At last Topsy grew so big that she was bigger than her teddy bears, and we decided that we would have to wean her off them, as it were, for eventually she would have to go into a big cage with other woolly monkeys, and she could not take her bears with her. It was time, we felt, that she grew used to the idea of having a companion in the cage with her, and so we chose a large ginger guinea-pig of placid disposition and no brain. He was introduced into Topsy’s cage, and at first she ignored him, except when he went too near to her precious bear, whereupon she would clout him. It was not long, however, before Topsy discovered that the guinea-pig had one great advantage over the bear as a sleeping companion—it had built-in central heating.

The guinea-pig—whom we now called Harold for con­venient reference—took, I think, a rather dim view of all this. To begin with, if he possessed a thought in his head at all, that thought was food. Harold’s life-work was to test the edibility of everything with which he came in contact, and he did not like having his life’s work mucked about by a domineering woolly monkey. Topsy, on the other hand, had very strict ideas about the correct time to get up, go to bed, play, and so on, and she did not see why she should have to change these to fit in with Harold’s feeding habits. It seemed to Harold that no sooner had he found a respectable piece of carrot, or something, than Topsy would decide it was bedtime, and he was seized by the hind leg and hauled off to their box of straw, in the most undignified manner. Here, to add insult to injury, Topsy would climb on to his back, wrap her arms, legs, and tail tightly round him to prevent his escape, and sink into a deep sleep, looking like an outsize jockey on a small and rotund ginger horse.

Another thing that Harold found disquieting was Topsy’s firm conviction that, if given the opportunity, he would be able to leap about in the branches with the same agility that she herself displayed. She was sure that if only she could get him up into the branches he would turn out to be a splendid climber, but the job was to lift Harold off the ground. She could spare only one hand to hold him with, and he was fat, heavy, and uncooperative. She would, after considerable effort, tuck him under one arm and then start to climb, but before she was more than a few inches up the wire Harold would slip out from under her arm and plop back to the floor of the cage. Poor Harold—I think he suffered a great deal at Topsy’s hands, but he served our purpose, for very soon Topsy had forgotten all about her teddy bears, and was able to take her place in the big cage with the rest of the woolly monkeys. Harold was returned to the guinea-pig pen, where he spends all day up to his knees in vegetables, champing his way through them with grim determination.

Another creature that gave us a certain amount of trouble during his settling-in period was Fred, a patas monkey from West Africa. He was a fully adult male, one of the largest patases I have ever seen, and he had been the personal pet of some people in England. How they managed to keep him up to that size without being severely bitten was a mystery, for Fred’s canines were a good two inches long and as sharp as razors. Apparently, right up to the time that Fred came to us, he used to go into the house each evening and watch television.

But the really awful thing about Fred was his clothing. Patas monkeys are covered with thick, bright ginger-coloured fur, and Fred arrived wearing a knitted jumper in a startling shade of red. This combination of colours made even the most unsartorial members of the staff blanch. The trouble was that Fred missed his television and his rides in the car, and decided that we were in some way responsible for depriving him of these, so he loathed us all from the very start with complete impartiality. If anyone went near his cage he would leap at the wire and shake it vigorously, baring all his teeth in a ferocious grimace. Until, if ever, he showed any signs of trusting and liking us, we could do nothing about removing his terrible jacket. Fred just sat among the branches in his cage, wearing his scarlet jacket and showing no signs of forgiving us. The trouble was that, as the days passed, the jumper grew more and more grubby and dishevelled, until he looked as though he had just emerged from a slum.

We tried every method to rid him of this insanitary garment, but without success. Fred seemed rather proud of it, and would become very annoyed if we tried to take it off him. We began to wonder how long it would take the wool to disintegrate naturally and fall off, but whoever had knitted the jumper had chosen really tough wool, and it was obvious that it would be several years before it fell to pieces. Then fate played into our hands. We had a heat wave, and the temperature in the mammal house, where Fred lived, soared. At first he enjoyed it, but soon it became too much even for him, and we noticed that he was pulling meditatively at his jumper. The next morning we found the offending garment hanging neatly over a branch in Fred’s cage and managed to hook it out with the aid of a long stick. From that day onwards, Fred grew increasingly placid; he will never be really trustworthy, but at least he is now less inclined to treat human beings as his enemy.

Still another creature that gave us a certain amount of trouble in the early stages was Millicent, the Malabar squirrel. Malabars, the largest members of the squirrel family, hail from India. They measure about two feet in length, with sturdy bodies and long, bushy tails. Their undersides are saffron yellow, their upper parts rich mahogany red, and they have very large ear-tufts that are like a couple of black sporrans perched on their heads. They are, like all squirrels, alert, quick-moving and inquisitive, but, unlike most squirrels, they do not have that nervous desire to gnaw everything with which they come into contact. Her view was that nature had provided her with a pair of prominent, bright orange teeth for the sole purpose of demolishing any cage in which she was confined. This was not from any desire to escape, because having gnawed a large hole in one side of the cage she would then move over to the other side and start all over again. She cost us a small fortune in repairs until we had a cage specially lined with sheet metal, and thus put a stop to her activities. However, feeling that she would miss her occupational therapy, we gave her large logs of wood, and she proceeded to gnaw her way through these like a buzz-saw.

At first Millicent was anything but tame, and would not hesitate to bury her teeth in your finger, should you be foolish enough to give her the chance. No amount of bribery on our part, with the aid of such things as mushrooms and acorns, would make her any the less savage, and we came to the conclusion that she was just one of those animals which never become tame. But then a peculiar thing happened; Millicent was found one day lying in the bottom of her cage in a state of collapse. She had no obvious symptoms, and it was a little difficult to tell exactly what was wrong with her. When I find an animal suffering from some mysterious complaint like this, I do two things: I give it an antibiotic and keep it very warm. So Millicent had an injection and was moved down to the reptile house, for this is the only place where the heat is kept on throughout the summer months.

Within a few days Millicent was recovering satisfactorily, but was still languid. The extraordinary fact was the change in her character. From being acutely anti-human, she had suddenly become so pro-Homo sapiens that it was almost embarrassing. You had only to open her cage door and she would rush out into your arms, nibbling your fingers gently and peering earnestly into your face, her long whiskers quivering with emotion. She liked nothing better than to lie along your arm, as though it were the branch of a tree, and doze in this position for hours if you let her. Since she was now such a reformed character, she was allowed out of her cage first thing each morning, to potter round the reptile house. Millicent soon discovered that the tortoise pen provided her with everything a self-respecting Malabar could want: there was an infra-red lamp that cast a pleasant, concentrated heat; there were the backs of the giant tortoises, which made ideal perches; and there was an abundance of fruit and vegetables. So the giant tortoises would move ponderously round their pen, while Millicent perched on their shells. Occasionally, when one of them found a succulent piece of fruit and was just stretching out his neck to engulf it, she would hop down from his back, pick up the fruit, and jump back on to the shell again before the tortoise really knew what was happening. When the time came that Millicent was well enough to return to the small mammal house, I think the giant tortoises were glad to see the back of her, for not only had she been an additional weight on their shells, but the constant disappearance of titbits from under their very noses was having a distressing effect on their nerves.