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Someone sent a chimpanzee to Gerald Durrell,
asking him to escort it to England. 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, o house an elephant. I wondered what
on earth could be inside, and when the driver told me
that it contained the chimpanzee, Cholmondely, that I
would be escorting to England, I remembered 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. Just one glance at him and I
realised my mistake: I would not be taking charge of a
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 enquiringly. 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 then
looked at me enquiringly again. Obviously, he wanted me
to offer him something after his tiring journey. I had
been told, before h arrived, that he liked to drink tea,
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
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 hen 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 undesirable 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 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 little 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 he sugar had trickled down into his
mouth. For a few minutes, he was in a world of his own,
far away from the threat of civilized man. |
