by Dr. V. Ramakantha
After my probation in the Indian Forest Service I was given the charge of a Zoo in Manipur. Though small in size, the zoo had some extraordinary creatures of the Oriental realm, seldom sighted anywhere else in the world. My top boss, an IAS officer, and his wife were the first of the dignitaries that I had received in the Zoo. We had a very cute looking Giant Flying Squirrel, which had had settled to its captive status so well that it sought no freedom whatsoever. I took out the animal from its cage with the lure of a banana, and deftly transferred the furry creature into the arms of the visiting lady. While thoroughly enjoying the experience of cuddling this wild animal, the delighted lady abruptly asked me, “Have you read Gerald Durrell?”
“Durel, Who?” I had asked sheepishly. The lady must have been disappointed that I did not know the author of the most popular books on animals. She kindly stated that if I read him it would add to my knowledge as to how to take better care of the animals under my charge.
A couple years, while spending some time in an airport, I purchased a book titled ‘Comedy Collection’ (Michael O’Mara Books Limited) which incidentally had a chapter from Gerald Durrell, alongside the likes of P. G. Woodhouse and Charles Dickens. It was a pleasure going through Durrell’s writing. Fortunately, I read his book ‘Beasts in my Belfry’ first, and I fell in love with his writing, and also his persona, which prompted me to read quite a few of his other works. Durrell’s books, in total 37 of them, have been translated into 26 languages across the globe. He was the best selling author of his time in Britain.
As a boy, Gerald Durrell he kept a large number of animals as pets, thanks to his kindly mother, who showered all her affection towards the animals that Durrell brought home. Durrell retained his fascination for animals all through his life. By the age of twenty-one, he led international expeditions to collect wild animals from forests of different continents of the world, to be sold to different zoos. He had the gift of recounting good and morbid things with extraordinary wit and humour. Here is a random selection that gives you the taste of Durrell’s humour:
After making a visit to a zoo that he did not like, he remarked, “I have seen newly laid-out paddock for ‘Bractian Camels’, where the only thing preventing the animals from mixing with the public and biting and kicking them in the charming way that camels have, was an eighteen-inch step. I was assured that this was sufficient, as camels did not like to step down. I look forward to hearing whether the camels knew about it when they were eventually moved into their new paddock.”
“You like musica?” the Fon inquired. (Fon was a black tribal chief in Cameroon, West Africa).
‘Yes, too much,’ I said truthfully, for I had heard that the Fon possessed a band of more than usual skill.
‘Good, we go have some musica,’ he said, and issued a terse command to one of his servants.
Presently, the band filed into the compound below the veranda, and to my surprise it consisted of about twenty of the Fon’s wives, all naked except for meagre loin cloths. They were armed with a tremendous variety of drums, ranging from one the size of a small saucepan to the great deep-bellied specimens that required two people to carry them; there were also wooden and bamboo flutes that had a curious sweetness of tone, and large bamboo boxes filled with dried maze that gave forth a wonderful rustling rattle when shaken. But the most curious instrument in the band was a wooden pipe about four feet long. This was held upright, one end resting on the ground, and blown into in a special way, producing a deep, vibrating noise that was quite astonishing, for it was the sort of sound you would expect to come only from a lavatory with exceptional acoustics.
However, I now have reservations about Durrell’s world view. 
Durrell treated animals and all people alike, as is evident from the title of his hugely popular book ‘My Family and Other Animals’. I should say that he had an uncanny ability to make the most awful remarks about some of the most eminent people and celebrities of his time who had interacted with him. Though one couldn’t find mea culpa in him, he succeeded making quote worthy, but terribly funny remarks about people and places, and this being the case, if I say a few odd things about his philosophy, I am sure, Durrell would not turn in his grave (Gerald Durrell passed away in 1995).
Despite his fascination for nature, which shows clearly in the lucid description of a pearly white dawn or an enchanting scene of a dusk in his books, Durrell held an appalling concept about Mother Nature. He argued that Mother Nature is not a benevolent lady as held by those well meaning people, but in reality she is harsh and unyielding. He goes on to label Mother Nature as ‘a totally rapacious monster that she is’.
Durrell convinced himself that the best place for a wild animal is a zoo. Even congestion in a zoo, according to him was not a great constraint.  He believed that ‘animals have strict sense of territory that are governed by three things: food, water and sex. Provide all these successfully within a limited area and the animal will stay there’. He scoffed at ‘the anthropomorphic souls of those animal lovers’ who did not like animals imprisoned in his zoos.
Durrell was not unaware that easily gaining of food, water and a mate in a zoo do not seem to solve their existential problems. He describes an array of emotions in animals, the predominant one being a sense of boredom in those that were that were held in captivity, and he himself has described in graphic detail as to how each species tries (in vain) to fight monotony in captivity.
I have known animals that settle to their status of captivity without going through much of trauma, and reconcile to their new found status. However, most of the animals do not relish being in a zoo, however spacious or well managed it could be, and given a chance, escape. In my decades of observations, I am yet to see an animal that is bored in its natural habitat, though a repeatedly yawning tiger under the shade of a tree, or a snake in its coil waiting for days on end for its prey to appear within its striking range may give us an illusion of their boredom. Durrell seemed to choose a simplistic notion of happy animals in a zoo, because, I guess, it suited his concerns splendidly.
While maintaining that an animal in its natural surrounding is not living in a Garden of Eden, Durrell describes the ceaseless drudgery of the wild animals: of finding adequate food supplies each day in the wilds, of the constant strain on the nerves of avoiding enemies, and of the battle against disease and parasites. To prove his point, he claims that in some species there is more than fifty percent of mortality rate among the young in the first six months.
‘Even if the high mortality rate is true, Mr. Durrell’, one could have asked him, ‘How come then the species has survived for eons with out the loving care of your crammed zoo? Going by Durrell’s logic, Lord God did not have wisdom, for He created forests with myriad living beings, that trembled all through their lives in fear of their enemies, led a life of semi starvation, and just managed to survive the dreaded diseases and pests; and Lord Gerald Durrell appeared on Earth to make amends!
Judging by the contemporary value system, the method adopted by Durrell to collect wild animals could hardly be forgiven, as it is not hard to imagine that countless animals were maimed and died before they reached him. As has been admitted by himself, despite his best of intentions, innumerable animals died, when he transferred them from their original home to the cold climes of far off England through turbulent seas, crammed in small boxes, placed one atop the other. We do not how many died an untimely death out of sheer boredom, as he has diagnosed accurately, one of the silent killers of any zoo.
In his later part of life, when he had no compulsion to catch wild animals, Durrell comes out as a better person, taking immense pain to film rare and unique creatures across the globe, and wishing fervently that those splendid creatures survive the onslaught of human beings. Though born in a colonial era, Durrell had no trace of racial prejudice, and reading through his books, you get to know that he was a caring, and kind hearted human being.
If you are in any way connected with animal welfare, Gerald Durrell is a must read. Even if you are not, please go ahead and read Durrell and enjoy yourself, and believe that certain of his observations about animals could be as accurate as that of Konrad Lorenz, a Noble Laureate in ethology. However, please do not get swayed by his arguments when it comes to an animal’s rightful place in a zoo, or the harshness of Mother Nature.
These days, when I interact with young Zoo Directors, most of whom happen to be from my service, I enquire if he or she has read Gerald Durrell. If I get a negative answer, I give a look that the VIP lady had given me decades ago.