Chapter 3 The First Days

From the outset, we knew that it was going to be tough.
Employ twenty staff members, when we had neveremployed staff before? Take care of two hundred wild andexotic animals? The house we had moved into was as rundownas the zoo over which it looked. Though once agrand, twelve-bedroom mansion, now its plumbinggroaned, its paper peeled, its floor-boards creaked—but itwas home. Most people, especially at Mum’s age, arelooking to downsize their lives, but we were upsizingdramatically, into an utterly unfamiliar avenue of work, andthe stakes were high. Everything, frankly, that my mum anddad had worked for over fifty years together was on thetable. And still we needed more—half a million more—justto be able to take the chance that the zoo might be able toreopen, and that when it did, it would work. Normally thislevel of uncertainty over something so important wouldseem impossibly crazy, but the late legal challenge from ourown side had forced our hand, leaving us uncertain,penniless, and paddling like mad to find some money. Yet,in the context of the last six months of negotiations, it simplyseemed like just another bad but probably weatherabledevelopment.
We were also comforted by the fact that although wehadn’t done anything like this before—and we didn’t have alicense to trade nor even a particular curator in mind (Suzyin Australia was having health problems, which put her outof the picture)—at least we owned the entire place outright.
This, surely, stood us in good stead with creditors. Plus wehad a whole ￡4,000 left over.
The meticulously researched business plan I had evolvedwith Jim—or, more accurately, Jim had put intospreadsheets based on his business knowledge andrumors I’d picked up from the twenty or so leadingattractions in Devon—was now very much hypothetical. Theurgent spending that was due to commence as we arrivedwas now delayed as we searched for new lenders, whocircled again, sniffing with renewed interest, since, asholders of actual assets, we had lurched to a new statuswith their backroom boys.
As it turned out, the backroom boys remained less thanimpressed. We could hear their collective eyebrows creakup, releasing small puffs of dust, but the calculators werequickly deployed, and though some offers were tentativelymade, all were swiftly withdrawn. This problem was goingto catch up with us fast, so with phones glued to our ears,we set about trying to solve immediate crises on the groundwithout actually spending any money. In those first few dayswe walked in wonder around the park, meeting the animals,gathering information, marveling at the bears, wolves, lions,and tigers, getting to know the keepers, and grinning wildlyover our new life.
The first time I met Kelly I got a surprise. As with Hannah,she was one of the two dedicated cat keepers who hadstayed on against the odds to look after the animals,sometimes not being paid, and having to pay for vitaminsupplements for the animals (and rudimentary sundries—like flashlight batteries and toilet paper) out of their ownpockets. “Are you the new owner?” she asked, wide-eyedand intense, to which I replied I was one of them. “Can youplease do something about the situation with these tigers?”
I had no idea what situation Kelly was talking about, but shesoon filled me in.
The top tiger enclosure is a moated range of 2,100square meters called Tiger Rock, after the enormousStonehenge-like boulder construction that is itscenterpiece. It contained three tigers: Spar, at nineteen theelderly patriarch of the park; and two sisters, Tammy andTasmin, ten and eleven. But only two tigers were ever out inthe enclosure at any one time. This was because Spar,though old, was still a red-blooded male, and occasionallytried to mate with the two girls, even though his back legswere arthritic and wobbly and they were hisgranddaughters. Five years earlier, Tammy and Tasminwere given contraceptive injections to prevent inbreeding(and because Ellis was not allowed to breed tigersanymore, having recently been prosecuted for thirty-twocounts of illegal tiger breeding). The unfortunate result ofthis hormonal change in the two sisters was that theysuddenly hated each other and began to fight, and fightingtigers are very difficult to separate; it could only end indeath. So, one of the sisters was always locked in the tigerhouse for twenty-four hours at a time while the other playedfondly with her granddad. Then the other tiger would belocked away for twenty-four hours, allowing her sister adaylong taste of freedom. As Kelly explained this to me,she drew my attention to the arrhythmic banging comingfrom the tiger house, which I had assumed was somemaintenance work. In fact it was Tammy, frustrated by herconfinement in a two-by-three-meter (six-by-twelve-foot)cell, banging on the metal door to get out. Kelly was on thebrink of tears as she told me that this had been going on forfive years, causing enormous suffering to the tigers (andkeepers), and making them much more dangerous tohandle. “It’s unacceptable in a modern zoo,” Kelly ended,somewhat unnecessarily, as even an amateur like me couldappreciate this. I immediately promised her that we woulddo whatever was necessary to rectify the situation, whichturned out to be finding one of the warring sisters a newhome. A new tiger enclosure was expensive and unfeasible(we already had two), and would have meant permanentisolation for one of the girls. I asked Kelly to research newhomes for whichever tiger was most suitable to pass on,and walked away from the encounter amazed that such anongoing systemic problem had not arisen in thenegotiations to buy the zoo. On the bright side, it was a bigimprovement we could make for almost no cost, but it wasone we hadn’t been expecting, and it was worrying that wehadn’t known about it before we bought the zoo. Why hadPeter Wearden or Mike Thomas not told me about this?
What else would emerge?
It was all the more surprising given that Peter and Mikehad not been shy about throwing me in at the deep end withdifficult animal-management decisions already. On thephone from France, probably about three months before webought the park, Peter sprang something on me as the lastbidder planning to run the place as a zoo. “What are yougoing to do about the two female jaguars?” he asked. Er,they’re lovely. What’s the problem? “The house fails to meetwith industry standards and there is a serious concernabout the possibility of an escape.” Can’t it be rebuilt, orrefurbished? “It’s been patched up too many times already,and rebuilding it with the animals in the enclosure isunfeasible. They have to be moved. If you’re going to be thenew owner, you have to decide now what you are going todo.”
Standing barefoot in my hot, dusty, French barn office,looking out over sun-drenched vineyards throbbing withcicada song seven hundred miles away from this unfamiliarproblem, I was taken aback. I wriggled for a bit, suggestingwe rehouse them in the puma enclosure and move the lessdangerous pumas elsewhere, desperately searching for away of keeping these two gorgeous big cats on the site.
Hand-reared from cubs, they were particularly responsiveto humans, answered to their names and rubbed up againstthe wire like epic versions of domestic house cats.
Sovereign, the male jaguar housed separately, only got onwith one of the females, who could be tried with him, but thesister cats were inseparable from birth and would pine foreach other. As a keeper of cats (albeit domestic ones)since childhood, I understood the very real suffering thiswould cause, and instinctively shied away from that option.
In the end I realized that this was a test, and the correctresponse was to roll with it, however uncomfortable it felt.
For the good of the animals, and in the interests ofdemonstrating a break from the past to the council, I askedPeter what he recommended. “Donate them permanently toanother zoo as soon as you take over,” he said. “MikeThomas will organize it for you.” I canvassed Mike and Rob,the head keeper currently responsible for the jags, and theyboth said the same thing: To prevent the very real risk of anescape, we should donate them as soon as possible. Witha very deep sigh, I eventually agreed. “That’s the rightanswer,” said Mike. “For that, you can probably get acouple of those zebras you’ve been on about, some waydown the line, when you’re ready to receive them. Andprobably a breeding female for Sovereign later on.” This Iliked—spots for stripes—and it made me feel a little closerto the zoo world, knowing I had made a tough decisioneveryone approved of and was building credibility.
But with two prime big cats going, the Tammy/Tasminquestion loomed large. In the first few days it also came outthat a wolf and three of the seven vervet monkeys had alsobeen ostracized by their groups and needed rehousing.
Would we have any animals left by the time we reopened?
One well-meaning relative called to helpfully explain that Ihad made an elementary blunder with the jaguars. “If you’regoing to run a zoo, it has to have animals in it,” she said.
The sense of siege from all sides was tightening, but I wassure that I’d made the right decision with all the informationavailable to me on the ground, and it only made me moredetermined.
In these very early days a lot of time was spent clearingout the house and grounds of junk, and burning it on a hugefire in the yard. This was cathartic for us and the park as awhole, but must have been hard for relatives of Ellis, likeRob, his grandson, who had to help haul the nowdilapidated furniture that he had grown up with onto thepyre. I’d already agreed that Rob could stay in the run-downcottage on site, and offered him anything he wanted tosalvage, but generally, he seemed relieved by the process.
Rob was extremely positive and helpful toward us.
But then, four days after we took over Dartmoor WildlifePark, while chatting with Rob about what to do with oursurplus stock, the unthinkable happened. In a catastrophicblunder, a junior keeper accidentally let one of the mostdangerous animals on the park, Sovereign, out of hisenclosure. At about 5:30 PM I was sitting with Rob in thekitchen when Duncan burst in, shouted, “ONE OF THE BIGCATS IS OUT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!” and then ran offagain. Now, Duncan doesn’t normally shout or get agitated,but here he was, clearly doing both. Rob disappeared likea puff of smoke, and I knew he’d gone to get the guns andorganize the staff’s response. I sat for an increasinglysurreal moment and then decided that, as a director of azoo, I probably ought to go and see exactly what was goingon. I started making my way toward the part of the parkwhere the big cats are kept. This was one of the strangestmoments of my life. All I knew was that a big cat—a lion, atiger?—was out, somewhere, and might be about to comebounding around the corner like an energetic Tigger but notnearly so much fun. I saw a shovel and picked it up, but itfelt like an anvil in my hand. What was the point? I thought,and dropped it, and began walking toward the sound ofscreaming. Was I about to see someone being eatenalive? I had images of someone still alive but fatallymauled, rib cage asunder, being consumed before ahorrified audience. Then a car pulled up with Duncan andRob in it. “GET IN THE CAR!” I was told, and gladlycomplied.
At the top tiger enclosure it was clear that the jaguar,Sovereign, was inside with a tiger, Tammy. Both animalswere agitated and the keepers were shouting todiscourage them from fighting. My first thought was reliefthat the animals were contained and no one was injured. Iconferred with Rob, now backed up by his brother Johnarmed with a high-powered rifle, and we began to build upa picture of what had happened. If the animals beganfighting he would have to shoot one of them, and wedecided it should be the tiger, because she was moredangerous and also the less-endangered animal, but hewould fire a warning shot first to try to separate them. Iasked that he only do this as an absolute last resort, asletting guns off would seriously up the ante for theassembled personnel, who at the moment were all tensebut calm.
Suddenly the jaguar lunged at the tiger’s hindquarters,and the tiger turned and swiped the jaguar’s head, spinninghim like a doll. At half her weight, Sovereign was instantlydiscouraged. From that point both animals stayed apart,encouraged by the coaxing of the keepers. But the tigerwas reluctant to surrender her territory. Sovereign pacedpurposefully along the right-hand perimeter, tracking akeeper who was moving up and down the fence to keep hisattention. Tammy took up a position on top of a rock andscowled and bellowed at Sovereign. Twenty minutes earlierI’d been having a nice cup of tea, and now I was witnessingan intense standoff that could only be ended by a dart froma gun. Unfortunately, the one in our gun room didn’t work,and had never worked, despite being on the inventory as aworking safety tool. We were only equipped to shoot to kill.
Soon the cat keeper Kelly ordered all available men toassemble along the bottom perimeter, and on commandwe shouted as loudly as we could at Tammy (she doesn’tlike men or shouting), while the cat keepers Kelly andHannah called her to her house. All keepers, maintenanceand ground staff, and even an IT expert, Tom, who’d beenon a site visit to give us a quote and had been with Duncanup at the lion house, got caught up in the escape. Tom hada good bellow, as depicted on the TV series being filmedat this early time. A camera crew shadowing your everymove can be a worrying thing, but we felt we had nothing tohide and, just to raise the stakes, I negotiated with Rob thatthe crew could leave the safety of their car and join us at thewall. The men commenced bellowing and the effect wasimmediate, like spraying Tammy with cold water. Her tailtwitched, her ears flattened, and after a couple of minutesshe cracked, jumped off the rock, and went into her house.
There was an enormous sense of relief, but I called MikeThomas and told him of my concerns. Although he wascontained, Sovereign was not 100 percent secure becausehe was in an unfamiliar enclosure, and agitated enough totry something desperate. Mike agreed. “I’ve seen an apejump forty feet when it was stressed,” said Mike. “Which it’snot supposed to be able to do. Luckily we caught her in theladies’ toilets.” If Sovereign got out again, we were unlikelyto be so lucky.
With all three tigers in, we decided the next obviouscourse of action was to try to lure Sovereign into the fourthtiger-house chamber, so that he really was contained.
Unfortunately, this spare chamber was in disrepair, andwas not secure. It needed lining with steel sheets andrepairs to the slats on the floor, both tasks that could becarried out in-house in a few hours with materials andpersonnel on site, but the light was fading fast. And therewas no light in the tiger house. Duncan stayed to overseethe refurbishment of the chamber, and I went off to try to buysome emergency lighting, with directions from the keepersto the nearest lighting emporium, in nearby Plympton. As Idrove off into the dusk, I noticed some workmen on themain access road unloading transits with tools, but theywaved me through and I thought little of it as I sped on in myquest.
After a couple of emergency U-turns I found a largegarden center–cum–bric-a-brac emporium, selling myriadkitsch, but which had DIY and lighting sections. I sprinted upthe stairs, grabbed an assistant, and asked for halogenfloodlights. There was a long pause. Then, as if in slowmotion, she said, “Well . . . I . . . think . . . we’ve . . . got . . .
some fairy lights—” NO, no, no. Flood-lights. Halogenfloodlights, 500 watts. Completely different. Where wouldthey be? As she drifted off to ask someone, I combed thelighting section again at emergency speed, eyes scanningsystematically up and down the rows of frilly pink bedsidelights, glass ladies holding a single bulb, and of course,fairy lights. I tried to broaden my mission statement; wouldany of this lighting detritus work as a compromise? Ipictured our grizzled team working in a dank corridor withmetal angle grinding machines, tigers in the next bay, andimagined their faces as I presented them with a Disneycharacterdesk lamp. No.
And then I found it. In an unmarked box on a bottom shelfwas a single exterior wall-mount halogen lamp, but no plugor cord. I grabbed it with both hands and shot down to theDIY section, past the emerging assistant, who was saying,“I’m sorry . . . but . . . we . . . haven’t got—” It’s okay. Gotone. Thanks.
With no one around in DIY I found a plug and some cord,and finally raised an assistant to measure it out for me. Itwas taking too long, so I decided to take the whole roll. “I’ll .
. . have . . .to . . . get . . . a price . . . for that . . . and Reg . . .
is . . . on his . . . break . . .” Okay, measure it out and roll itback, quickly please, as I’m in a bit of a hurry. He got theidea and I was soon in the checkout line, restlessly shiftingmy weight and craning over the three people in front of meto see how long they were likely to take. Now, my tolerancefor the dead time in checkout lines is minimal even whenI’m not in a hurry. Over the years I have developed zazenbreathing strategies, and trained myself not to focus on theinevitable sequence of minor ineptitudes that slow the linedown and that could be avoided. But this wasn’t working. Iwas in full emergency mode—a couple of hours before Iwas making life and death decisions for the first time in mylife, there was a volatile big cat prowling around up the roadin the wrong place, and it was going dark and I needed tocomplete this purchase so that we could continue workingto get him contained. And this was not a proficientcheckout. The cashier seemed bemused by her till, andeveryone around me was moving as slowly as molasses.
Then, as the first transaction finally meandered to itsconclusion, the departing customer stepped smartly backinto line and reached for a packet of marshmallows; “Ooh, Iforgot these,” he said. I very nearly cracked and went intomanual override. My hand was twitching toward the bag offatuous pink-and-white confectionery, and I fought the urgeto snatch it away, throw it down, and demand to beprocessed next. But I didn’t. Deep breaths. Eventually itwas over, and I was speeding back through the darknesstoward the emergency.
On the home straight an obstruction loomed in the headlights. Unbelievably, the guys in the transits I’d passedearlier had closed the road between my leaving the parkand returning. Concrete barriers were in place, and a signsaid it would be closed for the next four months to build apower station. The diversion signs weren’t up yet and mymental map of the area was scanty to say the least, and itwas an additional half hour of getting lost down identicalsingle track back lanes before I eventually tore up the driveand set off at a run for the top tiger enclosure.
A single 60-watt bulb had been rigged up, and I rapidlyset about wiring up the lamp using the Leatherman tool onmy belt. I’ve wired hundreds or so such lights in my time, butfor this one I noticed that my hands were shaking slightly,and I wasn’t doing a very good job. Doing it eighteeninches away from Spar, the elderly but massive andmenacing Siberian tiger, didn’t help. Sporting a smallbloodied cut on his ear from an earlier encounter withSovereign, Spar was naturally spooked by the afternoon’sevents, and didn’t like unfamiliar people working in hishouse at strange hours of the day. He was as unsettled bymy presence as I was by his, and kept up an impossibly lowand ominous growl, occasionally reaching a crescendo witha roar and a short lunge at the welded mesh between us,his big orange eyes wide and locked onto me at all times.
These noises travel right through you, resonating in yoursternum and sending alarm signals to your primitivemidbrain, which is already awash with worry, trying tosuppress the distressing news from the eyes, and warningof massive predator proximity and imminent death.
Perhaps understandably, in stripping the flex I cut toodeeply into the wire, and the terminal connections weremessy. But it would do.
When the light eventually flooded on, I confessed to Rob,our acting Health and Safety officer, that its wiring mighthave to be redone later under more conducive conditions.
His drawn face smiled sympathetically and he said, “It’ll dofor now.” John, Paul, and Rob worked quickly to finish theinside of the fourth chamber, with the unspoken efficiency ofmen who knew what they were doing and had workedtogether for a long time. Duncan had been exploring thedart-gun situation. The nearest zoo, Paignton, couldn’t lendus theirs because it wasn’t licensed for use off site.
Our park’s previous reputation in recent years, and ourmuch heralded inexperience, can’t have helped with theirassessment of the situation, and this sense of fiasco, thepublic perception of it, and what it might mean for ourprospects now had time to sink in.
Rob finally secured a dart gun and a licensed operator—Bob Lawrence, senior ranger at the Midlands Safari Park—who was prepared to travel immediately, but it wasdecided that because Sovereign was contained, Bobwould come down in the morning. Opinion on the groundwas, quite reasonably, that the cat was contained in anenclosure designed to contain big cats, and the risk wasminimal. We began trying to lure him into the finished fourthcat chamber by placing meat just inside the door. Thoughthe presence of meat had an almost chemical effect on thismuscular predator, bringing him to the threshold severaltimes, his instincts for self-preservation held him back. Hewas just too canny, and too spooked, to surrender his newterritory in return for a free meal in a small box.
Mike advised that we keep a vigil from a car next to theenclosure, and at the first sign of trouble, such asSovereign trying to climb the wire mesh fencing, call for thefirearms. Rob went to sleep on the sofa in the keeper’scottage with the gun next to him, and I moved my mum’s caras close as I could and settled down with a flask of coffeeand a flashlight. Every half hour, Mike said, I should shinethe light and make sure Sovereign was calm—and, mostimportant, still there. “Don’t get out of the car,” warnedMike. “If he has got out, you won’t hear him, and he’ll bewaiting outside the door.” Unfortunately, as the eveningwore on, sensible Sovereign decided it was safe to sit inthe empty chamber, though he kept a watchful eye onanyone approaching the cat house. This meant I couldn’tsee him from the car, so every half hour I had to open thedoor, half expecting a hundred kilos of muscle, teeth, andclaws to come bursting in. Then, when it didn’t, I had to walka few paces into the darkness, which may or may not havecontained a large, angry jaguar, and shine the flashlight. Myconfidence grew with each sighting of the two reflectiveeyes staring back at me from the house. Sovereign wasn’tgoing anywhere, and at 5 AM Duncan relieved me in thecar. Bob Lawrence arrived at about 7:30 AM with the dartgun. With things hanging off his belt and an Indiana Joneshat, Bob was a very reassuring presence to have on site. Ifthere was a rhino loose (not that we had any), you felt hecould deal with it. The vet arrived with the necessarysedatives, and on the third attempt Sovereign wassuccessfully darted, although unfortunately, it appeared, inthe tip of his sheath, and he jumped around angrily until hebegan to slow down, scowling and prowling, glaring at usthrough the wire. You got the impression he wasmemorizing faces, so that if he got out again he’d knowwhom to punish for this indignity.
There was a danger that, drugged, Sovereign could fallinto the moat and drown, so I sent for a ladder, mainly touse to push him out with, but I secretly decided that if itlooked even remotely possible, I was prepared to climbdown the ladder into the water to drag him out. But thatwasn’t necessary. Sovereign went down like a lamb, andwe rushed into the enclosure to stretcher him out. Back inthe safety of his own house—microscopically examined forflaws that could have contributed to the incident—Sovereign got a quick dental and general health check. It’snot often you get to peer into this kind of animal’s mouthwithout it being terminal, so the vet made good use of thetime.
Carrying Sovereign on the stretcher, and touching him,was my first direct contact with any of the animals in ourcare, and it was an incredible initiation. One of the mostbeautiful as well as the most dangerous animals in thepark, he required four men to be lifted. His exotic rosettemarkings watched you like eyes as he slept, his enormouspower dormant, cloaked tight in a coat of deceptive beauty.
As Bob Lawrence and the vet hauled this vast cat by thescruff like a sack of spuds clear of the welded mesh door,stepped out, and locked it behind them, there was a hugefeeling of collective, euphoric relief. “The Code Red is nowofficially stood down,” said Rob, which seemed to be hisway of expressing it. But of course there were reports towrite, and the precise timing of the incident would becritical, combed over by experts, and ultimately put into thepublic domain. Rob and Duncan interviewed Richard, thekeeper responsible for not locking the shutter, severaltimes, and eventually our statements and report werecommended by the council as demonstrating that we hadacted responsibly and professionally. We also got anendorsement of sorts from Tom, the bellowing IT consultant,who said as he left the next day that, “That was, withoutquestion, the most exciting site visit I have ever made.”
But for now I was left with the horror, the horror of what itfelt like to have Sovereign out, even for a second, andcapable of anything. In buying the zoo, I had always thoughtthat the concept of containment was a given—already fullyunder control, dealt with by experts using failsafe systems.
The idea of one of these animals loose, marauding on thepicnic area or going down into the village, brought to mychest a new residual level of adrenaline that has remainedto this day. The prospect of a Code Red, what it feels liketo be in one, and the potential consequences if it goeswrong, are there when I wake up, go to sleep, or walk aboutthe park chatting to visitors. This level of responsibility hasto be taken seriously. It’s as though we’re looking after gunswith brains, a secured armory of assault rifles, but each onewith a decision-making cortex and a series of escapeplans. Sovereign had already successfully implementedone of his.
In fact, although we were exonerated by the subsequentcouncil report, I think that our taking over the park may wellhave had something to do with that particular incident.
Locking in the jaguar was always a two-person operation. Itturned out that the junior keeper Richard had, according tohis statement and in direct contradiction of an order to waitfor the other keeper, “taken it upon myself to try to clean outthe jag house on my own.” This, he said, was in order to tryto impress his line manager, Kelly, a notion that may or maynot have been connected to the general sense of relief overthe park’s passing on to new owners and the animals’
being saved. Of course, his line manager was notimpressed, and nor was anyone else. That was Richard’slast day. Clearly, zookeeping was not for him.
Another manifestation of this new atmosphere had struckme forcibly the day before, when I was talking to Rob out inthe park. Suddenly his head spun around in the direction ofan unfamiliar sound, with the urgency of a man used tohaving to react quickly to an escaped animal (an urgency Iwas soon to pick up). “What’s that noise?” he said, and welistened intently. Then we realized it was laughter, comingfrom the staff room. Rob relaxed and his tired face crackedinto a smile. “We haven’t heard much of that round here forquite some time,” he explained.
The day after his return to his house, Sovereign’sanaesthetic had had time to fully wear off, and the fatefulsliding gate was lifted. Sovereign, the epitome of stealth,committed his weight incrementally in ounces at a timeacross the threshold, slowly rolling forward on the lip of thesliding gate. His squat forelegs and bulky shouldersgradually bulged with the effort as he edged towards theoutside—and food—ears flicking and eyes scanning theassembled personnel for signs of a dart gun or some otherdanger. “Sovereigngate,” as it has never been known (andmust never be in the future), was over, and the ramificationswould begin. Our dream could have ended there but for thelocal council endorsement of our handling of the incident,which commented specifically on the professionalism of thekeepers. I also was greatly impressed by their composurethroughout a very difficult situation. I’ve never been in a warzone, but this definitely felt like seventeen hours on the frontline, and with people you could rely on.
But as a family, our lack of euphoria was confirmed. Infact, a period of intense anxiety would ensue, as the grimliving conditions, bad weather, and lack of money camehome to roost. Dartmoor has one of the highest rainfalls inthe country, and although we are in a slightly shelteredmicroclimate, the continual winter rain was an unwelcomecontrast to southern France. My brother and I regressed toour roles from when we lived at home in the late 1970s, aswe chopped wood for the big fireplace and jokingly did ourbest to undermine each other in front of our mum—”I pickedyou some of those flowers you like, Mum. Duncan didn’t.”
“You only did it because you’re adopted . . .”
But this became an increasingly difficult time. I swappedmy role as negotiator for the zoo for the full-time job offending off creditors and trying to raise money. We ownedthe place outright, but development funds of around￡500,000 were urgently needed. The bankers and lawyershad a great time spinning it out, asking for yet moreexpensive surveys and more detailed predictions of ourexpenditures. “Can we have a specific breakdown ofroutine maintenance costs for August 2008?” asked theRoyal Bank of Scotland, though that was more thaneighteen months away, and utterly dependent on eventsbetween now and then. We’d made provision in ourforecasts for ￡15,000 to be available for that month, butthey wanted to know if it would be spent on paint, wood,tarmac, or lawn mowers. I could have made something up,but I told the truth: that there was no way of knowing theprecise breakdown so far ahead, but that we had arrived atthe ￡15,000 figure in consultation with other zoo and leisurefacilities and with an on-site maintenance team (and relyingon my experience in the building trade and as the author ofThe “Which?” Guide to Getting the Best from YourBuilder), and that this amount would go a long way. But thisbecame their sticking point, and after six or eight weeks ofdetailed and time-consuming negotiations—during whichthey sidelined other lenders with potential offers of reducedinterest rates—they pulled out. So it was back to thebeginning with someone else.
But all this was ahead of us. We still had the first week toget through, and the excitement hadn’t stopped yet.
Driving Duncan and his business partner, Cameron, tothe park from Plymouth station at about 11:30 PM on ourseventh day, I slowed down just outside the village wherethe road narrows and is banked by stone walls, five to sixfeet high, backed by woodland. The problem seemed to bea deer in the head lights, leaning over the wall about twentyfeet away, looking like it might be about to jump. Deer aresilly enough to jump in front of a moving car, so I stopped tosee what it was going to do. It was then that all three of usnoticed simultaneously that this wasn’t a deer. It was apuma. The human visual system works initially on atemplate system, drawing up a 2.5-dimensional sketchbased on the available evidence, then finds a suitabletemplate from a huge store in the brain, based on theindividual’s previous experience and the likelihood of amatch within the context, which is why I’d thought the brownanimal ahead was a deer. This is how many illusions and“tricks of the eye” work, eliciting the wrong template untilyour more detailed double-take sorts out what is going on.
In this instance, the double-take took less than a couple ofseconds, during which the harmless deer morphed into amuscle-bound, round-headed, cat-eared puma, including adistinctive gray dusting on the reddish coat, which deer donot have. “It’s a ____ing puma,” we all said, more or lesstogether, and then it vanished into the woods. We burst outof the car and ran to the spot on the wall where it had been,in time to hear it padding off (not clip-clopping like a deer)into the undergrowth. We quickly ruled out trying to pursue itin the dark without flashlights over unfamiliar terrain, andraced back to check on our pumas. So soon after the jagescape, we were convinced of the much-talked-aboutpossibility of animal rights saboteurs cutting the wire, likethey had in the bottom deer enclosure six months before.
Heading straight into Code Red mode, we tore back tothe park half a mile away and ran to the puma enclosure,armed with our biggest flashlight. And they were both there.
But they were both definitely what we had just seen. Thereare many sightings of big cats out in the country, somecranks or mistakes—probably problems with their 2.5-Dsketch—but some, I am now convinced, are real. Probablyuniquely, we were in a position to confirm what we hadseen with two examples of the exact same animal, becausewe had access to our own pumas.
The next day I told Rob, and Robin, who also acts as avolunteer of the Big Cat Sightings Society, expecting themto laugh in my face and mark me down as delusional. “Oh,there are pumas round here,” said Robin. “You’re lucky tohave seen one so soon. I’ve been here seventeen yearsand only ever seen the tracks.” Rob had more directconfirmation. “When I was living on site sixteen years ago, Iopened the door of my caravan at about six in the morningand there sat a puma, watching me. I closed the door,opened it after a moment, and it was gone, but my God, itwas definitely there.” In captivity, pumas can live to sixteen,but in the wild the life expectancy is several years less.
Judging from the size and condition of the one we sawcompared to our more elderly females, this was a youngmale. Which means they were breeding. A crediblegroundsman a few miles away claims to have seem amother and two cubs a few years ago, and all the sightingsof big cats around Dartmoor are of pumas—not lynx,panthers, or servals, but pumas—a fact that we had no wayof knowing before the evidence morphed into one beforeour eyes. Apparently the males come in off the moor to visitour females when they are in season (last sighting in thepark was in 2003), giving us a unique opportunity to gatherevidence on these elusive animals. Cats of a similar size,the European lynx, were once indigenous in the area,feeding on rabbits, rats, birds, and fallen lambs. They neednever come into contact with humans, unless they decide toseek them out. This gave a whole new perspective towalking around the park at night. That Code Red feelingjust wasn’t going to go away. Never a dull moment in thezoo world, clearly.