THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS--_continued_
We are now not far from the monkey house, where there are great cages
the height of a room, with bars filled in by wire to prevent the monkeys
from getting their little hands through to snatch, for if ever any
saying was justified it is that one, 'as mischievous as a monkey'; yet,
in spite of the bars, mischief is sometimes done. Stand near with a hat
trimmed with flowers, and you will not have to wait long to prove it.
That large monkey who has been sitting in a corner very quietly spies
the brilliant flowers. He begins to move slowly and stealthily; then,
with a sudden wild spring, almost before you realize what has happened,
he has grabbed the bright flowers, torn them out, and danced back to the
very highest corner of his cage, where, jabbering with delight, he picks
the petals off one by one, and lets them float down to the ground. He is
big, so none of the others dare take his prize from him; but woe betide
any little monkey who finds such a treasure. He darts off with it, and
then begins a wild race right across the cage; one monkey after another
joins in, leaping in the air from one swinging rope to another, and
springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a
rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a
corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has
slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other side
of the cage.
Feed one of them with nuts, a little wrinkled black hand is put out to
receive them; if you touch it, you will feel it cold and clammy. The
little black palm holds the nuts for a second, and then the monkey crams
them into its cheek, which makes a sort of pouch, and, retiring to the
top of the cage, cracks them one by one, throwing down the shells just
as a boy would do. They are very human the monkeys; you cannot help
feeling all the time they know a great deal more than they pretend. Have
you ever looked into a monkey's eyes? If not, do so the next time you
have the chance; they are the saddest eyes on earth--just as if the poor
little monkey thought a great many things in his small head, but could
never express them, and so was very unhappy. There are a large number
of monkeys at the Zoo; they are never still, and so funny that they make
you laugh outright sometimes. The bigger monkeys, which are called apes,
are also very interesting, but are in another house altogether. They
have glass in front of their cages. Of all of them the chimpanzees are
the most human, and one or two of these are in separate cages, where
they are bathed in artificial sunlight all day long to keep them in good
health, as they are very delicate.
One of the latest additions to the Zoo is a wonderful Aquarium, where
all sorts of strange fishes and sea-creatures can be seen swimming about
in natural surroundings, lit from above. From the huge wicked-looking
octopuses with their snake-like feelers, to the tiny sea-horses with
heads very like those of the knights in chess pieces, there are wonders
untold.
On this side of the Gardens there are many things we have not yet seen,
but we must leave them and see the big animals, the elephants and
rhinoceroses. To reach these, we go through a tunnel and come up on the
other side.
The first thing we see here is a row of most brilliantly coloured
parrots; I do not suppose you ever saw such colours anywhere else--the
brightest reds and blues and greens and oranges, all in the same bird.
It seems almost impossible to believe that the feathers really grow like
that; it seems as if someone must have taken a big paintbrush and daubed
on the colours. If it is warm and fine the parrots are out of doors,
each sitting on a perch, and tied by a little thin chain to one leg.
What must it be to see them in their own native forests flying about
among the green trees? Fancy, if we came across a great bird, as large
as the largest doll, brilliantly coloured, flying about in the garden at
home! The parrots come from South America, New Zealand, and Australia;
so they like hot countries, but they seem to do very well in England,
and look quite perky and happy. I will tell you what I think is the
reason of this, the parrots are so conceited that they are pleased when
people admire them, and they like nothing better than to be at the Zoo,
where dozens of people come past every day and say:
'Oh, just look at that one! Did you ever see such a beauty? Look at his
scarlet and blue! Now, who would have thought a bird could be like
that?'
On dull or cold days the parrots are indoors, and if you go into their
house you will hear a tremendous noise. All of them are shrieking and
screaming at once. Perhaps suddenly in the midst of all this din you
will hear a funny parrot voice saying: 'Thank you, my dear; Polly's
quite well,' which will make you jump. When you turn round you will see
it is one of the birds who is talking. They cannot all talk, and those
who do just know a sentence or two without knowing the sense of it, and
say it on all occasions; but very proud they are of the accomplishment.
There are dear little green parrakeets, too, who fly about in flocks in
Australia, looking like flights of animated green leaves.
Besides parrots there are in the same house toucans, birds who have
enormous bills and rather small bodies--in fact, they seem to have spent
their time growing bills. The bill, or beak, is like the claw of a
lobster, and is rich orange colour. The toucan's eye has bright blue
round it, and round that again orange colour. The bird himself is black,
but he has tips of scarlet on his costume and a white throat, so he is
altogether very grand, and he is so solemn that you think he must
imagine himself very superior.
Just beyond the parrot house is a long range of buildings like a large
stable, and here are the elephants and other big animals. Perhaps the
elephant is out earning his living by walking round the Gardens with a
seat on his back, on which anyone can have a ride who likes. He is very
gentle and tame, though his enormous height and great swinging trunk
make him appear rather fearful.
If he is at home, and we pay him a visit, he coils up his trunk or lifts
it over his head, and shows a huge three-cornered mouth, into which, he
gently insinuates, he would like you to throw biscuits. There are both
Indian and African elephants, and the African are generally the larger.
Elephants as a rule have very good characters, and get fond of their
keepers. They are big and gentle; yet in some cases they have suddenly
turned savage without any apparent reason. In the wild state they live
in dense forests, and unless they were very strong and their hides were
very thick they could never get through the trees and shrubs at all; but
they force them asunder with their great strength, and snap the long
twining plants that hang from tree to tree. Any other animal would be
wounded and torn with the spikes and thorns, but the elephant's hide is
as strong as a board. He does not mind prickles, and the only sensitive
part of him is just behind the ear, so when he is tamed a man sits on
his neck, and with a little sharp-pointed spike pricks him behind the
ear on the side he wants him to go. It does not hurt, but the elephant
feels it and soon understands, and follows the directions as a horse
follows the pull of the reins in driving. Elephants live entirely on
green food and vegetables, and never want to eat flesh. In their forests
they can find plenty of food, and they tear down great branches of rich
trees with their long trunks, and then strip the leaves off neatly and
put them into their mouths. When the elephant is thirsty he goes to a
deep watercourse and drinks, and then, sucking up water in his trunk, he
squirts it over his back and sides in a cooling shower-bath.
If you understood elephant language, and came here one evening when the
day's work was done and there were no other people about, you might hear
the elephants talking.
'Those silly fools of humans!' says the Indian elephant; 'not one of
them can throw straight. I can tell you half my time is spent in picking
up the bits of biscuit they mean to throw into my mouth and throw
somewhere else. I would have a school for teaching them to throw
straight if I were in authority. The bits are so little when you get
them too--mere atoms.'
'Always thinking about eating,' says the African one, who is a lady.
'Really, I wish they would give you more hay or something to stuff
yourself up with. For me, I don't care what I have to eat, but I do long
for a little heat and a good plunge in a real river with soft muddy
banks instead of my wretched tank sometimes.'
'Ah!' the Indian elephant answers, 'is there anything like it, that
plunge after a long, hot, sleepy day, when one has stood about under the
trees? I used to have a particular tree I always went and leaned
against. It just fitted my side, and I wore the trunk quite smooth. And
there I stood all the long, hot day, with sound of the rich forest life
in my ears, the buzz and hum of the myriad things that fly and swarm,
and the dense leaves kept off the sun; it was dark and hot. Then, when
evening came, and it grew a little cooler, we used to join together, all
of us who belonged to the same herd, and go down to the water. Then what
romping and splashing, what trumpeting and fun! We squirted each other
with mud and water, and came out fresh and cool. Ah, those were grand
times!'
'You were a fool to get caught,' said the African one rudely, for she
had not very good manners. 'How did it happen?'
The Indian elephant looked quite sad, and winked his little eyes as if
he thought he should cry. 'It was a terrible story that,' he said, 'and
the lesson is, never depend on women. I met one day a handsome elephant
in the forest, who seemed to me the nicest I had ever seen. She was not
very big, but her ears were particularly large, and hung down so
gracefully; and as for her feet, I don't think I've ever seen such
beautiful great flat feet on an elephant. Well, I loved her, and she
seemed to like me, and we talked together and rubbed trunks, and were
very happy, and I forgot where I was quite; and the next thing was I
found I was shut in between high palisades, and when I tried to get out
the gate was shut. And then men threw ropes over me, and tied my feet to
great poles; and the wicked little elephant ran away grinning, for she
was a decoy. You've heard of them perhaps--elephants who are tamed by
humans, who teach them to be wicked and go out into the forest just in
order to trap their own kind and bring them into captivity? It was sad,
very sad!'
'But you are happy and contented here as a rule,' said the African.
'Yes, yes, I can't grumble; they are very good to me, and I get some
exercise walking about, and as some day I shall grow old, it's as well,
perhaps, to be looked after. It's terrible to be old when one lives in
the forest; besides, I should feel strange to go back to the old life.
I've been here now thirty years.'
'And I twenty. How time does go past!'
All this and much more you might hear if you knew the elephants'
language, for they are quite too clever not to have some means of
talking to each other.
The rhinoceros is very different. His eyes are wicked, he turns his head
from side to side; he would like to stick that horn at the end of his
nose into you if he could, and, holding you down with his great flat
feet, rummage about inside you with it, and you would not live very long
under that treatment. His skin hangs in great thick folds like plates of
armour, and is so loose that it looks as if his tailor had fitted him
very badly. He is much smaller than the elephant, and his thick-set body
shows great strength. He is hideously ugly according to our ideas; but
rhinoceros' ideas are different, and he would probably think the smooth
pink-and-white skin of a child hideous. He lives in the jungle and eats
the leaves of trees, which he tears off with his long upper lip. Some
rhinoceroses have two horns on their nose and some only one. You can
see both sorts in the Gardens. When the rhinoceros in its wild state has
a little calf, as its young one is called, the little one runs along in
front of the mother at the sound of any danger, and the mother follows
in a wallowing trot behind, so that if necessary her body could guard it
from danger. Sometimes hunters shoot rhinoceroses and kill them, and
then eat part of them, which they say is very good, just like beef.
After leaving the elephant and rhinoceros house, we pass some sheds and
yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of
buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If
you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the
hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks
like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig
that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now--a
lady hippo, born at the Zoo, and about thirty years old, and another,
quite a boy yet, only ten or eleven years old, who was born in the
Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. Neither of them have known what it is to
wallow in the soft mud on the sides of rivers or the joy of living wild
and free; they are fat, sleepy, stupid, and contented. There is a tank
in their yard at the back, and they are free to walk out as much as they
please. Sometimes they lie in the water with only their backs out for a
whole afternoon at a time.
The yards of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire
fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and
touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd,
his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he
had a stiff neck, he holds his head so high, and seems so grand.
Giraffes are very delicate animals, and great care must be taken of
them. When you think how difficult it must be to bring an animal with a
neck like that over the sea and in a railway train to England, it seems
wonderful that the Zoo ever owns one at all. Giraffes live on the open
plains in Africa, and if they take fright they fly away over the ground
with their long legs, covering yards at each stride. If ever a hunter
gets near enough to one to throw a rope round him, he may think himself
lucky indeed. If a giraffe has been caught like this, the hunters draw
him, kicking and struggling, up to a tree, tie him there, and leave him
to fight and try to get free for a whole day and a night; sometimes he
fights so desperately that he kills himself. However, if he is still
alive in the morning, the hunters come and find him exhausted, and they
can then take him away without so much danger of being killed by a blow
from his great hoof or a swing of his hard head, which he uses to strike
with. Once down at the sea, a special place has to be made in the ship
so that his long neck may not be cramped; and when landed in England
there is a long box-like arrangement fitted on to a compartment of a
train, and this can be bent down flat along the roof of the train when
it passes under a tunnel. Just think of the many difficulties there are
before a giraffe can be transferred from his native plains to England!
If you look at a tall giraffe, with his sad, lovely eyes, you will think
it cruel that he should be brought into captivity; but, after all, when
he is here he is well looked after, and everything is done to make him
comfortable. And if he had not been brought here, thousands of people
would never have seen one of the most curious animals in the world. The
giraffes at the Zoo are continually changing, for though some have been
born here, they do not live long, and new ones have to be brought from
Africa at great cost.
Not far from the giraffe house are the zebras, with their beautiful
black and white stripes, looking like wonderfully marked donkeys. They
are very wild and untameable and of uncertain temper; it is best not to
go too near them. Well, with the zebras we have finished seeing all the
well-known animals of the larger kinds, and so we must say good-bye to
the Zoo, perhaps to come again another day.