be clients of the clinic, were so offended by my actions that they and their extended family were boycotting the clinic while I was still in its employ! Thank goodness my boss valued me and my job was safe, but my gut instincts had landed me in more than a little trouble that day and I was left wondering if I was right. The thought did briefly cross my mind that maybe I was over-analysing the situation and perhaps I was just a judgemental meanie!
I had accepted that I’d never know if my intuition was right or if I was way out of line, when several months later Jim wandered into the lounge one afternoon, grinning at me.
‘There you go, you can put yourself out of your misery.’ As he tossed me the paper he exclaimed, ‘You were right!’
As I started to read the article headed ‘These little piggies have roast beef ’, my jaw dropped. The sweet animal-hugging vegetarian, who had condemned me so harshly for not adopting out our animals to her, had started a free-range home-kill meat business and breeding facility. There she was with her husband, proudly cuddling one of their pigs. The article went into detail about how much they loved their lifestyle, their animals and their new wonderful service to the community.
While I agree that free-range pig farming can be a momentous improvement on the cruel practice of factory farming, I think it’s important for people to be honest and ethical in their intentions—a vegetarian pig farmer is somewhat hypocritical in my view!
‘Hey Carolyn, I just drove past the circus and there were a whole lot of protesters picketing it.’
Jim was calling me from his cell phone. He made a great roving reporter, and could have had a job as the eye in the sky for the local radio station.
‘Is it the elephant do you think?’
We had heard about the controversy surrounding this particular circus and its exploitation of exotic animals. A year had passed since our sneak peek behind the scenes of this very circus, and the animals we had seen had not stopped preying on our minds. As Jim continued to talk, all the unpleasant memories came flooding back.
‘What do you think, should we protest with them?’ Jim had pulled over to watch the chaos as the big top was being erected in a local park.
‘I don’t know. I wonder if anyone has actually just talked to him . . . maybe we should try?’
As we sat with the ringmaster, we just listened at first. It was obvious he still loved an audience and he loved to tell his story. His was a classic; he had joined the circus as a boy and 50-odd years later it was all he knew. We asked him what his plans were and he admitted that he was tired and would love to slow down as his health was deteriorating. ‘But with the bloody protesters on his back’ he was too proud and stubborn to make the move.
Over the next week Jim and I went to the river and foraged for willow branches for the elephant, loaded up Jim’s ute and drove our offerings to the circus. We became familiar faces and the team of roadies were always grateful for our help. Before long we were able to talk to the ringmaster about retiring the animals. There was the elephant, the monkeys, the donkeys and pony as well as the lions, poodles and doves. He agreed it was time to let all of them go, except for the poodles and doves which were his wife’s much-loved pets. After doing the sums and assessing our land we gave ourselves a reality check; lions and an elephant were probably too much for us to handle and after talking with the ringmaster we knew he had other good offers on the table from established wildlife sanctuaries. No one, however, wanted the monkeys. There were no sensible solutions in the pipeline, so we decided we would put our hands up. We also agreed to take Pablo the pony and Jenny and Wee One the donkeys back to HUHA.
The day we were going to pick up the monkeys came along in a bit of a hurry. The ringmaster wasn’t well and needed to move them on faster than agreed. It was winter and the tricky thing was that we didn’t have anywhere to put them yet, let alone have an official sign-off from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF). The ringmaster insisted that they needed to be gone immediately. He also insisted that we pay for the monkeys’ caravan and temporary enclosure as part of the deal for which he would accept no less than $20,000. We tried to reason with him but his final words were always, ‘Well you can bugger off then, and they can stay here.’
We didn’t want to lose the opportunity to get them out of the circus. We knew there was an opportunity for the ringmaster to sell them to another circus, so we weighed up our options and organised a second mortgage on our house. Forty thousand dollars, half for the caravan and half to build a big new enclosure for the monkeys as soon as the ground firmed.
MAF were amazing. They, too, were keen to see the circus animals retired and so instead of coming down heavily on this very peculiar last-minute transaction, they set about issuing us a temporary circus animal layover permit. As long as the monkeys’ caravan was behind a 1.8-metre perimeter fence and we adhered to all the rules we would be okay.
Jim and I drove for four hours to collect the monkeys. We walked across the field towards the big top and took a shortcut, bypassing the front entrance, hopping over the barrier rope, and headed straight to the monkeys’ caravan. There was a bone-chilling noise in the air that we immediately identified as monkey screams. We looked at each other and flew around the corner to see what was going on.
It was horrible. A circus roadie, who had his back to us and didn’t realise we were there, continued on with his game. The stick he was carrying was solid enough not to break as he ran it back and forth along the wire mesh that the monkeys sat trapped behind, and thin and long enough to be able to poke through the bars at the hysterically screaming monkeys. Circus folk are like family to one another, and we knew that if we made a scene all deals would be off, so we dropped back and reapproached from the front in full view. By the time we were standing next to him the roadie’s game was over and his stick had been replaced with a hose. He was giving the monkey caravan a final hose down for our benefit, and our hearts broke when we saw through the wire all three monkeys huddled in the back corner of their small compartments.
‘Yeah, you only have to do this every few days,’ the roadie announced in a helpful manner, a proud and slimy grin on his face.
‘Don’t you wait until they are out of their cages?’ I asked with forced interest.
‘Nah, they don’t care,’ he replied as he flicked icy water around in the wintry cold, wetting their bedding and ricoch
eting drops on the monkeys’ quivering little bodies.
We couldn’t get those little ones out of there fast enough. We handed over the money, loaded up our ute and attached the trailer containing three emotionally broken monkeys—Joanna had sadly died since our first visit—to the towbar, and we were gone. It was the second time we had driven away from the little circus quiet and sober. But this time we had made a difference; this time we had broken the cycle.
It’s a weird feeling waking up to the realisation that there are monkeys in your garden. Having the monkeys at home gave me the sense that anything is achievable if you are driven, careful and strategic.
Although the three monkeys were now safe, for us and for them, the journey to find them happiness had only just begun. There were so many questions to answer. It was too wet and muddy underfoot to build the monkey facility, so how were we going to exercise them and keep them enriched over the winter months—especially if they had to stay in that awful prison of a caravan? How were we going to keep Charlie’s crippled body as pain-free as possible? How were we going to handle tethering and walking monkeys on leads, which was so morally against every fibre of our beings? And how long was Laurie going to have to wear the soul-destroying chain that was bolted to his collar?
‘This is just going to have to be a sticking-plaster period,’ I said to Jim. ‘We can’t make it all perfect and undo all the damage with a magic wand. We will just have to suck it up and transition with them.’
I grimaced at the idea of a monkey on a tether and I hated them being trapped in that god-awful caravan. But from that point on we had to do everything properly and carefully for their sanity and safety, as well as ours. We would stick to the routine they knew for now.
One huge concern was how Rachel was coping without her sister. The transfer of the monkeys had happened in such a hurry we hadn’t stopped to fully process the awful news that Joanna had died.
‘We were so close to helping her,’ Jim said, kicking at a rock on the driveway.
I could see the frustration on his face as he hung his head in grief and sorrow for a little monkey we barely knew. We had been told that while in the Hawke’s Bay, Joanna had been tethered to a tree. The day was unprecedentedly hot, and when Joanna had knocked her water bowl over it hadn’t taken long for the heat to consume her and she died of heatstroke in a matter of minutes. So just a month later, there we were, left with half of a duo. We couldn’t even begin to understand what Rachel must be going through. So much change. So much devastation. Her life had been taken out of her control and now she had lost probably the only one who could truly comfort her.
Jim and I were wandering around The Warehouse like two new shell-shocked parents, picking out buckets, gloves and scrubbing brushes when I went off in the direction of the toy department. My lovely husband is amazing in so many ways, but he has zero tolerance for shopping, and as soon as I start to divert off the beaten track his lips begin to thin and his tone sharpens.
‘Where are you going?’ Jim called out.
‘I think Rachel needs a toy,’ I announced as I disappeared down the toy aisle.
Hmm, now which toy would I like if I were a lonely monkey? I wondered. I reappeared at Jim’s side with a choice of three. A classic teddy, a little fluffy monkey and a soft Tigger rattle.
When we got home I couldn’t wait to show Rachel the toys. First I offered up the little monkey, which she grabbed off me and immediately dropped. She displayed the same lack of interest in the teddy too. Then I passed her the Tigger rattle. Her eyes fixated on it as she carefully took it from my hand, and when she started to make kissy faces and coo softly to it we knew we had a winner. From then on there was never a moment that Rachel wasn’t holding Tigger. We even bought her a second Tigger for emergencies and for switching when the original needed washing.
CHAPTER 23
Laurie
Jim had come up with a genius plan to build the three monkeys temporary bedrooms in one bay of our garage.
MAF approved the idea as an interim containment facility and we set to work straight away. Winter was getting wild and woolly and the cramped caravan just wasn’t going to cut it.
Each of the monkeys had to be housed separately. There was no getting around it with their varying ages and species, as well as a whole lot of dysfunction. They liked to see each other but didn’t want contact. The monkey garage was great. As the winds howled outside the monkeys were toasty warm under a heat lamp, with hammocks and interesting knobby tree trunks to climb and fresh leafy branches and ponga ferns brought in daily. They were as content as could be until we could build them their new enclosures.
When there were breaks in the weather we would clip an extra-long dog lead to each of their collars and take them for a stroll around the property, to climb a tree or be tethered to something fun and enriching. Laurie was the trickiest to convince to come out of his room. He still had the awful piece of chain bolted to his collar and he protected it like his life depended on it. We soon learnt to read how he was feeling and whether he wanted to engage with us or not by how he handled the chain. It was the only way he knew to communicate with us. We hated the chain but were glad it gave him the power of choice—something we assumed he had had little of.
On calm or sunny days we would hold up the clip of a lead and Laurie would react in one of two ways. The first way was to take the free end of the chain dangling from his neck and carefully pass the link through the mesh so we could attach the dog lead. We would then open his door and thread the lead right though. Laurie would jump up on a shoulder and we would head outside. He was just so nervous. Until he was safely up his favourite tree and making jungle noises, it was a matter of walking quietly and slowly so he wouldn’t take fright and have a huge screaming meltdown.
The other reaction we would get was heartbreaking. He would hold the chain that dangled from his neck and cross both hands over it, shielding it against his chest. It was as if he was guarding it from us, protecting himself from his handler and whatever situation he was about to be forced into. He would scream and rock and chatter his teeth. In response, we would divert our eyes and just stand and breathe calmly until he settled, then offer him a positive experience, like passing him his favourite food, a grape.
Laurie’s circus keepers had told us that he was no longer used in shows because he had become extremely unpredictable and would bite. Some of the acrobats in the circus had surreptitiously filmed footage of him being kept in a small dog crate away from the other animals. They were distressed by his level of care and leaked the sad footage to the media. So Jim continued to diligently sit with Laurie, and the more time they spent quietly and relaxed in each other’s company the more familiar they became to each other. The two of them would spend hours just sitting with Laurie curled up on Jim’s knee.
Together they were detoxing from the stresses of life.
Laurie’s confidence just got better and better, and we discovered that he loved to ‘paint’. When we first found him smearing his caravan with poo, we were saddened as we suspected it was a learned behaviour from the boredom of his captive life. But then we decided to evolve his passion into something a little healthier, and so with canvas, face paint and sponges placed in front of a very excited Laurie, he would, with the helpful assistance of Jim, paint. I loved to watch the two of them; they’d emerge from a session of great artistic focus both covered with paint from head to toe. Laurie didn’t restrict himself just to paint and canvas; he helpfully redecorated his day hut too.
CHAPTER 24
Weathering the storms
It was one of those fluffy duvet mornings, when you are so warm and toasty in bed that you just can’t help but wake up with a smile.
We hadn’t slept through our alarm, which was a nice change, and Jim, followed by five dogs, had already found his way to the toilet and started on his Sudoku. I was contemplating my dash to the bathroom, but knew I could have another blissful twenty minutes if Jim’s habits were true to form. T
he wind was lashing at the windows and in the dawn light I could make out the silhouettes of the young pine trees surrounding our house, bending as the strong gusts hit. I started to think about the day ahead: we had to check on the animals, make sure they were warm enough and unaffected by the storm. It was definitely a porridge-type of a morning for the monkeys.
And then we needed to get ready to go to court. Who knew a shared driveway could cause such drama?
The phone ringing next to the bed jolted me from my thoughts. It was my friend Sam doing her morning check-in. Sam is an amazingly kind and clever lady, and had become interested in HUHA work. When I first met her at the SPCA years earlier, her passion for horses and their rescue and rehabilitation brought us together. Aside from her regular visits to the sanctuary, we called each other almost daily to bounce around ideas. Early morning was the perfect time for Sam and me to touch base.
We were working through our horse rehoming to-do list, when I heard an almighty noise. It sounded like ripping metal.
‘Holy heck,’ I expleted down the phone.
Jim came barrelling down the hallway with a sleepy Leah and the five dogs in tow. ‘Are you all right?’ He looked at me wide-eyed.
We had no idea what had just happened. Jim dashed back out of the room and I picked up the phone receiver which I had dropped in shock.
I assured Sam that whatever it was it had passed and snuggled back down under the cosy duvet to talk horse again. I was in total denial that it really was time to get up and potentially something quite huge had just happened. The dogs had all burrowed under the duvet, which was a treat I allowed them when Jim wasn’t looking, and I just didn’t have the heart to kick them out so quickly.
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