When an angry lion roars at you from less than a footaway, it is impossible to remain impassive. Late one night Iwas making notes and sketches for the new jaguar house梬hich is situated near the lion enclosure梟onchalantlysitting against a post and working by flashlight. After twentyminutes I抎 finished, and stood up to find all three lions?
two females and a magnificent maned male calledSolomon梤ight up against the fence next to where I抎 beensitting. The fact that three such large and dangerousanimals can get so close without your noticing isimpressive but chilling. Watching their intent faces so closeto mine I realized that Solomon was about to roar at me,something I抎 witnessed from afar, and the impact of whichI抎 seen on other people (usually total involuntary full-bodyspasming and retreat) but never experienced directly.
Okay, I thought, I know he抯 going to roar, but there is a lionprooffence in between me and him. I抣l hold my ground, staycalm, and stare him down by the light of my head-lamp. Myplan worked well for the next few seconds of eye-balling,until suddenly he roared and lunged at the wire, and Iinstantly leaped backward three feet into darkness andunseen brambles. It抯 impossible to remain impassive inthe face of a charging lion. There抯 something in yourprimitive midbrain that tells you it抯 just not right to be thatclose to something that can eat you, and the amount ofadrenaline dumped into your system at such times is trulyprimeval.
As a new zoo director I am privileged to be exposed tosuch experiences fairly regularly. This also helps explainwhy zoos, with their captive breeding programs, mandatoryconservation measures, and outreach educationalprograms, have such a vital part to play in the promotion ofbiodiversity in the twenty-first century. David Attenborough(may his name be praised) can educate and promote on abigger canvas, but even he cannot replicate that visceral,direct experience of physical proximity to these magnificentcreatures.
I抦 not saying that all visitors will get roared at梩hough afew might, if Solomon is showing off (stumbling on the pathin his line of sight sometimes triggers him). But having nowshown many people around, from surveyors, lawyers, andbankers to friends and neighbors, the euphoriaengendered convinces me that the direct viewing of exoticendangered animals is one of the best motivators for futureinvolvement in conservation.
As I am discovering, there are many complicatedarguments for and against zoos, from those extremists whothink that all captive animals should either be releasedback into the wild or killed, to those who see no harm in anykind of containment for entertainment. The conservationargument to me seems unassailable, with a long history ofimportant species saved from extinction by zoos over theyears (the South African white rhino, the Mauritius kestrel,the golden lion tamarin, the P鑢e David抯 deer, the condor;the list is long, though shorter than it should be).
But high standards in zoos are needed, which is whereconservationists should concentrate their efforts, ensuringthat each animal is held for a good reason, as close to itsspecies-typical conditions as possible, and that itseducational potential is maximized. Then if you抮e lucky, youcan feel that moment of sheer physical terror in a safeenvironment, which can抰 be synthesized. Toilet facilitiesare available nearby should they be required.
I had had a dream. Dartmoor Zoological Park was goingto be a massive, thriving success, with the potential tobecome world class, and contribute in some small buttangible way to the effort to reverse, or slow down, or atleast in some way mitigate, humankind抯 inexorable, selfdestructiveonslaught against our planet. There was nowenormous reason for hope梖or the park at least. We hadmoney in the bank, a definite plan, and all that stoodbetween us and achieving it was a lot of hard work. Whichis a happy position to be in. Throwing yourself intoworthwhile, fruitful hard work that you believe in, as much asyou can handle and more, is a kind of luxury not everyonegets to experience. It is also exhausting.
My days were incredibly varied. They always started withgetting the children ready for school between 8 and 9 AM,which often saw me in pajamas and dressing gown alsohaving a quick simultaneous kitchen meeting with TouretteTony (always on his best behavior in front of the children),or Steve, Adam, or a combination of the above, whilebrushing hair (not my own) and dishing out shredded wheatand orange juice.
A scrawled note from that time reads:
Reallocate office space to Robin, Rob, Sarahand Steve. Clear own desk and set up computer.
Speak to Katy, education officer working askeeper until facilities arrive to reassure. Let downby absentee, re-organize rota to cover. Councilrepresentative arrives for preliminary health andsafety audit. Pull necessary people off jobs toaccompany, spend two and a half hours on[more than mildly irritating and demoralizing]
walk around. Conduct three media interviews,ambivalent, relying on extremist animal rightsactivists?views for 揵alance.?Research and thenfax absolutely final, last piece of paper to lawyersregarding company setup. Speak to BT againabout delay in providing more lines. Resendrequest to two-way radio company for newfrequencies. Fetch children, get them changed,pass to grandma. Resolve argument about newstand-off barriers for tapir. Help install fenceposts. Listen to keeper concerns at end of shift.
Chop wood for fire. Do school admin andhomework. Eat. Answer phones. Kids to bed.
Answer more phones. Bed.
Some days were more exciting, some less. But it wasalways nice to get a call from an urban friend when I抎 justdone something decidedly unusual. A phone call fromsomeone in magazines once went like this: 揥hat are youup to??揥ell, we抳e just darted the jaguar and he抯 gonedown okay, so I抦 about to go into his enclosure andstretcher him out.?Short pause. 揝o your day抯 turning outmuch the same as mine then.?
Whenever possible I took the opportunity to go inside theenclosures, to see what it抯 like from the other side of thewire and wonder what can be improved. One of the firstenclosures I worked in that spring was the lion den. Mymission: to deliver a collection of gruesome severed headswhile perched on the end of a branch fifteen feet off theground. The heads, from farmers culling young bullocks, areregularly hung from the trees, or wedged into branches togive the lions a puzzle to solve to get a treat: crunchy on theoutside, chewy in the middle. The lion enclosure is adisturbing place to be: one keeper error or lock malfunctioncould release three hungry cats expecting food and findingus as a live bonus. And I knew the lions would not messabout. At Christmas we had made a full-size cardboardzebra for them, filled it with bits of meat and left it in theenclosure. Four seconds after they were let out, one of thelionesses was onto its back, dragging it down, while theother closed in from the front. Captive bred, but instinctsundiminished.
While Kelly and Hannah cleared out the old bones anduneaten bits of skin from the lions?last meal, I lookedaround trying to find imaginative places that wouldchallenge the lions and give them something to think about.
The girls, being busy梐nd being girls梔idn抰 have quitethe same enthusiasm for climbing trees as I did, so I setabout showing off a bit and placing the heads a bit higherthan they usually had time for. I shinned up a suitable tree,and edged out along a branch about fifteen feet off theground. One of the lionesses had apparently taken a heronin flight at a similar height, so I knew it was possible forthem to reach this branch. When I was in a good position bya solid fork, I called down to Kelly, who stretched up as Istretched down to receive my first head. This really was myfirst-ever head. Kelly handled them nonchalantly, as tools ofher trade, and I knew I mustn抰 appear squeamish or I抎never live it down. She held it by the neck, its glazed eyesaskew and its slippery purple tongue uppermost. I couldonly just reach it but I didn抰 want to grip the tongue in caseit slipped (not through squeamishness, you understand), soI asked her to pass it ear first. I just managed to reach theblood-soaked ear, like wet leather, hauled the head up ontomy perch, and wedged it in the crook of the fork. Jumpingdown I sited several more heads, one from a rope, whichinvolved piercing the ear with a knife to thread it through,then helped gather the last remnants of scraps into thebarrow.
Looked upon by my wide-eyed children, I抎 braved thelions?den and managed to hide my fear. But the best bitwas that it took the lioness three days to get that headdown. Through-out that time, she never relaxed or stoppedthinking about it. She paced underneath the tree, climbedup it a bit and then jumped down, and prowled aroundirritably, trying to solve the problem. This was realenrichment, giving her the sort of tricky issue she mighthave to solve in the wild梥tumbling on a leopard抯 killstored up a tree, for instance. Whenever I went up to theenclosure, she was there, fretting about it. How she got itdown in the end I don抰 know, but I bet that bullock head wasone of the best she抎 ever tasted.
Despite these intense distractions, I was frequentlysnapped back into vivid memories of Katherine, often fromthe most unlikely or mundane sources. During a meeting inthe house I popped into the downstairs toilet, and realizedthat this was the first time I抎 visited this room since I usedto prop Katherine up in there, its wobbly unsecured base anextra hazard for someone who couldn抰 keep her balanceunaided. It hit me like a train, but I had to leave that roomand go straight back into the meeting looking like I wasconcentrating and on top of things.
Other triggers from the mundane world included thingslike opening a cupboard and finding a half-full box of herfavorite herbal tea. A trip to Tesco was also fraught withperil. After walking past the wheelchairs that she had soenjoyed being spun around in, there was aisle upon aisle ofreminders from our years together, when I used to hunt herout a treat while doing the shopping. C魌e d扥r chocolate;chocolate truffles; sushi; navel oranges; magazines likeElle, Vogue, Red, or the one she had begun writing for,Eve; the makeup aisle, easily avoided now but once asurefire way to brownie points via the latest wonder cureantiwrinkle cream; Bombay mix; cashew nuts; herbal teas梩he list was endless. And it didn抰 stop in thesupermarket. Being in any part of London; black cabs;Converse All Stars, Jimmy Choos, Prada shoes and bags,coveted and unaffordable; people wearing old Birkenstocksandals; costume jewelry shops where she could pick out agem and make it look like the real thing; Muji; John Lewis;kitchen and bathroom showrooms; tile showrooms;drapers?shops stacked with bolts of shot silk;haberdashers; Apple Macs; yoga mats; Ian McEwannovels; flower stalls; health-food shops; passports; any sadmusic; good graphic design; stationery shops; bookmakingsuppliers; speaking French; seeing the children,our bed, and the chair where she died.
Against this backdrop, very little out in the zoo itselfreminded me of Katherine, because she was hardly there.
The new information signs going up about the animals,though informative and capably drawn up by our educationofficer, were a mish mash by Katherine抯 standards, and avivid illustration of her absence. But I didn抰 know what to doto put it right, and each time I contemplated tackling it leftme feeling like I was running across the Sahara in leadshoes with a plastic bag over my head. But putting heads intrees, driving the dumper truck, breaking up concrete with aroad drill, dealing with keepers?needs and seeing salesreps had no such connotations, and I knew I was lucky to beable to lose myself in these nonassociative tasks.
Having the camera crew around also helped a lot.
Getting them on board, in the early days of negotiations forthe park, had been the final persuader for me, because thiswas one of the few other things I knew a bit about and couldsee the enormous benefit of. Careful readers will havenoticed that there were several final persuaders for me: theNick Lindsay/ZSL endorsement of the park; talking to thethirty or so other big attractions in Devon who raved aboutthe site and offered their support; Tesco persuading methat we were within the reaches of civilization梐ll weremini-tipping points in the final cascade. But thisdevelopment, I could see as a journalist, was not just achance to air a great story about animals, but, cynically, itwas also going to have a positive impact on the businessplan.
Frustratingly, though a huge coup for us, none of the earlypotential lenders even registered it. The backroom boysbarely looked up from their calculators: after all, there wasno tangible money coming in as a result, no change in frontof them to our wonky bottom line. It needed a tiny leap ofimagination to comprehend it, and leaps of imaginationwere not how they got to be backroom boys. The TV serieswas one of those things that were dependent on us gettingthe park in the first place, so no benefit would be felt unlesswe had already succeeded. Therefore, by their strange butimmutable logic, there was no benefit.
I put all this to one side and concentrated on the positive,and suddenly here we were, in the middle of myriad(resolvable) crises, a great breaking story, all being filmedfor BBC2. The crew, from Tigress Productions, naturalhistoryspecialists I had worked with before, were inspiring.
One camera operator/director, Aidan, who had shadowedMum and me since before the purchase, had just returnedfrom seven months in the jungles of Cameroon, filminggorillas orphaned by the bushmeat trade, and was quiteunfazed by anything about our predicament. Max, acharismatic, clear-blue-eyed reprobate, had a host ofnatural-history filming experiences and countless stories togo with them.
Another tremendously knowledgeable person at TigressProductions was Jeremy Bradshaw, M.D., whom I hadworked with briefly in the past. When I抎 lived in France, I抎once spent a few days making a pilot with Tigress, andduring my one ten-minute meeting with Jeremy, had thrustmy book of DIY columns from the Guardian at him, with ashort pitch about how it would make a wonderful series. Hehad taken the book politely, and even read it, and every fewmonths we exchanged e-mails about ideas of how todevelop it梑asically, whenever I was desperate ordisheartened by some obstacle to my work. To a freelancerpitching is routine, as is having the pitch rejected or simplybeing completely ignored. But Jeremy was impeccablycourteous, and would always return an e-mail after threeweeks or so. For someone in his position to someone inmine, this was outright encouragement, even though theywere almost always one-liners saying he was very sorry buthe hadn抰 managed to think of an angle yet, and if I ever hadany other ideas to let him know. A reply of any kind otherthan an outright negative is gold dust to a freelancer, andthis tenuous direct line to Jeremy had felt like an enormousasset梩hough I抎 known it could evaporate fairly quickly if Ifailed to come up with anything of interest over the nextcouple of years.
But I had been happy writing my book and doing mycolumns, until the zoo came up. I happened to mention thisdevelopment to Jeremy in an e-mail fairly early on in thenegotiations, and was amazed by his response. He cameback the same day with an effusive reply about how he hadheard of this zoo (he is a Fellow of the Zoological Societyof London and had read about it, whereas I抎 just receivedthe real-estate agent抯 details from my sister), wished meluck, said it was an enviable way to spend one抯 life, andurged me to keep him informed.
He began contacting me about once a week. Suddenly Ihad his mobile number and he was calling me on Sundayafternoons. I could see that he was keen, and this could bevery good for the zoo, if we managed to buy it. I had alwayshoped that as a journalist I would be able to partiallysupport and publicize the zoo by writing about it桰 had askill to be deployed in the modern marketplace, and in thiscase it was for a good cause. My ambition had been toswitch my Guardian column from the family page, to whichit had migrated from the magazine, to writing about the zoo.
I knew the Guardian reader market, and that their level ofignorance (and squeamishness) on animal matters wasroughly equivalent to their position on DIY; after all, most ofmy friends read the Guardian.
But Jeremy was talking about a different level ofexposure. 揑 think it抯 a quintessentially English story,?hesaid in his soft Oxbridge accent, which is, objectively, only acouple of notches down from Prince Charles抯. 揅ompletelymad and eccentric, but with a very wide appeal. I wouldn抰be surprised if we can get BBC2 to do a series. Keep meposted.?Dream on, I thought, but I kept in touch, addingJeremy to the loop of phone calls I made from France, andhe always provided a supportive and encouraging ear.
And so one day, it turned out, I was showing Jeremyaround the park we had just bought, and he was discussingthe timing of the BBC2 series he had recently beencommissioned to make about it. Jeremy抯 knowledge froma lifetime in natural history was comprehensive, and mostof our animals were of species he had filmed in the wild,often with a celebrity presenter. The tigers reminded him ofhis direct experience of them while filming a documentarywith Bob Hoskins, the lions with Anthony Hopkins, and myaspirations for orangutans (Julia Roberts) andchimpanzees revealed that he had twice filmed JaneGoodall at her world-leading chimpanzee research andconservation center in Gombe. But my favorite remark wasas we walked past Basil, the coatimundi, the SouthAmerican climbing raccoon I had barely heard of before wearrived. 揙h, you抳e got a coati!?He beamed. 揥onderfulcreatures. You see them in the canopy in Ecuador all thetime.?
I was humbled by the entire film crew抯 knowledge andtheir professionalism, and uplifted by their enthusiasm forthis project梠ur project梬hich simply involved filming uswhile we learned about just exactly what we had gotourselves into. But it was a relief from time to time to berecast as the relative expert, for instance when theGuardian sent down a photographer to cover a feature onthe park I had written for the magazine.
As a journalist and feature writer, much of my time forabout ten years was spent working with photographers. I抎be sent on some hare-brained but marvelous assignment,like horse-riding in Spain, swimming with dolphins in theFlorida Keys, or snow boarding in California, and aphotographer would come with me to document exactlyhow badly I messed it up. It was a wonderful way to earn aliving, but a large part of the pleasure was workingalongside another professional with the same objectives,out on our own overseas. Photographers are practicalpeople. They make the best of situations, they improvise,they have gaffer抯 tape. As another pair of eyes and ears, aphotographer is useful in spotting good people to interview,and I was also able to help by drawing out and distractingpeople while they were photographed. Working as acomplementary duo like this was enormously satisfying,and it was one of the things I missed most when I fled toFrance to write my book.
So it was a very welcome relief from the myriadunfamiliar pressures of the zoo when the newspapers gothold of the story (after Sovereign and Parker made thenationals, they could hardly miss it), and started sending theodd photographer down to capture developments. This wassomething I was used to and knew all about, from thedemands of the picture editor to the backdrop and the light,but more than that, it was a chance to dip back into thatworld of journalism where I had spent so many comfortableyears. During my time working in London I was always theperson most likely to mention animals or to suggest ananimal story (usually rejected), or be disgusted with theshallow industry obsession with fashion and other mattersof extreme inconsequence. At the zoo, around the manydedicated professionals who have devoted their lives toexotic creatures, I am practically animal illiterate, unable tosex a snake, tell a Bengal owl from a European eagle owl,or dismember a horse for the tigers.
So when some fashionably dressed Soho-junky with acappuccino habit and totally inappropriate footware arrivedasking all the wrong questions, I found it enormouslyrefreshing. Julian, from the Guardian, arrived in Italiancalfskin brogues with designer jeans trailing on the ground,both instantly sodden in the long grass of the walk-inenclosure, where he wanted to get some shots of me withRonnie the tapir. On being warned of the dangers ofRonnie, who is a Class I dangerous animal easily capableof killing a man with gruesome efficiency, his reaction wasto ask the stony-faced keeper supervising us, 揥ow. Sowho抎 win in a fight between a tapir and an anaconda??Assoon as I could, I took him away on my own, so he didn抰upset anyone and I could enjoy his hopelessly out-of-placeremarks.
Trying to lure a peacock onto a picnic table for a shot,Julian approached the problem pragmatically, asphotographers do, by laying a trail of bread that ended inthe tabletop, but he didn抰 factor in the tiny pea-size brain ofthe bird. After twenty minutes with the light fading, hesnapped. 揅ome on, you total fucking spaz. You抮e not apeacock you抮e a peac枛??When he met Ben the brownbear, who at three hundred kilos is bigger than Vlad, ourmale Siberian tiger, his instant reaction was, 揝o who抎 winin a fight between the bear and a tiger??His 揳nimal maths?
theme continued all day, culminating in, 揥hat about fourrats against a swan??I was sorry to see him go back, byhis own admission, to the land of trivia and inconsequence,but it was probably for the best.
Meanwhile, there was plenty of work to be getting onwith. And again, for a change, some of it was stuff I wasused to. Like demolition. It is marvelously cathartic to wielda pickax or a sledgehammer in times of stress, though I didfind that visualizing a particular lawyer, banker, or someother source of frustration often led to an overenthusiasticwork rate, unnecessary damage to surroundinginfrastructure, and occasional personal injury. Like when Ilost a thumbnail to my new, heavy-duty crow bar whilethinking about a certain high-end bank. Demolition is notjust randomly smashing things up梩hough there is,occasionally, room for that梑ut is more a systematic, ifbrutal, dismantling in the most efficient way possible. Mymost enjoyable project was stripping out the vet room, intowhich we were sinking thousands of pounds to convert afetid former stable into a modern animal operating theater.
In the deeds, this was already officially the vet room, andanimals had in the past been stored here when there wasan urgent need for isolation. But in reality it was a series offour dank interlocking chambers with flimsy partitions, lethalwiring, and a constant splattering trickle from the faultyplumbing running across the ceiling. Smashing this stuffout, sifting the lead and copper for salvage, piling up thehardcore barrow by barrow for use under the concrete baseof the jag enclosure, was a luxury I allowed myself two orthree hours a day while it was going on.
The best discovery was a room that had not beenopened for fifteen years. A former workshop, its doorwayonto the vet room was blocked with the subsequent decadeand a half抯 worth of damp junk, so the easiest way in wastaking out the rotten window frame. Inside, it was like asmall museum of artifacts from another time. There was amini dilapidated range like the one in the flagstone kitchen,and the walls were bedecked with rusted two-manlumberjack saws and other agricultural implements from thenineteenth century梡lus, of course, the mandatory piles ofgrimy miscellanea, here including many decomposing rats,covering the floor so that not one square inch of it wasexposed. Sifting this lot for scrap and interesting artifactswas a welcome distraction, particularly when it came toripping out the ancient rotten tongue-and-groove panelingwith the aforementioned heavy-duty crowbar. Insulated fromthe world by a breathing mask and goggles, covered insweat and grime, I could wield heavy implements and avoidcalls and callers for a couple of hours a day, whileperforming useful work and also saving money on gymmembership. But inevitably, a line would build up outsideand I would have to engage with them. Well-dressed youngreps梬omen in stilettos on the uneven grimy surface of theyard, men in gray suits梬ould stand clutching clipboardswith things for me to sign, always (enjoyably for me)surprised that the man they had come to see was theperson loading the skip they had assumed was a laborerand turned their noses up at before we were introduced.
Reluctantly, when it was fully gutted, I had to hand overthe vet-room resurrection to a team of outside builders, whowere remarkably proficient in transforming this shell into awhite-tiled medical facility. They worked well, though theexpense for an off-show area was worrying, as the money,so hard-won, was hemorrhaging out in all directions, andfront-of-house issues like pathways, enclosures, and thekilometers of stand-off barrier to be replaced seemed atleast equally as important. But investing heavily in an offshowfacility like this would benefit the animals, whowouldn抰 have to be moved so far to undergo veterinaryprocedures, and it would demonstrate to the authorities thatwe were serious. The new crew of builders took over, andseemed to know what they were doing, so I moved myrecreational focus to other areas of demolition.
Like digging out enclosure fence posts from concretewith a road drill, pickaxing loose concrete wherever I couldfind it, and transporting rubble in the dumper. All too soon?
though not quite soon enough梩his stage of the operationwas complete, and the only jobs to be found wererestorative. Again, as long as they were not toocomplicated and something I could dip in and out of tomake way for the other myriad demands of my newposition, I gladly got involved. In the absence of a budget formuch needed tarmac for the car park and paths, Adam hadorganized deliveries of road planings. These are the bitsthey trim off the tops of roads before resurfacing, with thathuge machine like a giant electric razor without a guard, awhirring wheel with blades that chews up and spits out thechips of the old tarmac onto a conveyor belt behind it. Theconveyor belt deposits them into lorries, and the lorries, ifyou抮e quick enough and know where they are working, willcome and deliver them to you for a token price of about tenpounds a ton. We secured about a hundred tons, whichwas left in the bottom car park in vast piles, and whichneeded to be transported up the drive (a fifth of a mile) anddeposited on the pathways for Tony in the digger to rakeout, and then someone on the steamroller to flatten down.
We had tried for some weeks to buy reliable machineryourselves, but this meant thumbing through FarmersWeekly and other magazines dedicated to the sale ofheavy machinery. These quickly became compelling, andmany times I had eagerly dropped what I was doing whenTony or John came striding up with a folded-backcatalogue in their hand saying, 揑抳e got a lovelydumper/digger/tractor here for you, Ben.?I even took tothumbing through back issues to get a feel for what was outthere. I soon learned to tell the difference between aMassey Ferguson and a John Deere at a glance, andeasily identify a mini-digger as a one-, one-and-a-half-, two-, or three-tonner. But what I couldn抰 seem to do was buyany of them at a reasonable price. Good ones tended to belocked in some place like Dundee, where the transportcosts could double the price of the machine, and there wasthat delicate trade-off between getting something cheap,within our relatively measly budget, and getting somethingthat was going to work. This meant visiting the nearer oneswith Tony, pulling him off whatever he was doing, invariablyto find that what was on offer was either not good enough ortoo expensive. Everything decent, in this heavily agriculturalarea, was quickly snapped up. Canny farmers were alwaysthere before you, bidding against you, knowing exactly whatthey were doing. (I still pine after a particular John Deerewith a front loader, which was stolen from under my nose bya neighbor of the vendor just before we got there. It wouldhave been p............