The New Noah (6 page)

I decided that this could not go on, for Footle was fed five times a day and, as he got soaked each time, I was frightened that he might catch a chill.

I thought that the reason for his excitement was that he could see the milk coming when he was sitting on the table, so I tried a new way of feeding him. I put the saucer on the table first and
then carried Footle to it. The first time I did this, he saw the milk when he was still some way off and, uttering a shrill squeal of joy, he jumped out of my hands, shot through the air very
gracefully, and landed in the centre of the milk with a splash. Of course, the saucer was overturned and both Footle and I were drenched.

After this, I tried holding him while he drank, and this was a trifle more successful. He used to wriggle and scream with rage because I would not let him dive into the milk as though it were a
swimming pool, and sometimes he would succeed and struggle free, plunging in before I could stop him. But on most occasions, this method worked well and he remained reasonably dry, except of course
for his face. I was unable to stop him pushing that into the milk, and when he came up for air his face would be so white with cream that you could not tell where his moustache began and ended.

When Footle was not eating, he loved to cling to something. All baby monkeys, when they are that age, usually cling to the soft fur of their mother as she wanders through the trees. Footle,
having adopted me as his mother, seemed to think that it was only right that he should cling to me when he was not feeding. Most of the time I used to carry him around when I worked, and he behaved
very well, sitting on my shoulder, and clinging to my ear with one hand. But one day he got too brave and jumped off, to land on the wire front of a cage which contained a large and fierce monkey,
which promptly grabbed Footle by the tail. If I had not been there to rescue him, this would have been his last adventure.

I decided that it was too dangerous for Footle to sit on my shoulder while I worked, and therefore I shut him up in his basket, but he was obviously unhappy and spent his day screaming
plaintively and trying to climb out, so I had to think of something else. I got an old coat of mine and wore it for a few days, carrying him around on my shoulder as usual. When he had become quite
used to the garment, I took it off and hung it over the back of a chair and then put Footle on to it. He did not seem to realize that I was no longer inside the coat and clung to it with great
affection.

So every morning I would put the coat over the back of the chair, place Footle on it and he would cling there quite happily while I got on with my work. He seemed to think that the coat was part
of me, a sort of extra skin I suppose, and as long as he was attached to some part of me he felt quite happy. He would even carry on long squeaking conversations with me while I worked, but never
attempted to leave the coat and climb up on to my shoulder.

When he eventually arrived back at Liverpool, Footle had a wonderful time posing on my shoulder for the press-photographers. They were quite fascinated by him; none of them had ever seen such a
tiny monkey. One reporter watched him for a long time, and then he turned to me and said, ‘You know, he seems awfully young to have such a big moustache.’

Weekes, the red-headed mangabey, came by his name owing to his cry. Whenever you went near his cage, he would open his mouth wide and shout ‘Weekes, weekes’ at the top of his
voice.

He was a delicate shade of grey all over, except for a band of white fur round his neck, and the top of his head, which was a bright mahogany red. His face was a very dark grey and his eyelids
were creamy white. Normally, you could not see these, but when he greeted you he would raise his eyebrows and lower his lids so suddenly, it looked as though his eyes had been covered by white
shutters.

Weekes was very bored with living in a cage by himself with no one to play with, but I could not give him a mate, as he was the only one of his species that I had. He did not realize this,
however, for all round him he could hear and smell other monkeys and he thought it very unfair of me not to let him leave his cage and go to play with them. He decided the best thing to do was to
tunnel his way out of the side when I was not looking.

He had discovered a small gap between the boards of the side of his cage and set to work with fingers and teeth to widen it. The wood was very hard, and it was only after much picking and biting
that he was able to work off a small splinter. I kept a cautious eye on the hole to make sure it did not get any larger, but Weekes did not know this and thought I knew nothing about it. He would
spend hours biting and scratching at the wood, but as soon as he heard me coming he would leap up on to his perch and sit there, looking as innocent as possible, raising his eyebrows and showing
his white eyelids, blinking at me cheerfully, in the hope of persuading me that he was the very last monkey in the camp to do anything wicked.

I did not do anything about Weekes’s hole, for I thought that as soon as he found out how hard the wood was he would soon give it up. To my surprise, exactly the opposite happened. He
became so interested that he used to spend every available moment biting and scratching and sucking at the wood. Every time I came on the scene, however, there he was sitting on his perch without a
care in the world, and if it had not been for the few splinters that stuck to the hairs of his chin, I should not have known that he was still going on with his mining operations. He seemed so
convinced that I did not know about his secret passage that one day I thought I would give him a surprise.

I had just given him a bowl of milk, so he was not expecting me back at his cage for at least an hour. Refreshed by his drink, he set to work on his hole. I allowed him enough time to get well
started and then I crept down the line of cages. There was Weekes, squatting on the floor, with a grim, determined expression on his face, tugging with both hands at quite a large splinter of wood.
It was a very tough piece, and although he pulled at it with all his might, it would not part company with the side of the cage, and so he became angrier and angrier, muttering to himself and
screwing up his face in the most frightening grimaces. Just as he was bending forwards to see if he could bite through the annoying splinter, I asked him in a stern voice what he thought he was
doing.

He jumped as though I had jabbed him with a pin, and then glanced over his shoulder with a horrified and guilty expression on his face. I asked him again what he thought he was up to, and,
giving me a feeble grin, he made a half-hearted attempt to show me his eyelids. Seeing that I was not to be distracted, he sheepishly let go of the splinter and seizing his empty milk pot, leapt on
to his perch, where he was overcome with embarrassment and put the pot over his face and fell backwards off the perch on to the bottom of the cage.

He looked so ridiculous that I had to laugh, and so he decided that I must have forgiven him. He climbed back on to his perch, wearing the pot like a tin helmet on his head, and then fell off
the perch again. This time he fell on his head and hurt himself, so he had to come to the bars and have his paws held until he felt better.

Now he realized I knew all about his hole, he gave up being so secretive about it and used to work away in full view of me. If I scolded him, he would repeat his trick of putting the pot over
his face and falling backwards off the perch; and if I laughed he would assume that he had been forgiven and go back to work. Just as a precaution, however, I nailed a bit of wire over the outside
of his hole, which he was extremely annoyed about when he discovered it. When he found he could not shift the wire, he rather reluctantly gave up his tunnelling, but never forgot his trick of
falling off his perch backwards, and would always do it when he knew I was angry with him, in order to try to pacify me.

When Cholmondely, the chimpanzee, joined the collection, he immediately became the uncrowned king of it, not only because of his size, but also because he was so remarkably
intelligent. Cholmondely had been the pet of a district officer who, wanting to send the ape to the London Zoo, and hearing that I was collecting wild animals in that region and would shortly be
returning to England, wrote and asked me if I would mind taking Cholmondely with me and handing him over to the Zoo authorities. I wrote back to say that, as I already had a large collection of
monkeys, another chimpanzee would not make any difference, so I would gladly escort Cholmondely back to England. I imagined that he would be quite a young chimp, perhaps two years old, and standing
about two feet high. When he arrived I got a considerable shock.

A small van drew up outside the camp one morning and in the back of it was an enormous wooden crate. It was big enough, I thought, to house an elephant. I wondered what on earth could be inside,
and when the driver told me that it contained Cholmondely I remember thinking how silly his owner was to send such a small chimpanzee in such a huge crate. I opened the door and looked inside and
there sat Cholmondely.

One glance at him and I realized that this was no baby chimpanzee but a fully-grown one about eight or nine years old. Sitting hunched up in the dark crate, he looked as though he were about
twice as big as I, and from the expression on his face I gathered that the trip had not been to his liking. Before I could shut the door of the box, however, Cholmondely had extended a long, hairy
arm, clasped my hand in his and shaken it warmly. Then he turned round and gathered up a great length of chain (one end of which was fastened to a collar round his neck), draped it carefully over
his arm, and stepped down, out of the box. He stood there for a moment and, after surveying me carefully, examined the camp with great interest, whereupon he held out his hand, looking at me
inquiringly. I took it in mine and we walked into the marquee together.

Cholmondely immediately went and seated himself on one of the chairs by the camp table, dropped his chain on the floor and sat back and crossed his legs. He gazed round the tent for a few
minutes with a rather supercilious expression on his face, and evidently deciding that it would do he turned and looked at me inquiringly again. Obviously, he wanted me to offer him something after
his tiring journey. I had been warned before he arrived that he was a hardened tea drinker, and so I called out to the cook and told him to make a pot of tea. Then I went out and had a look in
Cholmondely’s crate, and in the bottom I found an enormous and very battered tin mug. When I returned to the tent with this, Cholmondely was quite overjoyed and even praised me for my
cleverness in finding it, by uttering a few cheerful ‘hoo hoo’ noises.

While we were waiting for the tea to arrive, I sat down opposite Cholmondely and lit a cigarette. To my surprise, he became very excited and held out his hand across the table to me. Wondering
what he would do, I handed him the cigarette packet. He opened it, took out a cigarette, and put it between his lips. He then reached out his hand again and I gave him the matches; to my
astonishment, he took one out of the box, struck it, lit his cigarette, and threw the box down on the table. Lying back in his chair he blew out clouds of smoke in the most professional manner.

No one had told me that Cholmondely smoked. I wondered rather anxiously what other bad habits he might have which his master had not warned me about.

Just at that moment, the tea was brought in and Cholmondely greeted its appearance with loud and expressive hoots of joy. He watched me carefully while I half-filled his mug with milk and then
added the tea. I had been told that he had a very sweet tooth, so I put in six large spoons of sugar, an action which he greeted with grunts of satisfaction. He placed his cigarette on the table
and seized the mug with both hands; then he stuck out his lower lip very carefully and dipped it into the tea to make sure it was not too hot.

As it was a trifle warm, he sat there blowing on it vigorously until it was cool enough, and then he drank it all down without stopping once. When he had drained the last drops, he peered into
the mug and scooped out all the sugar he could with his forefinger. After that, he tipped the mug up on his nose and sat with it like that for about five minutes until the very last of the sugar
had trickled down into his mouth.

I had Cholmondely’s big-box placed some distance away from the marquee, and fixed the end of his chain to a large tree stump. He was too far away, I thought, to make a nuisance of himself
but near enough to be able to watch everything that went on and to conduct long conversations with me in his ‘hoo hoo’ language.

But on the day of his arrival he caused trouble almost as soon as I had fixed him to his tree stump. Outside the marquee were a lot of small, tame monkeys tied on long strings attached to stakes
driven into the ground. They were about ten in number, and over them I had constructed a palm leaf roof as a shelter from the sun. As Cholmondely was examining his surroundings, he noticed these
monkeys, some eating fruit and others lying asleep in the sun, and decided he would have a little under-arm bowling practice.

I was working inside the marquee when all at once I heard the most terrific uproar going on outside. The monkeys were screaming and chattering with rage, and I rushed out to see what had
happened. Cholmondely, apparently, had picked up a rock the size of a cabbage and hurled it at the smaller monkeys, luckily missing them all, but frightening them out of their wits. If one of them
had been hit by such a big rock, it would have been killed instantly.

Just as I arrived on the scene, Cholmondely had picked up another stone and was swinging it backwards and forwards like a professional cricketer, taking better aim. He was annoyed at having
missed all the monkeys with his first shot. I grabbed a stick and hurried towards him, shouting and, to my surprise, Cholmondely dropped the rock and put his arms over his head, and started to roll
on the ground and scream. In my haste, I had picked up a very small twig and this made no impression on him at all, for his back was as broad and as hard as a table.