SPRING AT WHIPSNADE
By HERBERT PALMER
APPROACHING Whipsnade from the south you gather it quickly into view by fixing your eyes on the figure of a huge white lion which has been cut deeply into the chalk. The lion tells you that Whipsnade is now the home of wild beasts—in brief, a Zoo. A few days ago I told myself that if I could discover anything about the spring which had so far escaped me, the Zoo inmates would be eloquent of it. So I set off for Whipsnade. But the wind was a whip ; it stung and lashed me. Smoking clouds careered over the grey-green downs. Hail, rain, beating wind, and cold sunlight ! The wild Spring !
But at thd park gates there was pleasure. All the singing and chirruping birds of Great Britain, especially the finches, have found sanctuary in Whipsnade, and at the entrance they greeted me. Choirs of them were making music in a leafless grove. Below them clusters of snowdrops whitened the wet turf littered with last autumn's decayed, brown leaves. To the right the wind rocked and moaned in the pine-wood which sheltered the wolves.
The animals and foreign birds were not excited about the spring. Most of them seemed what schoolboys call " dozy." They were distinctly bored and sleepy and off colour, many of them cowering in their shelters—the zebras, for instance, not to be seen at all. The tigers were on view in their great stone-terraced pit ; but when the keeper fed them they displayed no eagerness. One of them picked up the reeking lump of flesh as diffidently as a well-fed dandy picks up an apple. The other, a female, merely stared at it, and then touched it with her paws. " It's the breeding season, you see," said the keeper.
The lions were very nearly the liveliest animals in the Zoo. They were pacing swiftly round their bush-filled enclosure, considerably more active than when I saw them last summer. They are all males, but, though uncas- trated, they never show (I was told) the slightest inelina- tion for female company. The lion, I think, must be the • chastest of beasts as well as the noblest. It was mani- festly not lionesses they pined for, but a gallop over the country, and perhaps a chunk from one of the llamas or deer in view. They took the raw meat from the keeper with growls and muffled roars, and two of them rolled over one another, biting and scratching, as they fought briefly for possession .of it. But just previously I'd have pushed my hand through the bars and stroked their great gallant noses for less than twenty pounds. Their eyes were so soft and mellow, they had stared so bene- volently, they had looked so incapable of wrong-doing.
The wildest, most active animal in the park was a dark brown beast with long thin legs. I will call him The Spirit of Evil, for he is dreadfully ugly, and looks like a quadrupedic embodiment of Mephistopheles. He is always very disagreeable, always in a towering rage, and that wild spring day he was worse than usual. He is really a sort of South African antelope, and his correct designation is " gnu." But he looks more like a vicious horned horse than an antelope. He and his mate are enclosed in a wide grassy paddock surrounded by strong barbed wire. Lest he should leap over the wire (and he certainly can leap) a high wire fence has been reared just outside it. It is a most necessary double protection, for if he did get loose he would spread death and terror through the countryside. He has smashed his horns in his attempts to get at people ; and this time he was not content with tearing at the broken wire with the jagged stumps and leaping and racing round after me, he must needs try and bore a tunnel under his defences. He hurled himself furiously on the muddy ground, banged a hole into it with his head and broken horns, and made the mud fly. Poor ugly, angry beast ! Poor relentless Spirit of Wrath ! Poor filthy, muddy head ! He looked an awful sight. So I hurried away swiftly. I felt he would kill himself in his rage, or get over that double fence somehow. The wild Spring I I passed a flaming blue-green peaeoek-; and to the right of it two sulky ravens squatting on a bough staring at the gnu.- Presently. I came to• the wolves' -quarters. With noses pointed to the ground, they were slinking round the lichened, brilliant green trunks of pine and fir. They were shyer than usual. ' Though their breeding season was coming to an end they were still affected. I waved a banana-skin to them. They came dovin the slope warily, but stopped short a few yards from the wire fence. • They are' often Charmingly tame, and are • really as good-natured as they are beautiful. I have watched children stuffing nuts into their mouths, pushing fearless fingers between their carnivorous teeth, and not even the threat of a bite. But today they seemed shy even of the keeper and his buckets of raw meat. He walked into the wood and confronted the pack. They kept back a little ; but two of them came close, crouching, almost fawning.
I left the monkeys till nearly the last. They were mute and cowering, their high tree deserted. The most lively of them expressed themselves in filthy antics and gestures. Two or three ran up to the wire fence to be fed. I singled one out for special kindness, a timid, shivering weakling ; but he refused to take the pellets of; bread unless they were dropped right into his Mouth. He seemed afraid of another monkey, which snatched at every crumb that bounced near him. Next to the gnus the monkeys are the nastiest, most vicious beasts in Whipsnade. A double wire fence has been placed round them, and the public are informed that they -" bite." I suppose all monkeys (not excluding human ones) are vicious and greedy and treacherous ; and these tiny Whipsnade monkeys (for they are only little fellows) are as bad as the worst.
The only foreign animals in the Park which are entirely free and allowed to go where they will are the lesser kangaroos, called wallabies. Though they have rabbit noses they look like huge deformed rats ; and they hop about all over the place. But I wish such a privilege could be extended to the polar bears ; they are so gay and jolly, the humorists of the Zoo. They adore visitors and show off in front of them. I gave one of them the remains of a gingerbread I had been biting at ; and when he had eaten it he grinned ecstatically and rolled about like a kitten. I may be told that I had gi,ren him a pain in his tummy, but I 'don't believe it. Even a polar bear with an arctic inside can't get a pain from half a gingerbread. It was his way of saying thank you." And beyond that it was the Spring, the wild Spring !
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