We both recently visited Jersey. I was returning after 50 years and Cherry had never visited before. We were mainly there to pay a visit to Jersey Zoo where I remember Gerald Durrell, half a century ago, taking two baby Gorilla’s into his flat to keep them warm and actually allowing them, suitably nappied, to share the warmth of his bed with him. In those days, the zoo was always short of money. Now it is magnificent with very successful breeding programmes on rare creatures, from the Montserrat Mountain Chicken (actually a frog) to Gorilla’s, Komodo Dragons, Orangutans and Spectacled Bears to Sumatran Laughing thrushes. All fantastic news.
One of our favourites was the Aye Aye, the most peculiar big eared, saucer eyed, nocturnal Lemur (looking nothing like the familiar much loved Ring Tailed Lemur) which has ever growing teeth and a long thin, skeletal finger on each hand for pulling bugs and larvae out of holes. The others were the very rare Rodriguez and Livingstone Fruit Bat very rare Flying Foxes, both very endangered and both breeding well.
Above all I stood outside Les Augrès Manor, the Zoo headquarters and remembered the time when I was a young articled clerk checking figures in one room but listening to Gerald Durrell, who was dictating to his then secretary, Sophie, one of his wonderful books.
His was a giant charismatic personality in the field of conservation when it was a word hardly uttered in the everyday world.
I miss him.
(thanks to commons.wikimedia.org for the image of the statue).