CHAPTER XX
THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS
If you go to the Zoological Gardens you ought to be a good walker and not easily tired. The animals are in cages, but they are not all close together; there are long stretches of green grass and trees and beautiful flower-beds between, and to go over the Zoo thoroughly takes a very long time. But it is not likely that any of you would want to know it thoroughly; the things you want most to look at are not the curious rare small animals or different sorts of birds, but the largest and best-known animals, such as the lions and tigers, the bears, elephants, and giraffes. Of all these the lions are the most interesting.
If we arrive at the Zoo a little before four o'clock in the afternoon we ought to go straight to the lion-house, for four o'clock is the lions' dinner-time. The house is light and warm, and the cages are all down one side in a row. Behind them are the railed-in gardens belonging to the beasts; but sometimes the doors between are shut, and the lions are not allowed to walk in their gardens. On fine sunny days, however, we can see them there outside, licking their great lips and rolling about lazily on the warm ground. In the lion house about ten minutes to four all the great animals begin to get restless; they walk up and down and whine or howl, and as four o'clock draws near they get more and more excited, some of them going round and round in circles, always quicker and quicker. Though they have no watches, they know the time exactly, which is rather wonderful, for there is nothing to tell them four o'clock is near. This is their one meal in the day, so no wonder they look forward to it; and when you see what they get, it doesn't seem much for such a great big animal as a lion. Soon a rumbling sound is heard, and a little truck laden with raw meat runs up through a little passage between the cages, and the keeper pushes it along the front of the cages to the end. Then the animals get frantic; the sight of the raw meat makes them savage; they leap and howl—great howls that would make your blood run cold if you heard them on a dark night when you were out in the forest. The animal that goes round in circles goes so fast he nearly tumbles on his head, and the others trot backwards and forwards, and all is noise and confusion. The keeper undoes a bar at the bottom of the cage, which leaves just enough room to put the meat in; then he picks out the piece he means for that animal and thrusts it through at the end of an iron rod. The lion or tiger pounces on it, and growling, carries it into a corner of its den. The keeper replaces the bar, and goes on to the next one, and so on until all are fed. Then a deep silence follows; there is only a licking of great lips, a sort of purring of content, and a sound of bones being crunched or scraped, and we can look at the animals more easily than when they are running about. Here in front is a magnificent lion, with a great tawny mane; his broad nose is wrinkled as he crunches his bone. He has torn all the meat off it almost at once, and his rough tongue has licked it clean until it is quite polished; but he still goes on chewing it with those huge white teeth as long as your finger—teeth that would crunch through your arm in a moment. This old fellow is usually good-tempered for a lion, but when feeding-time comes his wife Mrs. Lioness has to go into the back den shut off by a little door to eat her dinner alone, or they would fight. Suddenly Mr. Lion raises his head and looks round grandly, as if he were ashamed of all those people who come to stare at him. He was a king in his own country, and now, alas! he is only a captive king. Perhaps he sees a woman carrying a little baby in her arms, and he fixes his eyes on that baby until it is out of sight. What a delicious morsel it would make for dessert! But he knows he cannot get through his bars; he learnt that long ago when he was first brought here. He was not born in the Zoo—oh no; he had been caught when he was full grown. He remembers quite well the wild, free life, where, if he were not sure of a dinner every day, at least every now and then he got more than he could eat. While he licks his bone he is in a quiet mood, and if you listened very hard you might hear him talking.
'Yes,' he says (Lick, lick), 'that bone was very good, but there wasn't enough on it, and now I'm not going to get any more until to-morrow. Oh, those stupid humans, how they do stare! Have they never seen a gentleman eat his dinner before? They would open those silly round eyes a bit wider if these bars were not between us. I wish they could have seen me that day we caught the zebra. It was grand that!' (Lick, lick.) 'I had hunted all one night without getting even the whisk of a tail; and also during the day in the glaring, hot African sun, when I wanted to go to sleep; and I was very hungry. We, I and my wife, lay down in the shade a little while towards evening before we parted to see what we could pick up. There were the little ones to be considered, for when they had come running up and seen me with nothing, all their little tails dropped down, and you never saw such a set of little cats in your life. I told them I would bring them something next time for certain; and so I set off alone, as I said before, in the evening.
'The sun had burnt up all the grass, which was a kind of dusty brick-red colour; but that's not a bad thing for a lion, because he doesn't show against it. It was a very wide open plain where I was, with just a few shrubs and odd bits of tree for shelter. Well, I crouched down under one of these, trying to make myself as small as I could, and praying that the still air wouldn't send the smell of me over the plain to warn all those silly creatures I wanted to catch.
'Presently I smelt zebra. Now, good tender zebra makes a dish fit for a king, but the brute can trot at such a rate that I knew I shouldn't have a chance to catch him running. I must hide and leap out. The smell got stronger and stronger, and then I saw them half a mile off, a whole herd, galloping just as straight as they could come towards my hiding-place. I grew hot and cold then, I can tell you, and my tail quivered so I was afraid they would see it. I was in fine condition, and I reckoned that at the distance they would pass I could just by a very long spring land on the back of the leader. But then they might at any moment scent me, and I should be done for; up with their heels, and nothing more of supper should I see but a cloud of dust. So I waited, and they came right on. I shook with excitement. Then, just at the right moment, I gathered myself up, and with a great spring I cleared the distance and landed clean on the back of the leader. That was a surprise for him, I can tell you. He went down as if he had been shot, and the others, with snorts of terror, flew away like the wind. One stroke of my paw killed him, and then I stood up over his striped and quivering body and roared as loud as I could for my wife and little ones. They weren't far off, and they came as fast as they could; and to see those little beggars dancing about that zebra was a sight, almost as good a feeling it gave me as when I landed on that zebra's back. It had been a record jump that. We measured it afterwards in strides, and my wife said she was proud of me, and she always knew I could jump better than any other lion in South Africa.
'Well, those little beggars jumped on that zebra, and bit at him; but the skin was too tough for their little teeth, bless them! It was the funniest sight. But when the old woman and I started in, we did more than that, I can tell you; we tore off great chunks of him, and the little ones ate what they could. They got in the way, too, and we had to give them a slap now and then to keep them in order; and they snarled and swore at each other until their mother had to quiet them. When we had done we felt as if we could hardly walk, and we just wanted to get home as fast as we could and do no more that night. We had pretty well finished up that zebra before we walked off, and the vultures came hopping round to clean up what we had left. I was feeling all right then, and we lay down comfortable and satisfied. Oh dear! I had quite forgotten where I was; and now I wake up to find myself in this dull place, where there is no hunting and no fun, where we are caged up in horrid bars.'
Just as the lion finished speaking, Mrs. Lioness came out from the inner den. She was not nearly so handsome as her husband, and he thought her not nearly so handsome as his first wife, who had hunted with him in South Africa; still, she was company, and that was something.