An Alligator in the Bathroom...And Other Stories

by Carter Langdale

  Westies are popular these days as pets and, because of their looks, they might be thought of as jolly little lapdogs, forgetting what they were bred for. They, like their relatives the Cairn and Skye terriers and the famous Scottie, are of an ancient race, built for work in the hard terrain and sometimes very rough weather of the Highlands. They have strong legs ideal for digging, and their sworn foes are the rat, the fox and the badger, which live down holes.

  My lord’s Westie had done nothing more than return to its ancestral duties, and its instincts had taken it far into enemy territory. As I arrived, Plan B was about to be implemented, which I found shocking enough, but not as shocking as recognising a certain aristocratic chap whose Rolls-Royce I had shunted when covered in fleas. Luckily, he didn’t recognise me in full uniform and I hoped things would stay that way.

  ‘Ah, Inspector, thank goodness you’re here,’ said the viscount. ‘You can advise this fellow where to start.’

  ‘This fellow, my lord?’

  ‘Yes, he’s going to drive the JCB thing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t let you dig up a badger sett with a JCB. It’s against the law.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? I’m chairman of the bench.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re the Archangel Gabriel, you’re not digging up a badger sett.’

  This was a fellow unused to being contradicted and he was quite taken aback. Obviously I had not understood the gravity of the situation so, grasping my arm, he led me aside to explain the horror of it all, man to man.

  ‘Look here, Inspector,’ he said – or words to that effect. ‘It’s my wife’s dog, and my fault. It’s surely gone down the sett. My wife and daughters have made it plain to me that Christmas will not occur this year, nor possibly any other year, if I do not retrieve that which I have lost. The entire festive season and very probably the rest of my life will be spent in isolation. Dinner will be cold shoulder and hot tongue. You see?’

  A parade followed, his lordship striding out in the lead, me following with my low-tech situation-retrieving kit, being a bundle of slim iron rods, a rubber mallet and a stethoscope, and a dozen miscellaneous estate workers in line astern. When we reached the sett I could see a big problem. The sett, going by the size of it, was an ancestral home for a family going back even further than his lordship’s.

  The stethoscope is an instrument that always inspires respect, and there was deep silence around me as I began my methodical exploration, thrusting a rod into the soil and placing my stethoscope on it to listen for vibrations. Nothing there, so we’ll try here, and here. There was no need to ask for quiet. The deference shown to the expert stethoscoper could not have been greater had I been a druid weaving a spell before true believers. In fact, it was a technique we law-abiders learned from badger diggers, who search setts for tunnelling activity in this way.

  As I progressed, I needed my mallet to drive a rod into some stony ground and, since it was more or less at his feet, I asked his lordship if he’d pass it to me.

  ‘Perkins,’ said he to a man twenty yards away, ‘pass that mallet to the Inspector.’

  I must have recycled my bundle of rods three times and still no result. There was just a hint of impatience in his lordship. I could tell he was thinking JCB. Maybe he had suddenly realised who I was, and that his hopes of a happy Christmas were resting on the flea-ridden idiot who had rammed his Roller.

  I was thinking that perhaps the terrier had had a fight and lost. For the umpteenth time I rodded and stethoscoped. Despondent, I straightened up, just in time to see a small, dirty, wet, bedraggled, frightened bundle of hair on legs rocket out of a hole, right at the feet of his lordship and straight into his arms.

  If the estate workers had been a football team, they had scored in the final minute. Joy was unconfined. Presumably, a lordship under a cloud with her ladyship meant an equal or even greater lack of sunshine for everybody else on the estate, but never mind. The clouds were gone, replaced by glorious rainbows.

  Something had trapped the terrier and, somehow, all my mallet banging and rod wiggling had revealed light at the end of the tunnel. A fortunate accident it may have been but, as far as my client was concerned, I was Good King Wenceslas with knobs on. I had never been hugged by a peer of the realm before, and a moment later when her ladyship arrived I was given innumerable noble kisses too.

  A happy band trouped back to the big house, the butler was instructed to bring champagne and I was told to name my heart’s desire. I thought of asking if the chauffeur could take me in the Roller to the party in York, and wait while I sank a few jars, but I just did my usual ‘oh, all in a day’s work, don’t you know’ routine.

  A few days later, an enormous hamper full of Harrods goodies arrived at our door, and I had a message from York about an anonymous donation, the biggest single donation they’d seen in years. Thank you, my lord.

  7

  PERCY THE ELUSIVE PORPOISE

  I took a call on Radio Langdale. Carol had had two messages about a dolphin in the river. I thought it was a hoax at first, or a well meaning but short-sighted animal lover who didn’t know a dolphin from a salmon. We had some quite big salmon swimming up our river, but they had a purpose and it was the time of year, while it was a hell of a long way upstream for a dolphin to go by accident. But no. These two calls were quite definite. It was a dolphin.

  Anything to do with wild animals was always liable to push up through my list of priorities and, just at that moment, there wasn’t much else going on so I’d go and have a look at this dolphin. We are in the olden days, remember, without GPS and Google Maps, so I only had a second-hand description of a stretch of the river that was quite out of the way, not really near anywhere populated. This could prove fortunate, if it was a dolphin, because there wouldn’t be crowds of people getting easy access to rubberneck and upset it.

  I walked up and down the bank for an hour and a half before I saw it, and what a thrill that was. No, it wasn’t a dolphin but a very similar, rather smaller animal, a porpoise, a young harbour porpoise in fact, and it was the first time I’d seen one.

  Its behaviour didn’t seem quite normal, from what I knew. The action of coming out of the water and diving back in is called porpoising, so of course that’s what it would do, but not so often, I thought. I watched it for an hour, entranced and undisturbed, knowing that it was in the wrong place and that its future there could only be short term. All kinds of dramatic porpoise rescue scenarios ran through my mind, but I decided that the best thing for the moment would be to leave matters as they were, monitor the situation, and hope that the animal would sort itself out, turn itself round, swim back down the river where it would join the tidal Ouse and thence into the Humber estuary where all Yorkshire rivers end up (except the Tees which, admittedly, is only half Yorkshire – Ed.), and out to the North Sea where it belonged.

  At home, I got my animal books out and looked up the porpoise. I knew it was a cetacean, that is, a type of whale, and a toothed one (Odontoceti), and that it was a hunter-predator. I knew what it looked like – triangular dorsal fin, dark grey back, white belly – and that a big threat to the species was being caught up in fishing gear. My books told me that it could dive to more than 600 feet but tended to swim nearer the surface, coming up every half-minute or so to breathe, when it made that sneezing noise I’d heard. Well, I thought, my porpoise was coming up more often than that.

  The name came from the Latin porcus piscis, which translates as pig fish, but we used to call it by the Anglo-Saxon name mereswine, or sea pig, all of which I thought was a bit mean.

  They use their own form of sonar echolocation by sending out click sounds that they can read as they bounce back, to locate useful quantities of prey fish but also to communicate with other porpoises. They have good eyesight and much better normal hearing than humans; these are factors that were to play a big part in the story, as was their ability to swim very fast indeed and their shy, elusive nature. In fa
ct, because they are so shy and retiring, not much is known about what they do in the wild.

  None of this boded well for a thoroughly domesticated RSPCA inspector brought up on dogs and cats and the occasional alligator, but every day for a week I got up early so I could go and see my new object of fascination. It was a wild animal that had been given a name, something I wouldn’t normally go along with, but he was now called Percy, after the local paper ran a piece on it/him, although we didn’t know if he was a Percy or a Priscilla.

  As that week went by, Percy increased the frequency of his breathing until he was coming up every few seconds, so I contacted a biologist author I knew of, who lived not far away and had written books on dolphins. He was happy to come with me to see Percy.

  His first impressions were not good. Percy, the biologist said, was already suffering from the effects of being in fresh water. The skin was going paler and there were a few small sores on the back and on the dorsal fin. Even so, after some discussion, the decision was to leave it a bit longer and hope nature would resolve matters.

  Another week went by of early-morning visits, but things only got worse. If we couldn’t get Percy back in the sea soon, he was going to become so sick that he would have to be put down.

  I called the fire brigade. All the emergency services were ever willing to help the RSPCA, any time of day or night, and vice versa. We made a plan. A special unit of half a dozen firemen, trained in marine rescue, turned up with a sea-going inflatable boat and a net. We strung the net across the river upstream of Percy, intending to drive him into it, and started the boat’s two big engines.

  Percy’s reaction was immediate. For him, the noise must have been utterly deafening. He disappeared and came up again about 200 yards further up, having dived under our net. We dismantled, re-erected and tried again. Same result. Tried again, and this time Percy went the other route, leaping right over the top of our net and showing us all what fools we were. After three hours of this, the firemen reluctantly pulled their boat out of the water, shook my hand and wished me the best of British.

  I spent the next two days calling every expert I could, in zoos, aquariums, universities, hoping somebody would have a bright idea. Meanwhile, there were numerous voices saying I should do the decent thing and have Percy humanely killed. I knew it might come to that, but not yet.

  I rang Geoff, one of my management hierarchy, a senior man based in Sheffield, because I knew he had just acquired a new rescue boat and was the regional leader on such matters. He was delighted at the idea of trying out his new kit and proving it in action and so we, with my old mucker Dan, set about mounting our own rescue.

  Plan B was to catch Percy in a much bigger net that we’d had urgently put together from several smaller ones, and pull him into the boat. This boat was not as big as the fire brigade’s but the one engine had the same effect, and Percy dashed off, soaring over our trap.

  Plan C was to paddle the boat in silence and sneak up on the animal, and that didn’t work either. As soon as we got near, off he went, downstream this time, which raised our hopes of chasing him in the right direction, but when we approached again he turned and shot past us upstream.

  Up and down the river we went, for miles and hours, including sliding over a weir, where we almost capsized while Percy proved that he was in his element and we were not. It was exhausting work. He was far too clever for us, and could dive below us out of our sight and stay down for ages. The whole business began to look impossible. I remembered what it said in the books. Shy and retiring nature. Swims very fast. We withdrew to ponder Plan D.

  Updates were now appearing every day in the local press, which brought the public to see Percy and helped create a wave of positive interest. Unfortunately, all the informed opinion was against us. Vets, cetacean experts and so on were saying I should call in a marksman and put Percy out of his misery.

  Some other marksmen too increased the pressure. I can only assume it was stupid boys, but we saw two small holes in Percy’s dorsal fin and what looked like small wounds on his body, doubtless done with an air rifle.

  My immediate boss, Fred Sheriff, gave me four more days. If I couldn’t effect a rescue, and Percy did not rescue himself, I had to follow the experts and have him destroyed. I knew a man who could do the job, a deer-stalker who was a crack shot and had the right weapon. I was confident that he could deliver the humane bullet, but not if I could help it.

  The telly was involved by this stage, with Yorkshire TV’s evening news programme, Calendar, also running a daily update and speculating on Percy’s probable doom. It was turning into a big story and it looked more and more as if it was going to end badly – very badly indeed for Percy, and not so hot for the RSPCA.

  At last I had an offer of practical help from the great world of experts, admittedly with a bit of a commercial angle to it but enormously welcome anyway. Flamingo Land zoo was big on dolphin displays, not all that many miles away, near Malton, and a much smaller operation then than it is now. The main dolphin man rang and said he and his team would like to have a go. I explained all that we’d done before and while no new ideas came forth, we agreed we’d have a try anyway.

  Dan and Geoff were re-enlisted, and we met up on the river bank at sunrise with two days left of our deadline. The Flamingo Land contingent was something of a surprise, being the general manager, the senior dolphin keeper and the young woman who ran the parrot show, with a small inflatable boat and a pair of oars.

  We all looked at Percy and he was in a bad way. His sores were much worse, his skin had a very unhealthy looking pallor, and he was coming up for air more frequently than ever. The dolphin keeper had a grim expression. He’d never seen anything like it. Of course, his dolphins at the zoo were in tip-top condition; the contrast with poor Percy obviously hit home.

  We knew that rowing wouldn’t work. We’d never got within a hundred yards of the animal before he heard us and dived, so we hatched yet another plan. We used the old narrowboat method of a tow rope, and instead of a horse we had my two RSPCA pals, one on each side of the river, dragging the boat quietly along. More hours went by, and more miles, back and forth as Percy eluded us at will. There was quite a crowd by now, including the telly crew, and we even had some rope-tugging volunteers, but Percy got the better of us as always.

  We really were at the point of throwing in the towel, tired, frustrated, defeated, miserable, fed up to the teeth, when we had one last go. Whether Percy was also feeling tired, miserable and fed up we’ll never know. Maybe he was disoriented by the noise of the crowd coming from all sides. Whatever the reason, he allowed us – at that moment I was in the boat with the Flamingo Land dolphin man – to creep up on him. I was behind, the dolphin trainer was in the bow, and he leant over and grabbed Percy by the tail.

  Percy didn’t like it, and in my rush to help I nearly had us all in the water, but I got hold of some bit or other and we pulled him aboard. A smallish one like him should have weighed maybe 45 kilos, or less as he hadn’t eaten for a fortnight, but those kilos were all muscle. If you put it in fisherman’s terms, we were struggling to get a hold on a 100-pound salmon.

  To loud cheers and acclaim, we had him in the boat at last. It was a great moment, and I cannot describe quite how I felt. I’d won the cup, Wimbledon, the Olympics, everything. Then I looked at the dolphin man and he looked at me. We were both thinking the same thing. This much reduced creature we’d caught was too far gone. Percy wasn’t going to make it after all.

  As well as arranging the sharpshooter, I’d lined up facilities for the best-case scenario, which was a police escort to the nearest seaside town, where two fishing boats and crews were waiting to take Percy out to sea. That was forty miles by road, in my van, out of the water. No chance.

  The young woman who ran the Flamingo Land parrot show suddenly turned up with the emergency supplies they’d brought – a tub of lanolin and a pile of blankets. We smeared lanolin all over Percy in an attempt to keep his skin in some sort
of condition and to stop him overheating. The blankets we soaked in the river and covered him with as well as we could, apart from two that we knotted and made into a sling.

  By the time we got him to the road and my van, the police were there. We had flashing blue lights in front and behind, and behind that came Flamingo Land, Yorkshire TV, the press and Uncle Tom Cobleigh. We were at the harbour in the shortest possible time, and now our fears started piling up. After days and weeks of fruitless efforts and frustration, everything had gone with mechanical smoothness since the moment we actually caught Percy. It was all too pat. He was breathing fairly well, but he was in such shabby condition that we had horrible thoughts of him slipping into the sea and turning belly up.

  Our fishermen friends were keen to help, despite porpoises not being their natural allies except in the sense that they both like mackerel. One fishing boat was to take the TV crew. The other was to take the RSPCA, Flamingo Land, and Percy.

  The first major incident was a fisherman dropping his outboard motor on the foot of the TV presenter, who pressed on regardless of the pain and, we later found out, several broken foot bones.

  We were to go about a mile out to sea, which we hoped would be far enough to stop Percy from being really bloody-minded and turning back for the shore. At one point on our way, we hit a couple of breakers and shipped quite a big splash. The sea water seemed to wake Percy up and he began flapping about. Big smiles all round. Everything was going to be all right, wasn’t it?

  We lowered him over the side in our blanket sling, thinking he might not be strong enough to swim away, or might need a few minutes to acclimatise. Not likely. He thrashed with his tail, ripped the sling from our hands, and disappeared. Twice he surfaced and leapt as he headed for home, and that was the last we saw of him.