We Bought a Zoo. Benjamin Mee

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СКАЧАТЬ it felt. For the good of the animals, and in the interests of demonstrating a break from the past to the council, I asked Peter what he recommended. ‘Re-house them in another zoo as soon as you take over,’ he said. ‘Mike Thomas will organize it for you.’ I canvassed Mike and Rob, the head keeper currently responsible for the jags under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, and they both said the same thing. To prevent the very real risk of an escape, we should re-house as soon as possible. With a very deep sigh, I eventually agreed. ‘That’s the right answer,’ said Mike. ‘For that, you can probably get a couple of those zebras you’ve been on about, some way down the line when you’re ready to receive them. And probably a breeding female for Sovereign later on.’ This I liked, spots for stripes, and it made me feel a little closer to the zoo world, knowing I had made a tough decision everyone approved of, and was building credibility.

      But with two prime big cats going, the Tammy/Tasmin question loomed large. In the first few days it also came out that a wolf and three of the seven vervet monkeys had also been ostracized by their groups and needed re-housing. Would we have any animals left by the time we re-opened? One well-meaning relative called to helpfully explain that I had made an elementary blunder with the jaguars. ‘If you’re going to run a zoo, it has to have animals in it,’ she said. The sense of siege from all sides was tightening, but I was sure that I’d made the right decision with all the information available to me on the ground, and it only made me more determined.

      In these very early days a lot of time was spent clearing out the house and grounds of junk, and burning it on a huge fire in the yard. This was cathartic for us and the park as a whole, but must have been hard for relatives of Ellis like Rob, his grandson, who had to help haul furniture which was dilapidated but still things he had grown up with, onto the pyre. I’d already agreed that Rob could stay in the run down cottage on site, and offered him anything he wanted to salvage, but generally he seemed relieved by the process, and Rob was extremely positive and helpful towards us.

      But then, four days after we took over Dartmoor Wildlife Park, while chatting to Rob about what to do with our surplus stock, the unthinkable happened. One of the most dangerous animals on the park, Sovereign, was accidentally let out of his enclosure by a catastrophic blunder from a junior keeper. At about 5.30 pm I was sitting with Rob in the kitchen when Duncan burst in, shouting ‘ONE OF THE BIG CATS IS OUT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,’ and then ran off again. Now, Duncan doesn’t normally shout, or get agitated, but here he was clearly doing both. Rob disappeared like a puff of smoke, and I knew he’d gone to get the guns and organize the staff’s response. I sat for an increasingly surreal moment, and then decided that, as a director of a zoo I probably ought to go and see exactly what was going on. I started making my way towards the part of the park where the big cats are kept. This was one of the strangest moments of my life. All I knew was that a big cat – a lion, a tiger? – was out, somewhere, and may be about to come bounding round the corner like an energetic Tigger, but not nearly so much fun. I saw a shovel and picked it up, but it felt like an anvil in my hand. What was the point? I thought, and dropped it, and began walking towards the sound of screaming. Was I about to see someone being eaten alive? I had images of someone still alive but fatally mauled, ribcage asunder, being consumed before a horrified audience. Then a car pulled up with Duncan and Robert in it. ‘GET IN THE CAR!’ I was told, and gladly complied.

      At the top tiger enclosure it was clear that the jaguar, Sovereign, was inside with a tiger, Tammy. Both animals were agitated and the keepers were shouting to discourage them from fighting. My first thought was relief that the animals were contained and no one was injured. I conferred with Robert, now backed up by his brother John armed with a high-powered rifle, and we began to build up a picture of what had happened. If the animals began fighting he would have to shoot one of them, and we decided it should be the tiger, because she was more dangerous and also the less endangered animal, but he would fire a warning shot first to try to separate them. I asked that he only do this as an absolute last resort, as letting guns off would seriously up the ante for the assembled personnel, who at the moment were all tense, but calm.

      Suddenly the jaguar lunged at the tiger’s hind quarters, and the tiger turned and swiped the jaguar’s head, spinning him like a doll. At half the weight, Sovereign was instantly discouraged. From that point both animals stayed apart, encouraged by the coaxing of the keepers. But the tiger was reluctant to surrender her territory. Sovereign paced purposefully along the right-hand perimeter, tracking a keeper who was moving up and down the fence to keep his attention. Tammy the Tiger took up position on top of a rock and scowled and bellowed at Sovereign. Twenty minutes ago I’d been having a nice cup of tea, but this was Intense. A stand-off ensued, which could only be ended by a dart from a gun. Unfortunately, the one in our gun room didn’t work, and had never worked, despite being on the inventory as a working safety tool. We were only equipped to shoot to kill.

      Soon the cat keeper Kelly ordered all available men to assemble along the bottom perimeter, and on command we shouted as loudly as we could at Tammy (she doesn’t like men or shouting), while the cat keepers Kelly and Hannah called her to her house. All keepers, maintenance and ground staff, and even an IT expert, Tom, who’d been on a site visit to give us a quote and had been with Duncan up at the lion house, got caught up in the escape. Tom had a good bellow, as depicted on the TV series, also being filmed at this early time. A camera crew shadowing your every move can be a worrying thing, but we felt we had nothing to hide and, just to raise the stakes, I negotiated with Rob that the crew could leave the safety of their car and join us at the wall. The bellowing commenced, and the effect was immediate, like spraying Tammy with cold water. Her tail twitched, her ears flattened, and after couple of minutes she cracked, jumped off the rock and into her house. There was an enormous sense of relief, but I called Mike Thomas and told him of my concerns that although he was contained, Sovereign was not 100 per cent secure because he was in an unfamiliar enclosure, and agitated enough to try something desperate. Mike agreed. ‘I’ve seen an ape jump forty feet when it was stressed,’ said Mike. ‘Which it’s not supposed to be able to do. Luckily we caught her in the ladies’ toilets.’ If Sovereign got out again, we were unlikely to be so lucky.

      With all three tigers in, we decided the next obvious course of action was to try to lure Sovereign into the fourth tiger-house chamber, so that he really was contained. Unfortunately, this spare chamber was in disrepair, and was not secure. It needed lining with steel sheets, and the slats on the floor repairing, both tasks that could be carried out in house in a few hours with materials and personnel on site, but the light was fading fast. And there was no light in the tiger house. Duncan stayed to oversee the refurbishment of the cat house, and I went off to try to buy some emergency lighting, with directions from the keepers to the nearest likely lighting emporium in nearby Plympton. As I drove off into the dusk I noticed some workmen on the main access road unloading transits with tools, but they waved me through and I thought little of it as I sped on in my quest for lighting so that the repairs could continue.

      After a couple of emergency U-turns I found a large garden centre cum-bric-a-brac emporium, selling myriad tat, but which had a DIY and a lighting section. I sprinted up the stairs, grabbed an assistant, and asked for halogen floodlights. There was a long pause. Then, as if in slow motion, she said, ‘Well … I … think … we’ve … got … some … fairy lights …’ ‘NO, no no: floodlights. Halogen floodlights. 500 watts. Completely different. Where would they be?’ As she drifted off to ask someone, I combed the lighting section again at emergency speed, eyes scanning systematically up and down the rows of frilly pink bedside lights, glass ladies holding a single bulb, and of course, fairy lights. I tried to broaden my mission statement; would any of this lighting detritus work as a compromise? I pictured our grizzled team working in a dank corridor with angle grinders and tigers in the next bay, and imagined their faces as I presented them with a Disney character desk lamp. No. And then I found it. In an unmarked box on a bottom shelf was a single exterior wall-mounted halogen lamp, but no plug or flex. I grabbed it with both hands and shot down to the DIY section, past the emerging assistant saying, ‘I’m … sorry … but … we … haven’t … got …’ ‘It’s OK. Got one. Thanks.’

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