In my youth, I read the books written by Gerald Durrell ... starting off with the stories of his childhood on Corfu in "My family and other animals" where I learnt of his maveric background with unusual pets of all shapes and sizes. Followed him through animal collection trips to Africa and South America, trips to New Zealand and Australia on a more fact-finding mission and his own zoo on Jersey where he specialised in breeding rare animals and other conservation work.

So I was especially interested to find that one of my course delegates this week spent 8 years on the staff of a local zoo, looked after the smaller cats, and was very much into the breeding / conservation. Some very interesting tales over lunch; "I don't talk about it too much - I get carried away and bore people" to quote ... but no way was I bored, and I relished the enthusiasm. To hear that the "secret" to breeding one type of cat is to give them a steady 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark every day to be like their native equator, and that another cat (the jaguarundi) is a social cat ... and how a clue in an obscure Victorian book about a trip to South America "I knocked a bush with my stick and a whole swarm of Jaguarundi ran out" lead him to put the zoo's whole stock into a single cage as it was a lightbulb moment that they're a social cat, and lead to a previously unseen breeding success.

Add the story of Nobby the Elephant, of visits to the Aspinall Zoo in Kent, and of Siberian tigers and there's a book in these stories, I'm sure ... now I wonder if I can persuade him.
(written 2006-06-21 06:14:56)

 

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