The New Noah by Gerald Durrell Read Free Book Online Page B

should cling to me when he was not feeding. Most of the time I used to carry him around when I worked, and he behaved
very well, sitting on my shoulder, and clinging to my ear with one hand. But one day he got too brave and jumped off, to land on the wire front of a cage which contained a large and fierce monkey,
which promptly grabbed Footle by the tail. If I had not been there to rescue him, this would have been his last adventure.
    I decided that it was too dangerous for Footle to sit on my shoulder while I worked, and therefore I shut him up in his basket, but he was obviously unhappy and spent his day screaming
plaintively and trying to climb out, so I had to think of something else. I got an old coat of mine and wore it for a few days, carrying him around on my shoulder as usual. When he had become quite
used to the garment, I took it off and hung it over the back of a chair and then put Footle on to it. He did not seem to realize that I was no longer inside the coat and clung to it with great
affection.
    So every morning I would put the coat over the back of the chair, place Footle on it and he would cling there quite happily while I got on with my work. He seemed to think that the coat was part
of me, a sort of extra skin I suppose, and as long as he was attached to some part of me he felt quite happy. He would even carry on long squeaking conversations with me while I worked, but never
attempted to leave the coat and climb up on to my shoulder.
    When he eventually arrived back at Liverpool, Footle had a wonderful time posing on my shoulder for the press-photographers. They were quite fascinated by him; none of them had ever seen such a
tiny monkey. One reporter watched him for a long time, and then he turned to me and said, ‘You know, he seems awfully young to have such a big moustache.’
    Weekes, the red-headed mangabey, came by his name owing to his cry. Whenever you went near his cage, he would open his mouth wide and shout ‘Weekes, weekes’ at the top of his
voice.
    He was a delicate shade of grey all over, except for a band of white fur round his neck, and the top of his head, which was a bright mahogany red. His face was a very dark grey and his eyelids
were creamy white. Normally, you could not see these, but when he greeted you he would raise his eyebrows and lower his lids so suddenly, it looked as though his eyes had been covered by white
shutters.
    Weekes was very bored with living in a cage by himself with no one to play with, but I could not give him a mate, as he was the only one of his species that I had. He did not realize this,
however, for all round him he could hear and smell other monkeys and he thought it very unfair of me not to let him leave his cage and go to play with them. He decided the best thing to do was to
tunnel his way out of the side when I was not looking.
    He had discovered a small gap between the boards of the side of his cage and set to work with fingers and teeth to widen it. The wood was very hard, and it was only after much picking and biting
that he was able to work off a small splinter. I kept a cautious eye on the hole to make sure it did not get any larger, but Weekes did not know this and thought I knew nothing about it. He would
spend hours biting and scratching at the wood, but as soon as he heard me coming he would leap up on to his perch and sit there, looking as innocent as possible, raising his eyebrows and showing
his white eyelids, blinking at me cheerfully, in the hope of persuading me that he was the very last monkey in the camp to do anything wicked.
    I did not do anything about Weekes’s hole, for I thought that as soon as he found out how hard the wood was he would soon give it up. To my surprise, exactly the opposite happened. He
became so interested that he used to spend every available moment biting and scratching and sucking at the wood. Every time I came on the scene, however, there he was sitting on his perch without a
care in