Читать книгу The Zoo Book - Enid blyton - Страница 5

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Have you ever wished that one of the keepers at the Zoo was your special friend? Think what exciting and interesting stories he could tell you about all sorts of things! He would tell you which animals could be tamed and which could not. He would perhaps show you a wolf which loved to be stroked, and a cat which nothing will tame! He would tell you of the narrow escapes he has had from the animals under his care, and of all the funny things that have happened from time to time at the Zoo.

There is a true and funny story about some white storks which used to live at the Zoo. London air made their feathers very dirty, and, instead of being beautiful white birds, they looked sooty and ugly.

One day a visitor told the keeper that he “didn’t think much of the storks. They might be blackbirds by their colour!”

The keeper looked at his storks and thought about them for some time. He didn’t like remarks like that. And you will never guess what he did! He took those storks, one by one, and laid them on the table where he prepared their food. He took soap and soda and water, and he washed each stork thoroughly from beak to tail. They didn’t like it at all, and for some days they went about looking very draggled, miserable birds; but as the hot sun dried their feathers, they spread out their plumage, and soon, instead of three sooty-looking birds in a paddock, you would have seen a trio of gleaming white, spotlessly clean storks walking about in the sun under the eye of a very proud and pleased keeper.

The parrots keep their beautiful colours, but sometimes one will fall into the bad habit of nibbling her own feathers. If nothing were done to prevent this, the silly parrot would probably go on until she had hardly a feather left! So, when a bird is seen beginning to bite away her coat, the keeper slips a tin collar round her neck! The parrot looks as if she were wearing a tin ruff, and she cannot possibly bend her head down to nibble any of her feathers! Isn’t that a good idea?

Birds which come from far-away hot countries are difficult to keep strong and healthy at the Zoo. Our climate is different, and also the length of our days. In winter we have only eight hours daylight, and as these tropical birds had been used to a day of at least twelve hours’ length in their own land, it meant that they had not enough time, when they came to the Zoo, to pick up sufficient food in our short eight-hour day to keep themselves well and strong. Many of them starved and died because they would not feed during the darkness, even if they were hungry.

Something had to be done to save these rare birds, and a very good idea was thought of. “We can’t make our sun shine in the sky any longer than it does,” said the Zoo folk, “so the only thing to do is to give the birds an artificial sun and hope they will think it’s the real thing and go on feeding!”

And they put big, powerful gas lamps in the birds’ house, and had these lighted two hours before sunrise and two hours after sunset! That made twelve hours of light for the birds, and as they did not go to sleep until the house was dark, but fed all the time, the idea was a great success, and is still carried out at the Zoo. The birds do not starve themselves any longer, and are much healthier and stronger than they used to be.

I was once told a most interesting story about a widgeon. Widgeons in their free state nest in lonely wild places by the sea. But there was once a widgeon at the Zoo who made her nest, laid her eggs, and hatched them in a yellow privet bush just outside her aviary!

No keeper saw her get out from her aviary, and no one missed her. She got out somehow and, all unseen, explored around until she found the privet bush in a flower bed. She decided that was just the place, and there she laid her eggs. She probably went back to her aviary every day for her food, and then returned secretly to the hidden nest. One day eight of her ten eggs hatched! What was the mother to do? Take them back to her aviary, of course, where they could get food! And then, to the astonishment of every one, a mother widgeon came bustling across the lawn, followed by eight baby widgeons, trying to get back into the wired aviary! It must have been a charming sight to see.

Sometimes animals quarrel. The keepers take no notice if it is one of the silly hourly quarrels of monkeys, or the spitefulness of animals safely separated by fence or walls. But a fight between lions, for instance, is a serious thing. They are valuable animals, and with their powerful teeth and claws can do tremendous damage to each other. It is not easy to doctor a great savage animal, so fights have to be stopped as quickly as possible, before any real harm is done. Irons and poles are kept ready to separate fighting animals; but there is something even stronger than those, and that is the hose! A great jet of cold water is powerful and surprising enough to make even lions stop fighting!

A real lion or tiger fight must be a savage affair. There was a great fight years ago at the Zoo between a tiger and tigress. The tigress clawed at the tiger’s nose and hurt him. He jumped up and knocked her over and bit her. She flew at him and bit him on his side, and this angered him so much that he seized her by the throat with his great teeth. The keeper then thought it was time to interfere, and he separated the two fierce animals; but the tigress was so badly hurt that ten days later she died.

Bears sometimes get angry with each other, and there is an interesting story about a polar bear who lived at the Zoo many years ago. This polar bear had a wife who sometimes irritated him dreadfully. She snarled at him and annoyed him, for she was a bad-tempered creature. He used to bear it as long as he could, and then he would suddenly turn on her and push her into the water. There he sat on her head until he thought she had been punished enough, when he would let her free again; but one day he sat too long on her head, and when he climbed out of the pond he found she did not follow him. She was drowned.

If you watch the monkeys in a monkey cage you will probably see one who is bigger than the others and who seems to be held in great respect by them. If you watch him for some time you will see why. He will come tearing down from his perch if he sees you giving a tit-bit to a smaller monkey, and perhaps he will snatch it away or chase the monkey all over the cage for it. He will pinch other monkeys and smack them, so that, when they see him coming, they scamper away as fast as hands, feet and tail will take them.

“What a horrid, selfish monkey!” you will say. “Why ever do the keepers let him live with the other poor little monkeys? They never get five minutes’ rest!”

That is exactly why he is put there—so that the other monkeys won’t be able to laze about too much and become ill through want of exercise. Monkeys in a cage are protected from all their natural enemies, and do not need to climb or run at all, except for purposes of play; and if they do not have enough exercise they become ill and die. So you see the horrid bully of a monkey is really very good for them, for he keeps them “on the move” without hurting them too much. Of course, if he showed any signs of over-bullying he would be taken away, but the keepers are always on the look-out for that.

Photo: F. W. Bond.

A Handsome Leopard

The magnificent coat of this animal with its black ring-shaped markings on a bright yellow ground closely resembles the sun-flecked spaces of the jungle. It is not easy, therefore, to discover the whereabouts of a leopard in his leafy abode.

The keeper of the sloth bears could tell you a story rather like the monkey story if you asked him. Sloth bears are lazy creatures, and when, as in the Zoo, there is not even the need to go hunting for their daily food, they become lazier and lazier. Animals, to keep healthy, must have exercise, and the keepers were puzzled to know what to do. At last the two sloth bears (called Tweedledum and Tweedledee) were put with three young brown bears who were very lively indeed. They loved sitting up on their hind legs and boxing with each other. They were very clumsy at it, but once a paw got home it was a very hefty one! These three brown bears looked at Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and decided to teach them how to box—and that was the end of the sloth bears’ laziness!

Animals not only suffer from sheer laziness and from wounds they get through fighting or nibbling themselves; they sometimes suffer from the same sort of illnesses that we have. Apes particularly catch colds which turn to pneumonia or influenza. Because of this a glass screen was put between the visitors and the apes in the hope that the apes would thus be prevented from catching any infection from visitors. But now it has been decided that it is really better for the animals to have fresh air and to be allowed to make friends with people.

There was once a tapir who got the mumps! Tapirs are queer enough looking animals when they haven’t got mumps, but it must have been the funniest sight in the world to see an animal which is a sort of half elephant, half pig standing and looking very miserable with a large white rag round her neck and throat! Tommy, her companion, couldn’t understand it at all, and would insist on taking it off continually, much to the keeper’s annoyance!

If you look in the cages of animals which have sharp claws, you will always see logs of wood there. Can you guess why? It is because the animals have no chance of using their claws in a natural way, and if these are not kept worn down they will grow and grow until they enter the foot of the animal and make it unable to walk comfortably. In their wild state clawed animals will scratch their claws down the trunks of trees; and when they are caged they are given logs for the same purpose. But sometimes they will not keep their claws in order by scraping them down, and then the Zoo doctor has to deal with them. When you go to the dentist to have a sturdy tooth out, you are given a “sleepy gas,” which sends you to sleep for a few seconds while the dentist takes out your tooth without any feeling of pain on your part. That is what is done to the Zoo animals when their claws are cut. They are just put into a “sleep-box,” and directly they are asleep the doctor nips the claws to the proper length.

You might think that claws ought to be cut without all the fuss of “sleepy gas.” Well, they used to be. But animals will not sit still and hold up their paws quietly, as you hold up your hands to have your nails cut. So this is what used to be done. Loops of rope were put in the animal’s cage, and when he stepped into one a watching keeper pulled it tight. Then the animal was dragged to the bars and its claws were cut short. It was sometimes a long business though, for many animals were suspicious of the loops of rope and would not go near them; and, of course, they hated to be treated like that.

Animals with hoofs also have to be dealt with sometimes, for they cannot possibly get enough exercise in their small paddocks to run and wear their hoofs down. So when the hoofs grow too long, up comes the Zoo doctor, and, after the keepers have roped the animal (a zebra, perhaps) and got him down on the ground, the doctor cuts the hoofs into the proper shape and size.

There are many cages at the Zoo into which I should be very afraid to go. I should hate to enter the lions’ cage or the tigers’, and I should be afraid of the rhinoceros, with his great horned nose; but the cages I should hate most of all to enter would be the snakes’. I should be very much afraid of a python or a rattlesnake. But the keepers don’t seem to be afraid of anything. There was one keeper in the Snake House who had to get a python out of one cage into another whilst the first cage was being spring-cleaned. What do you think he did? He just opened the door between, got hold of the big snake, and walked him through!