It was in the spring of 2005 that it landed on our doorstep:
the brochure that would change our lives forever. Like anyother brochure from a real estate agent, at first wedismissed it. But, unlike any other brochure from a realestate agent, here we saw Dartmoor Wildlife Parkadvertised for the first time. My sister Melissa had sent mea copy in France, with a note attached: “Your dreamscenario.” I had to agree with her that although I thought Iwas already living in my dream scenario, this odd offer of acountry house with zoo attached seemed even better—ifwe could get it, which seemed unlikely. And if there wasnothing wrong with it, which also seemed unlikely. Theremust have been some serious structural problems in thehouse, or the grounds or enclosures, or some fundamentalflaw with the business that was impossible to rectify.
Yet, even with this near certainty of eventual failure, theentire family was sufficiently intrigued to investigate further.
A flight of fancy? Perhaps, but it was one for which, wedecided, we could restructure our entire lives.
My father, Ben Harry Mee, had died a few months before,and Mum was going to have to sell the family home wherethey had lived for the last twenty years, a five-bedroomhouse in Surrey set on two acres, which had just beenvalued at ￡1.2 million. This astonishing amount not onlyreflected the pleasant surroundings, but also, mostimportant, its proximity to London, comfortably within theeconomic security cordon of Route M25. Twenty-fiveminutes by train from London Bridge, this was thestockbroker belt, an enviable position on the propertyladder achieved by my father, who, as the son of anenlightened Doncaster miner, had worked hard andinvested shrewdly on behalf of his offspring all his life.
Ben did in fact work at the stock exchange for the lastfifteen years of his career, but not as a broker, a position hefelt could be morally dubious. Dad was administrationcontroller, overseeing the administrative duties for theLondon Stock Exchange, and for the exchanges inManchester, Dublin, and Liverpool, plus a total of elevenregional and Irish amalgamated buildings. (At a similarstage in my life I was having trouble running my admin as asingle self-employed journalist.) So, as a family, we wererelatively well-off, though not actually rich, and with no liquidassets to support any whimsical ventures. In 2005, HalifaxBank, with one of the largest real estate agencies in Britain,estimated that there were 67,000 such properties valued atover ￡1 million in the UK, but we seemed to be the onlyfamily who decided to cash it all in and a have a crack atbuying a zoo.
It seemed like a lost cause from the beginning, but onethat we knew we’d regret if we didn’t pursue. We had a planof sorts. Mum had been going to sell the house anddownsize to something smaller and more manageable, likea two- or three-bedroom cottage, then live in peace andsecurity with a buffer of cash, but with space for only one ortwo offspring to visit with their various broods at any time.
The problem, and what we all worried about, was that thisisolation in old age could be the waiting room for a gradualdeterioration (and, as she saw it, inevitable dementia) anddeath.
The new plan was to upsize the family assets and Mum’shome to a twelve-bedroom house surrounded by astagnated business about which we knew nothing. I wouldabandon France altogether and put my book on hold,Duncan would stop working in London, and we would thenlive together and run the zoo full-time. Mum would bespared the daily concerns of running the zoo, but wouldbenefit from the stimulating environment and having herfamily around in an exciting new life looking after twohundred exotic animals. What could possibly go wrong?
Come on, Mum . . . it’ll be fine.
In fact, it was a surprisingly easy sell. Mum has alwaysbeen adventurous, and she likes big cats. When she wasseventy-three, I took her to a lion sanctuary where you couldwalk in the bush with lions and stroke them in theirenclosures; many were captive bred, descended from lionsrescued from being shot by farmers. I was awestruck by thelions’ size and frankly terrified, never quite able to let go ofthe idea that I wasn’t meant to be this close to thesepredators. Every whisker twitch triggered in me a jolt ofadrenaline that was translated into an involuntary flinch.
Mum just tickled them under the chin and said, “Ooh, aren’tthey lovely?” The next year this adventurous lady tried skiingfor the first time. So the concept of buying a zoo was notdismissed out of hand.
None of us liked the idea of Mum being on her own, sowe were already looking at her living with one of us,perhaps on a larger property with pooled resources. Whichis how the details of Dartmoor Wildlife Park, courtesy ofKnight Frank, a real estate agent in the South of England,happened to drop through Mum’s letterbox. My sisterMelissa was the most excited, ordering several copies ofthe details and sending them out to all her four brothers: theoldest, Vincent; Henry; Duncan; and me. I was in France,and received my copy with the “your dream scenario” note. Ihad to admit it looked good, but quickly tossed it onto myteetering, “soon to be sorted” pile. This was alreadycarpeted in dust from the mistral, that magnificent southernFrench wind that periodically blasted down the channel insouthwest France created by the mountains surroundingthe rivers Rh?ne and Sa?ne. And then it came right throughthe ancient lime mortar of my north-facing barn-office wall,redistributing the powdery mortar as a minor sandstorm ofdust evenly scattered throughout the office over periods ofabout four days at a time. Small rippled dunes of mortardust appeared on top of the brochure, then otherdocuments appeared on top of the dunes, and then moresmall dunes.
But Melissa wouldn’t let it lie. She wouldn’t let it liebecause she thought it was possible, and had her housevalued, and kept dragging any conversation you had withher back to the zoo. Duncan was quickly enthused. Havingspent a short stint as a reptile keeper at London Zoo, hewas the closest thing we had to a zoo professional. Now anexperienced business manager in London, he was also theprime candidate for overall manager of the project, if he,and almost certainly others, chose to trade their presentlifestyles for an entirely different existence.
Melissa set up a viewing for the family, minus Henry andVincent, who had other engagements but were in favor ofexploration. So it was agreed, and “Grandma” Amelia anda good proportion of her brood spanning three generationsarrived in a small country hotel in the South Hams district ofDevon. There was a wedding going on, steeping the placein bonhomie, and the gardens, chilly in the early-springnight air, occasionally echoed with stilettos on gravel asunderdressed young ladies hurried to their hatchbacks andback for some essential commodity missing from therevelry inside.
A full, or even reasonably comprehensive, familygathering outside Christmas or a wedding was unusual,and we were on a minor mission rather than a holiday, yetaccompanied by a gaggle of children of assorted ages.
Our party was definitely toward the comprehensive end ofthe spectrum, with all that that entails. Vomiting babies,pregnant people, toddlers at head-smash age, and childrenaccidentally ripping curtains from the wall trying toimpersonate Darth Vader. The night before the viewing, wewere upbeat but realistic. We were serious contenders, butprobably all convinced that we were giving it our best shotand that somebody with more money, or experience, orprobably both, would come along and take it away.
We arrived at the park on a crisp April morning in 2005,and met Ellis Daw for the first time. An energetic man in hislate seventies with a full white beard and a beanie hat thathe never removed, Ellis took us around the park and thehouse like a pro on autopilot. He’d clearly done this tour afew times before. On our quick trip around the labyrinthinetwelve-bedroom mansion, we took in that the sitting roomwas half full of parrot cages, the general decor had aboutthree decades of catching up to do, and the plumbing andelectrical systems looked like they could absorb a few tensof thousands of pounds to be put right.
Out in the park we were all blown away by the animalsand Ellis’s innovative enclosure designs. Tiger Mountain,so called because three Siberian tigers prowl around amanmade mountain at the center of the park, wasparticularly impressive. Instead of chain-link or wire-meshfence, Ellis had adopted a “ha-ha” system, which basicallyentails a deep ditch around the perimeter that in turn issurrounded by a wall more than six feet high on the animalside but only three or four feet on the visitor side. Thiscreates the impression of extreme proximity to these mostspectacular cats, who pad about the enclosure likemassive flame-clad versions of the domestic cats we allknow and love, making you completely reappraise yourrelationship with the diminutive predators many of usshelter indoors.
There were lions behind wire, as stunning as the tigers,roaring in defiance of any other animal to challenge themfor their territory, particularly other lions, apparently. And ithas to be said that these bellowing outputs, projected bytheir hugely powerful diaphragms for a good three milesacross the valley, have over the years proved 100 percenteffective. Never once has this group of lions beenchallenged by any other group of lions, or anything else, fortheir turf. It’s easy to argue that this is due to lack ofpredators of this magnitude in the vicinity, but one lionessdid apparently catch a heron at a reputed fifteen feet off theground a few years before, confirming that this territorialdefensiveness was no bluff.
Peacocks strolled around the picnic area, from whereyou could see a pack of wolves prowling through the treesbehind a wire fence. Three big European bears looked upat us from their woodland enclosure, and three jaguars, twopumas, a lynx, some flamingos, porcupines, raccoons, anda Brazilian tapir added to the eclectic mix of the collection.
We were awestruck by the animals, and surprisingly notdaunted at all. Even to our untutored eyes there was clearlya lot of work to be done. Everything wooden, from picnicbenches to enclosure posts and stand-off barriers, wascovered in algae that had clearly been there for some time.
Some of it, worryingly, at the base of many of the enclosureposts, was obviously having a corrosive influence.
We could see that the zoo needed work, but we couldalso see that it had until recently been a going concern, andone that would give us a unique opportunity to be nearsome of the most spectacular—and endangered—animalson the planet.
As part of our official viewing of the property, we wereasked by a film crew from Animal Planet to participate in adocumentary about the sale. The journalist in me began towonder whether this eccentric English venture might besustainable through another source. Writing and the mediahad been my career for fifteen years, and, while notproviding a huge amount of money, had given me atremendous quality of life. If I could write about the things Iliked doing, I could generally do them as well, and I wassometimes able to boost the activity itself with the medialight that shone on it. Perhaps here was a similar model. Aonce thriving project now on the edge of extinction,functioning perfectly well in its day, but now needing a littlenudge from the outside world to survive . . .
Mum, Duncan, and I were asked to stand shoulder toshoulder amongst the parrots in the living room, to explainfor the camera what we would do if we got the zoo. At theend of our burst of amateurish enthusiasm, the cameramanspontaneously said, “I want you guys to get it.” The otheroffers were from leisure industry professionals with a lot ofmoney, against whom we felt we had an outside chance,but nothing more. My skepticism was still enormous, but Ibegan to see a clear way through, if, somehow, chancedelivered it to us. Though it still felt far-fetched, like lookingaround all those houses my parents seemed to drag us towhen we were moving as kids: Don’t get too interested,because you know you will almost certainly not end upliving there.
On our tour around the park itself, Ellis finally switchedout of his professional spiel and looked at me, my brotherDuncan, and my brother-in-law Jim, all relatively strappinglads in our early to mid-forties, and said, “Well, you’re theright age for it anyway.” This vote of confidence registeredwith us, as clearly, Ellis had seen something in us that heliked. Our ambitions for the place were modest, which healso liked. He said he’d actually turned away several offersbecause they involved spending too much on theredevelopment. “What do you want to spend a millionpounds on here?” he asked us, somewhat rhetorically.
“What’s wrong with it? On your way, I said to them.” I canimagine the color draining from his bankers’ faces whenthey heard this good news. Luckily we didn’t have a millionpounds to spend on redevelopment—or, at this stage, evenon the zoo itself—so our modest, family-based plansseemed to strike a chord with Ellis.
At about three thirty in the afternoon, our tour was overand we began to notice that the excited chattering of theadults in our group was interrupted increasingly frequentlyby minor, slightly overemotional outbursts from our children,who were milling around us like progressively more manicand fractious over-wound toys. In our enthusiasm for thepark we had collectively made an elementary, rookieparenting mistake and missed lunch, leading to Parents’
Dread: low blood sugar in under-tens. We had to find foodfast. We walked into the enormous Jaguar Restaurant, builtby Ellis in 1987 to seat three hundred people. Then wewalked out again. Rarely have I been in a workingrestaurant less conducive to the consumption of food. A thinfilm of grease from the prolific fat fryers in the kitchencoated the tired Formica tabletops, arranged in canteenrows and illuminated by harsh fluorescent strips mounted inthe swirling mess of the grease-yellowed Artex ceiling. Theheavy scent of the oil used to cook french fries gave a fairlyaccurate indication of the menu and mingled with thesmoke of hand-rolled cigarettes rising from the group ofstaff clad in gray kitchen whites sitting around the bar,eyeing their few customers with suspicion.
Even at the risk of total mass blood-sugar implosion, wewere not eating there, and asked for directions to thenearest supermarket for emergency provisions. And then,for me, the final piece of the Dartmoor puzzle fell into place,for that was when we discovered the Tesco at Lee Mill.
Seven minutes away by car was not just a supermarket, butan übermarket. In the climax of the film Monty Python andthe Holy Grail, King Arthur finally reaches a rise that giveshim a view of “Castle Aaargh,” thought to be the restingplace of the Holy Grail, the culmination of his quest. AsArthur and Sir Bedevere are drawn across the watertoward the castle by the pilotless dragon-crested ship,music of Wagnerian epic proportions plays to indicate thatthey are arriving at a place of true significance. This musicstarted spontaneously in my head as we rounded a cornerat the top of a small hill, and looked down into a man-madebasin filled with what looked almost like a giant spaceship,secretly landed in this lush green landscape. It seemed thesize of Stansted Airport, its lights beaming out theirmessage of industrial-scale consumerism into the rapidlydescending twilight of the late-spring afternoon. Hotchickens, fresh bread, salad, hummus, batteries, children’sclothes, newspapers, and many other provisions we werelacking were immediately provided. But more important,wandering around its cathedral-high aisles, I was hugelyreassured that, if necessary, I could find here a television, acamera, an iron, a kettle, stationery, a DVD, or a child’s toy.
And it was open twenty-four hours a day. As I watched thethirty-seven checkouts humming their lines of customersthrough, my final fear about relocating to the area was laidto rest. A Londoner for twenty years, I had becomeaccustomed to the availability of things like flat-screen TVs,birthday cards, or sprouts at any time of the day or night,and one of the biggest culture shocks of living in southernFrance for the last three years had been their totallydifferent take on this. For them, global consumerismstopped at 8 PM, and if you needed something urgentlyafter that, you had to wait till the next day. This Tesco, forme, meant that the whole thing was doable, and we tookour picnic to watch the sunset on a nearby beach in highspirits.
Although my mum’s house was not yet even on themarket, it had been valued at the same as the asking pricefor the park; so, with some trepidation, we put in an offer atthat price in a four-way sealed-bid auction and waitedkeenly for the outcome. But two days later we were told thatwe were not successful. Our bid was rejected by Ellis’sadvisors on the basis that we were in-experienced and hadno real money. Which we had to admit were both fairpoints. We went back to our lives with the minimum ofregrets, feeling that we had done what we could and hadbeen prepared to follow through, but now it was out of ourhands. Melissa went back to her family in Gloucestershire;Duncan was busy in London with his new business;Vincent, at fifty-four our eldest brother, had a new baby;Mum went back to the family home in Surrey, preparing toput it on the market. All relatively comfortable, successful,and rewarding. My life in particular, I felt, was compensationenough for missing out on this chance. Having spent nearlya decade maneuvering into a position of writing for a livingwith low overheads in a hot country, watching the childrengrow into this slightly strange niche, I was content with mylot and anxious to get back to it.
But after all the excitement, I couldn’t help wonderingabout what might have been. Sitting in my makeshiftPlexiglas office in the back of my beautiful derelict barn withthe swallows dipping in and out during the day and the batsbuzzing around my head at dusk, I couldn’t stop thinkingabout the life we could have built around that zoo.
Katherine was getting stronger every day, wielding myFrench pickax/mattock in her vegetable garden withincreasing vigor, and her muscle tone and body mass—wasted to its furthest extreme by the chemotherapy so thatshe went from looking like a catwalk model to an etiolatedpunk rocker, with her random tufts of hair—improvedthroughout the summer. Her neurologist, MadameCampello, a fiercely intelligent and slightly forbiddingwoman, was pleased with her progress and decided toshift her MRI scans from monthly to once every two months,which we saw as a good sign. It gave us longer betweenthe inevitable anxiety of going into N?mes to get the results,a process that both of us, particularly Katherine, foundpretty daunting.
Mme Campello was obviously compassionate, and I’msure I saw her actually gasp when she first saw Katherine,the children, and myself for Katherine’s initial postoperativeconsultation. From that moment she fast-forwarded almostevery part of the treatment, and I could see that this ladywas going to do everything she could to make sure thatKatherine survived. In her normal clinical consultations,however, Mme Campello was rather like a strictheadmistress, which made Katherine, always the good girl,feel unable to question her too closely about treatmentoptions. However, with one or two school expulsions undermy belt, I have never been overly intimidated by schoolheads, and felt quite entitled to probe. Mme Campelloturned out to be extremely receptive to this, and severaltimes I called her after speaking with Katherine once wehad got home, and we decided on an adjustment to hermedication.
My nighttime excursions with Leon continued to yieldinteresting creatures, like fireflies from impenetrablethickets that never produced the goods in daylight in front ofthe children, scorpions toward whom I was beginning tohabituate but was still jittery, and probably the mostsurprising for me, a long horn beetle. Never before or sincehave I seen such a beetle in the wild, and I was convincedhe was on the wrong continent. Long—perhaps threeinches—with iridescent wing casings, a small head, andenormous antennae, from which, I assume, he got hisname. I took great pleasure in identifying him with thechildren in our voluptuously illustrated French encyclopediabought from a book fair in Avignon, and photographing himstanding on the page next to his template self, though hewas inordinately more impressive and colorful.
Katherine was well and in capable hands, the childrenwere blooming, and I was writing about home improvementfor the Guardian and even occasionally doing some, andgradually making contact with professors around the worldon topics like chimpanzee predation of monkeys for sexualrewards, elephant intelligence, and the dolphin’s capacityfor syntax. It was close to heaven, with local friends poppingin for mandatory glasses of chilled rosé from the vines onour doorstep, and me able to adjust my working hoursaround the demands of the village and family life relativelyeasily. Apart from all that rosé.
But still I kept thinking about the zoo. The park sat on theedge of Dartmoor, surrounded by the lush woodland andbeautiful beaches of South Hams. The two days I had spentin this region of Devon would not go away. Our family hadenjoyed their stay, but it was more than that—somehowenchanting, something I could only very reluctantly let go of,even though I knew it was already lost.
Standing in my French hayloft door, free of Health andSafety Commission interference, the barn’s ancient portalsbleached like driftwood by the sun and sandblasted by themistral, with its interior and exterior dripping rusted doorfurniture, some of it reputedly dating back to the Napoleonicera, it was the zoo that kept coming back to me.
When Napoleon passed through our village ofArpaillargues in 1815, he famously killed two localdissenters, known (admittedly among a relatively select fewlocal French historians) as the Arpaillargues Two. In 2005the Tour de France passed through the village, causing nodeaths but quite a lot of excitement (though not enough forthe local shopkeeper, Sandrine, to forgo her three-hourlunch break to sell cold drinks to the hundreds of swelteringtourists lining the route). So, in two centuries, two quite bigthings had happened in the village. In between, it settledback into being baked by the sun and blasted by themistral. And, only slightly wistfully, I settled back into that,too.A year passed, with the zoo as a mournful but ebbingdistraction. Those big trees, so unlike the parched scrub ofsouthern Europe, the nearby rivers and sea, and theridiculously magnificent animals, so close to the house, sofoolishly endangered by mankind and yet right there in aready-made opportunity for keeping them alive for futuregenerations.
Partly because the whole family was in a bit of a dazeabout my father’s death, Mum’s house was still not on themarket, so we were unprepared for what happened next.
As an expat without satellite TV (that’s cheating), Inevertheless craved English news and probably visited theBBC News online two or three times a day. Suddenly, on12 April 2006, there it was again. Ellis had released astatement saying that the sale had fallen through yet again,and that many of the animals would have to be shot if abuyer wasn’t found within the next eleven days.
It didn’t give us long, but I knew exactly what I had to do. Icalled Melissa and Duncan, who had been the main driversof the previous attempt, and told them that we had to tryagain. I was not entirely surprised, however, when neither ofthem seemed quite as excited as I was. Both had delveddeeply into the machinations required for the purchase, andDuncan in particular had been alarmed at the time by ademand for a “non-refundable deposit” of ￡25,000 tosecure a place at the head of the line. “If you can get it inwriting that he will definitely sell it to us, and we can sell thehouse in time, I’ll back you up,” he said. He felt it was just anendless time-sink, but gladly gave me all the information hehad. Brother-in-law Jim too had a list of contacts andoffered his help preparing spreadsheets for a businessplan should it get that far.
Peter Wearden was the first call. As environmental healthofficer for the South Hams district, Peter was directlyresponsible for issuing the zoo license. “Can a bunch ofamateurs like us really buy a zoo and run it?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said unequivocally, “providing you have theappropriate management structure in place.” This structureconsists primarily of hiring a curator of animals, anexperienced and qualified zoo professional with detailedknowledge of managing exotic animals who is responsiblefor looking after the animals on a day-to-day basis. Petersent me a flowchart that showed the position of the curatorbeneath the zoo directors, which would be us, but still in aposition to allocate funds for animal management at his/herdiscretion. “You can’t just decide to buy a new ice-creamkiosk if the curator thinks there is a need for, say, newfence posts in the lion enclosure,” said Peter. “If you haven’tgot money for both, you have to listen to the curator.” Thatseemed fair enough. “There is, by the way,” he added, “aneed for new fence posts in the lion enclosure.” And howmuch are those? “No idea,” said Peter. “That’s where you’llhave to get professional advice. But that’s just one of many,many things you’ll need to do before you can get your zoolicense.” Peter explained a bit about the Zoo Licensing Act,and that Ellis was due to hand in his license to operate azoo within a couple of weeks, hence the eleven-daydeadline for the sale.
In fact, the animals would not have to be dispersed bythen, as they would be held under the Dangerous WildAnimals Act (DWA) as a private collection. It just meant thatvisitors were not allowed, so the park’s already seriouslyfaltering finances would reach a crunch point. But notabsolutely necessarily an eleven-day crunch point, itseemed. If we could mount a credible bid, there was everychance that we could carry on negotiating for a few weeksafter the park closed. Already, there was reason to hopethat this apparently hopeless task was not necessarilyimpossible.
“Is it viable?” I asked Peter. This time he took longer torespond. “Erm, I’m sure it is,” he said. “With the rightmanagement, a lot of money invested in the infrastructure,and a hell of a lot—and I mean a hell of a lot—of hard work,it should be viable, yes. For a long time it was one of thearea’s most popular attractions. It’s declined over the lastfew years due to lack of investment and not keeping up withthe times. But until quite recently it was a thriving business.”
I was deeply suspicious that there must be more to it thanthis, and that there was some sort of black hole in the wholefabric of the place that meant that it couldn’t work. Why hadthe other sales fallen through? So many industryprofessionals had cruised up to this project and somehownot taken the bait. Were we going to be the suckers whobought it and then discovered the truth?
Clearly, I needed professional help, which came in theform of a text message from a friend whose sister-in-lawSuzy happened to be a fairly senior zoo professional, easilyequivalent in fact to the rank of curator, currently working inAustralia. I had met Suzy once at a wedding a long timeago and liked her instantly. I was impressed with the waythat even in a cocktail dress, with her wild mane of blondehair, she managed to give the impression that she waswearing work boots, leggings, and a heavy fleece. Her jobat the time had involved educating Queensland cattlefarmers about the need for conservation of local wildlife, atough-enough sounding proposition for a bare-knuckleprize-fighter, I would have thought. But not for Suzy, whowas now working as head of animal procurement for thethree zoos in the State of Victoria, including the flagshipMelbourne Zoo where she was based. Suzy offered anyhelp she could give, and said she would even considertaking a sabbatical for year in order to act as curator. “Ican’t guarantee it,” she said. “But you can put me down asa candidate until we see how things develop. In themeantime, before you go any further, you need to get asurvey done by a zoo professional who can tell you whetherit works or not.” Suzy shared my concerns about thepossibility of a black hole, having read about Dartmoor’sdecline through the zoo community literature. Did she haveanyone in mind for this inspection? “There’s someone Iused to work with at Jersey who could give you a prettydefinitive opinion,” said Suzy. “He’s a bit too senior to dothat sort of thing now I think, but I’ll see what he thinks.”
And that’s how we came to meet Nick Lindsay, head ofInternational Zoo Programs for the Zoological Society ofLondon (ZSL), in the car park of Dartmoor Wildlife Park afew days later. This tall, slightly avuncular man shook handswith me and Melissa, who was now about eight monthspregnant, and agreed that we should walk up the drivealong the normal visitor access route to get a feel for howthe park works. We had commissioned a report from ZSLand Nick kindly agreed to carry out the inspection himself,as he too had been following the plight of the zoo, and as alocal boy had an interest in it. He even stayed with his mumdown the road so that we didn’t have to pay a hotel bill.
On the way up the drive we were as candid as we couldbe. “We know nothing about zoos, but if this really is aviable zoo, do you think it’s possible for us to do it?”
“Oh, there’s no reason for you to know about zoos inorder to buy one.” said Nick, laughing. “You’d have to be abit mad, but I assume you’ve got that part covered. Let’sjust see if it really is a viable zoo first.”
Our first stop was Ronnie the tapir, whose enclosure ranparallel to the drive. Nick bent down and called him over,and to my surprise he came. I had never seen a tapir thisclose before, and was impressed that this large, strangelookinganimal was so biddable and friendly. Resembling alarge pig with a hump on its back and a miniatureelephant’s trunk for a nose, the tapir was made, theIndonesians say, from the parts left over when God hadfinished making all the other animals.
Nick held his fingers through the mesh, and Ronniewibbled his extended proboscis onto it, and then onto ourhands, happy to make our acquaintance. With thischarming encounter, however, came the first of the thingsthat would need addressing. “This fence should have astand-off barrier,” said Nick. “We have to be sure his houseis heated in the winter, and it looks a bit muddy in there forhim. He’s an ungulate, so his feet are quite delicate.” I’dbeen determined to take notes all day to keep track of thekind of expenditure we would be looking at, but already I’drun into an unforeseen problem: tapir snot, all over my handand notepad. “Don’t worry,” said Nick. “I’ll put everything inthe report.”
The day went well, and we were halfway around the parkwhen we were intercepted by Robin, a strained-lookingman with a long gray ponytail, who introduced himself as amember of the staff, clearly prepared to undergo theunpleasantness of seeing us around the park, though notrelishing it. Though we had made an appointment to view,we should be escorted at all times, for legal and securityreasons, he told us. He was our guide for the rest of theoutside tour. It soon became clear that there was noquestion about the park that Robin could not answer.
History, attendance figures, animal diets, names of plants—he knew it all. And then something happened that gavehim a tricky one. A huge shot boomed out, echoing acrossthe valley. It could only have been a gunshot, and fromsomething big, the kind of sound you generally only hear infilms. We stopped in our tracks. “Er, bit of trouble with thetigers?” I asked. Robin paused, looked a bit more strainedbut now tinged with sadness, and said. “No, it’s one of thelionesses, actually. She had lung cancer.” He turned to leadus on and I looked at Nick, utterly agog. I had never beenanywhere where they had shot a lion within fifty meters ofwhere I was standing. Was this okay? Are they allowed todo that? Does it sound justified? Is this somehowconnected with the black hole? Nick looked slightly takenaback, but seemed to take it in his stride. “If she had lungcancer and the vet says it’s time, it’s completely justified,”
he said. And the use of a gun rather than an injection wasalso quite normal, if the animal was difficult or dangerous todart. So it was all okay, everything normal, just that a lionhad been shot. If the head of the International Zoo Programat ZSL said it was all right, it must be, but I confess I found itslightly unsettling.
So did Rob, the man who had pulled the trigger. We methim later in the Jaguar Restaurant, along with Ellis, andEllis’s sister Maureen. Ellis was also unsettled, by atoothache, he said, which was why he was holding a glassof whiskey. There was a difficult, tense atmosphere as theedifice of a once successful family business lay in ruins,creditors circled, and emotions were near the surface. Butthere were questions we and Nick needed to ask Ellis, andhe also had questions for us. Rob seemed almost close totears after his ordeal of shooting the lioness, Peggy, ananimal he had known for thirteen years, and was reluctantto come to the table at first, but Maureen persuaded himthat it might be necessary, as he now held the license tokeep the collection on site under the DWA. Ellis paced theroom, cursing, not quite under his breath.
Eventually we all sat down and Nick said hello to Ellis asa teacher might greet a former student, expelled but at thereunion, as was only right. They knew each other fromvarious Zoo Federation meetings over the years, and Ellisnodded, acknowledging that here was a man with whom heneeded to cooperate. Nick began his line of questions forhis report, and everything went well until he mentioned thename of Peter Wearden, the South Hams environmentalhealth officer. “Peter Wearden? Peter Wearden? I’ll kill him,I will. I’ll cut his head off with a sword and stick it on a spikeat the top of the drive. That’ll show them what I think of him.”
He went on for a while, explaining how he had killed menbefore, in the war—”I’m good at killing men”—as well asevery kind of animal on the planet. He wouldn’t make a fussabout shooting a lion, like Rob.
At this point I interjected, and said I personally didn’t thinkit was unreasonable for Rob to be upset, but we needed totalk about Peter Wearden. “I’d kill him without a thought, justlike the lion,” he said, looking me in the eye. Not sure whatto say, I thought I’d try to claw back toward some referencesto reality. “Well, that would at least sort out youraccommodation problems for the next few years,” I said. Heweighed this remark, looked at me again and said, “I’ve gothis coffin ready for him up here before.” And it was true. Acoffin with a picture of Peter Wearden in it had been in therestaurant for a period of about six months, even while thepark was open to the public. “Now then, Ellis,” said Nick,moving seamlessly on, “what about those stand-offbarriers?”
Ellis was polite but perceptibly preoccupied as he tookus on the tour of the house again, even more briskly thanlast time, and I was surprised to see that it seemed insignificantly worse condition than I remembered it. Whetherthis was cosmetic, due to an increase in mess, or memisremembering the fabric of the place was hard to tell, butthe impression was strong enough to cause a new entry inmy mental spreadsheet of expenditures.
The first warning was the increase in the strength of theodor in the kitchen, at the front of the house. This was Ellis’sentry point, and obviously one of the key rooms he used,but it stank. Last time it stank badly, but this time the stenchwas like a fog that you felt was clinging to your clothes.
Women in Melissa’s condition are particularly sensitive tosmells, and she nearly gagged as she passed through,pressing her hand to her mouth in case she had to forciblysuppress some vomit—it is impolite after all, whensomeone is proudly showing you around their home, tothrow up in it.
The main source of the smell seemed to be a bucket inthe corner containing raw mackerel and dead day-oldchicks to be fed in the mornings to the heron and jackdawpopulation. It was an ancient, yellowed plastic vessel, andthere had to be some doubt about its structural integrity, asa large, ancient, multicolored stain rippled outward from itsbase like a sulphur bog, but more virulent. Even Ellis wasmoved to comment, “Bit whiffy in here. But you don’t have tokeep that there,” he added, gesturing toward the bucket.
“You’ll be moving things around, I suppose.” Somehow Ididn’t think that simply repositioning the bucket wouldexpunge this odor. I vowed on that threshold that, if we gotthe park, no food would ever be prepared in this roomagain.
The rest of the house seemed more dishevelled than weremembered, and we still didn’t have time to get a fullpicture of how the floor plan worked. Half the house hadbeen used for students, and this section was coated inplastic signs declaring, NO SMOKING, TURN OFF THELIGHTS, and oddly, BEING SICK ON THE STAIRS ISFORBIDDEN. But it mostly seemed like a standardrewiring, replumbing, and plastering job would make itgood. The other half of the house, with a grand galleriedstaircase and stone-flagged kitchen, was marred bydecades of clashing wallpapers and patchwork surfacerewiring that snaked wildly like the tendrils of an aggressivegiant creeper gradually taking over the house. And ofcourse the all-pervading smell coming from the frontkitchen.
The stone-flagged kitchen had not been used as such fordecades, and in the fireplace, behind a ragged, dusty sheethanging on a string nailed to the high mantel above it, lay arusted hulk of an ancient range, a door hanging off, cloggedinside with what appeared to be bird droppings from thechimney above. “My grandma used to cook on that,” saidEllis. “Bit of work would get it going again. Worth a few bob,that.” I wasn’t so sure. But this room looked out over an oldcobbled courtyard, now overgrown with weeds, whichlooked across to the cottage opposite, above the stables(read “junk depository”). Melissa, who is good at spottingpotential and visualizing a finished house, lit up. “This is thebest bit of the house,” she said. Really? “I can imaginedoing the breakfast in here, looking across the courtyard,waving to Katherine or Mum in their kitchen in the cottage.”
At that time Melissa was still seriously considering sellingup and moving in too, five kids and Jim included. It soundedgood. But in the time allowed, and with enough clutter to filla hundred rummage sales strewn about, it was hard togauge what it might be like to live in this house. Except thatit, like the park, would require a lot of (expensive) work.
We came back out of the house and met Nick in therestaurant again, thanked our hosts, and strolled down thedrive. By now our objective and impartial advisor hadbecome a little partisan. “I think it’s a great place,” enthusedNick. “Much better than I thought it would be from all thestories. You’ll need a proper site survey, to be sure, but asfar as I can see, this could be a working zoo again withouttoo much trouble.” As an advisor on zoo design, Nick alsohad a few ideas to throw in at this stage. “Get thecustomers off the drive”—which ran up the center of thelower half of the park for a fifth of a mile—“and into thepaddock next to it. You could put a wooden walkwaythrough it—meandering, so that they don’t notice the climb—and get something striking in there, like zebras, andmaybe some interesting antelopes, so that as soon as theypass through the kiosk they enter a different world.” Couldwe get zebras? I asked. “Oh, I can get you zebras,” saidNick casually, as if they were something he might pick upfor us at Tesco. This I liked. Spoken almost like a wheelerdealer:
video recorders, leather jackets, zebras, roll up, rollup. But there was more about this glimpse into theworkings of the zoo world that appealed. Nick was paintingwith the animals, as well as designing a seriouscommercial layout in his head. “You need more flamingos,”
he said. “Flamingos look good against the trees. The lakeup there with the island has trees behind it, so if you put afew more in it they’ll look marvelous when the punters reachthe top of the path. Then, having climbed that hill, they’ll behot. So that’s where you sell them their first ice cream.”
Wow. Unfortunately, flamingos are one of the few animalsthat don’t usually come free from other zoos, costinganything from ￡800 to ￡1,500 each. Which is a lot of icecream. And with the prospect of bird flu migrating over thehorizon there was the possibility of a mass culling orderfrom DEFRA (Department for Environments, Food, andRural Affairs) shortly after we took delivery of thesebeautiful, expensive birds. Our flamingo archipelago mighthave to wait.
I went back to France, Melissa went to her children inGloucester, and Nick went back to Whipsnade, where heprepared the report that was to dictate the direction of ourlives. If it was negative, it would be definitively so, and therewould be no point chasing this dream any further. In manyways, as before, I was half hoping that this would be thecase and I could finally lay the idea to rest knowingcategorically that it would be a mistake to proceed. If it waspositive, however, we knew we had to continue, and thereport itself would become instrumental in finding thebacking to make it happen.
Meanwhile, I was learning more about the zoo every day.
Ellis had once been seen as a visionary, designinginnovative enclosures, putting in disabled access on adifficult sloping site long before legislation required him todo so, and developing an aggressive outreach educationprogram, one of the first of its kind in the country and nowcopied by almost every other zoo. But he had absolute,total control. There was no one to tell him when to stop. Andwith overinvestment in expensive infrastructure like theenormous restaurant (against advice, which he overruled),an expensive divorce, and other zoos learning, copying,and developing his techniques and continually changingtheir game while he began to grind to a halt, visitornumbers declined.
My life became a series of long phone calls to lawyers,real estate agents, bankers, family members, and Ellis.
Every time I spoke to Ellis, I noticed, he inexorably steeredthe conversation toward conflict. We were frank with him.
We didn’t have the money to buy it yet, but we had assetsof equal value, which we could borrow against or sell, if hecould only hold on. “You’d think when someone offered tobuy a place they’d at least have the money to do it,” he saidonce, the type of observation that gave me an indication ofwhy so many other sales had fallen through. Apart fromanything else, Ellis was in the terrible position of having tosell his much-loved park, built largely with his own hands,the expression of his life’s vision over the last forty years,so it was no wonder he was irascible. The only other bidderleft was a developer wanting to turn it into a nursing home,and Ellis didn’t want that. So, to his enormous credit, heagreed to wait for us.
In this tense situation, I was genuinely concerned forPeter Wearden, who had become the focus of Ellis’svexation, crystallized as the deliberate, Machiavellianarchitect of his downfall. It had all started with a routineinspection several years ago, which had concluded that thehand-painted signs on the animal enclosures were illegibleand needed replacing. Ellis escorted the inspector from thepark (some say at the end of a shotgun), and refused tocarry out the directive. This activated a one-way process ofhead-on confrontation with the authorities, which escalatedinto many other areas over the years, and ultimately led tohim handing in his zoo license in April 2006. When we’dvisited that last time, after so many years of gradualdecline, it felt like we’d been to the Heart of Darkness, to aplace where a charismatic visionary had created an empireonce teeming with life and promise, but where humanfrailties had ultimately been exposed by the environment,with terrible consequences. I telephoned Peter and told himof my concerns. It was not uncommon for council officials tobe attacked in the course of their work, even occasionallykilled, and Ellis was, in my opinion, a man with his back tothe wall. The word amok, in Malay, describes a syndromewhereby someone feels they have received an intolerableinsult that has ruined their life, and that the only way toredeem their status is to kill the perpetrator, orperpetrators. The amok syndrome is a universalphenomenon, just as likely to present itself in South Hamsas in Malaysia or Southern California. And Ellis owned anelephant gun with a range of about three miles. “Oh, I’m notbothered about that.” Peter laughed, with a bravery I doubt Iwould have shown in his position.
“He does seem very difficult to deal with,” I said. “Is thereanyone else it might be possible to talk to there?” Hislawyer? Rob?
“Try Maureen, his sister,” advised Peter. “She talkssense.”
And so another vital piece fell into place for theacquisition of the park. Maureen was devoted to herbrother, and on both tours of the house we had been showna picture of her as a teenager falling out of the back of astock car during a jump Ellis was performing (among otherthings he had been a stuntcar driver). She had workedoutside the park in a hotel all her life, and understood thepressures of the outside world perhaps better than he did. Ispoke to Maureen two or three times a day as we tried topiece together a plan that would save the park.
Another key person, without whom we would never havesucceeded, was Mike Thomas. To get backing we neededa site survey, which would cost about three thousandpounds. But I knew that several (nine, in fact) such surveyshad been commissioned recently, and was reluctant to payfor another. I asked Maureen if she knew of anyone of therecent potential buyers who might be prepared to sell ustheir survey. “Try Mike Thomas,” she said. So I ended uppitching on the phone to a complete stranger that we weretrying to buy the park and had heard he had commissioneda full site survey recently. “Go on,” said a gravelly voice. Itold him everything about our inexperience and lack offunds, surprised as I continued that he didn’t put the phonedown. “You can have the survey,” he said at the end.
“Where shall I send it?” This was the first of manygenerosities from Mike, whose reassuring voice often sawme through difficult times in the months ahead.
Mike was the former owner of Newquay Zoo, which hehad turned from a run-down operation with 40,000 visitors ayear to a thriving center of excellence with about 250,000visitors, in the space of nine years. He knew what he wasdoing. His bid had foundered on the twin rocks of Ellis andMike’s business partner, but he wished the park well. Moreimportant, he had been appointed by Peter Wearden tooversee the dispersal of the animal collection to other zoos,should it be necessary. He was in daily contact with Rob,the holder of the DWA license, and Peter, and as a man onthe inside could not have been better placed. Hisunswerving support and sound advice were absolutelypivotal for us in securing the park.
Weeks dragged on, and the main positive development— apart from the arrival of Nick Lindsay’s report from ZSL,which gave a ringing endorsement to the park as a futureenterprise— was that a cash buyer was found for mymum’s house. But he was a cautious man, in no hurry, andany inclination that we desperately needed the money rightnow would have almost certainly reduced his bid. Bridgingloans—those expensive, dangerous arrangements offeredby commercial banks in the hope of snaffling all your assetsin a year—were arranged, and fell through. Commercialmortgages, likewise, were offered and withdrawn. Severalhigh-end banks let us down badly. Lloyds three timesextended the hand of friendship and then, just as we wereshaking it, pulled it away, put their thumb up to their nose,and gave it the full hand waggle. Very funny, guys. Privatebanks were similarly fickle. Perhaps eight banks altogetherpromised support in protracted negotiations on which werelied, and then we passed the good news on to thenaturally keenly interested other side, and committed morefunds on the basis of that. Then the offer would bewithdrawn. Corporate managers were generallypersuadable and good at giving you a 100 percent verbalagreement and a physical shake of the hand. But thebackroom boys with the calculators and gray suits whoconstituted what were known as risk teams, invariablybalked. Lawyers were also busy. At one point a six-acrepaddock disappeared from the map of what was includedin the price, which I made clear to Maureen was a dealbreaker, and it reemerged.
For light relief at the end of a twelve-hour day of circularphone calls, we would watch the series 24, boxed sets ofwhich were making the rounds of the English mums inFrance. Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer, a maverickCTU (counterterrorism unit) agent who, over severalepisodes, always has to save the world in twenty-fourhours, shown in real time an hour at a time. The groundshifts under his feet as he pursues, with total commitment,leads that turn out to be blind alleys. He is betrayed by hissuperiors, double agents, and miscellaneous villains, andfaces new disasters with every tick of the clock. Alliesbecome enemies, enemies become friends but then getkilled; yet he somehow adapts and finds a new line to gofor. I knew exactly how he felt. Every day there wereimpossible obstacles, which by the afternoon had beenresolved and forgotten, in preparation for the next.
But the situation at the other end seemed far moredesperate. Running costs—seven tigers, three lions, andsix keepers to feed—continued without ticket sales to coverthem, interest on debts stacked up, and creditors brushedup close with increasing frequency. Then, just as the buyerfor my mum’s house agreed to sign sooner rather thanlater, Maureen told me we had to begin paying runningcosts for the zoo in order to stop it going to the nursinghomedeveloper. By now we were pretty committed, soDuncan and I melted credit cards to pay, by whatevermeans possible, ￡3,000 a week to keep our bid open. Thiswas way beyond our means and could not last long,particularly for something that might not pay off. Luckily,Duncan conjured a donor—who wants to remainanonymous—who lent us ￡50,000, to use as a “semirefundabledeposit.” This was good news, but obviously itneeded to be paid back, win or lose, and the “lose”
scenario didn’t really have that contingency.
By agreeing to pay the semi-refundable deposit (we gothalf back if the sale fell through), we were now one of Ellis’screditors. We were going upriver to see Kurtz. We’d donethe reconnaissance. Now we had to see if we could go allthe way. All we had to remember was not to get out of theboat. Then, just as the sale of my mum’s house was finallyagreed, we had our worst moment. My brother Henry, whohad been supportive of the venture at the beginning,suddenly lost his nerve and mounted a costly legal battleagainst the rest of the family. Henry was executor for mydad’s half of the estate, so could delay the release of fundsas he saw fit. He refused to be contacted except by lettersent through the post, which in a situation changing hourlywas simply untenable for such a key player. Mum, Duncan,and I tried to go around and discuss it with him severaltimes, but he wouldn’t answer the door or phone. It waslooking bad. We felt for Henry with whatever it was he wasgoing through, but there was a bigger picture that everysingle other member of the family was in agreement on.
Finally, the whole family ended up on the doorstep of hisexpensive lawyers (paid for out of the estate), and afterbeing kept waiting for three hours, persuaded them that thiswas Mum’s wish and the wish of all the beneficiaries of mydad’s will. We all wanted to buy the zoo.
Eventually Henry agreed, as long as we all signed aclause that we wouldn’t sue him when it all went wrong, andeach sibling took the full ￡50,000 they were entitled tounder the Nil Rate Band legislation (the value of an estatethat is not subject to inheritance tax). This meant that therewouldn’t be enough to buy the zoo unless at least four of usgave the money straight back, which everyone but Henryinstantly agreed to, though in order to do so we each had toseek independent legal advice first. This meant each of usfinding another lawyer and paying for written evidence toshow that we had been made aware of the risks, which wasfun.Also, instead of the zoo being bought in the name of alimited company, a business- and tax-efficient vehicle andthe basis of all our months of negotiations, it had to bebought in Mum’s name. And no one lends a seventy-sixyear-old lady half a million pounds, however spry andadventurous she may be. Back of the envelope calculationsrevealed that if everything went according to plan, therewould be enough money to buy the zoo, pay all the legalfees, and have ￡4,000 left over, equivalent to about tendays’ running costs.
We leaped at it. Well, my two brothers, sister, and Mumdid. Katherine had remained slightly bemused by the ideathrough-out the negotiations, partly because of the inherentuncertainty about whether we would get the zoo, but alsobecause running a zoo had never featured very high on herto-do list. However, she thought about how much thechildren would enjoy it, she observed my enthusiasm, andinvestigated a role for herself doing graphics and moneymanagement. These were both well-honed skills from herdays as an art director on glossy magazines, and once shewas able to equate the whole thing to organizing a large,complicated ongoing photo shoot, she gave her cautioussupport. Now that it was becoming a reality, she knew whatshe had to do, and she was ready. The children, as you canimagine, were very enthusiastic, jumping up and down,clapping and squealing. I’m not sure they really believed it—but it was true.