We Bought a Zoo. Benjamin Mee

Was I about to see someone being eaten alive? I had images of someone still alive but fatally mauled, ribcage asunder, being consumed before a horrified audience. Then a car pulled up with Duncan and Robert in it. ‘GET IN THE CAR!’ I was told, and gladly complied.

      At the top tiger enclosure it was clear that the jaguar, Sovereign, was inside with a tiger, Tammy. Both animals were agitated and the keepers were shouting to discourage them from fighting. My first thought was relief that the animals were contained and no one was injured. I conferred with Robert, now backed up by his brother John armed with a high-powered rifle, and we began to build up a picture of what had happened. If the animals began fighting he would have to shoot one of them, and we decided it should be the tiger, because she was more dangerous and also the less endangered animal, but he would fire a warning shot first to try to separate them. I asked that he only do this as an absolute last resort, as letting guns off would seriously up the ante for the assembled personnel, who at the moment were all tense, but calm.

      Suddenly the jaguar lunged at the tiger’s hind quarters, and the tiger turned and swiped the jaguar’s head, spinning him like a doll. At half the weight, Sovereign was instantly discouraged. From that point both animals stayed apart, encouraged by the coaxing of the keepers. But the tiger was reluctant to surrender her territory. Sovereign paced purposefully along the right-hand perimeter, tracking a keeper who was moving up and down the fence to keep his attention. Tammy the Tiger took up position on top of a rock and scowled and bellowed at Sovereign. Twenty minutes ago I’d been having a nice cup of tea, but this was Intense. A stand-off ensued, which could only be ended by a dart from a gun. Unfortunately, the one in our gun room didn’t work, and had never worked, despite being on the inventory as a working safety tool. We were only equipped to shoot to kill.

      Soon the cat keeper Kelly ordered all available men to assemble along the bottom perimeter, and on command we shouted as loudly as we could at Tammy (she doesn’t like men or shouting), while the cat keepers Kelly and Hannah called her to her house. All keepers, maintenance and ground staff, and even an IT expert, Tom, who’d been on a site visit to give us a quote and had been with Duncan up at the lion house, got caught up in the escape. Tom had a good bellow, as depicted on the TV series, also being filmed at this early time. A camera crew shadowing your every move can be a worrying thing, but we felt we had nothing to hide and, just to raise the stakes, I negotiated with Rob that the crew could leave the safety of their car and join us at the wall. The bellowing commenced, and the effect was immediate, like spraying Tammy with cold water. Her tail twitched, her ears flattened, and after couple of minutes she cracked, jumped off the rock and into her house. There was an enormous sense of relief, but I called Mike Thomas and told him of my concerns that although he was contained, Sovereign was not 100 per cent secure because he was in an unfamiliar enclosure, and agitated enough to try something desperate. Mike agreed. ‘I’ve seen an ape jump forty feet when it was stressed,’ said Mike. ‘Which it’s not supposed to be able to do. Luckily we caught her in the ladies’ toilets.’ If Sovereign got out again, we were unlikely to be so lucky.

      With all three tigers in, we decided the next obvious course of action was to try to lure Sovereign into the fourth tiger-house chamber, so that he really was contained. Unfortunately, this spare chamber was in disrepair, and was not secure. It needed lining with steel sheets, and the slats on the floor repairing, both tasks that could be carried out in house in a few hours with materials and personnel on site, but the light was fading fast. And there was no light in the tiger house. Duncan stayed to oversee the refurbishment of the cat house, and I went off to try to buy some emergency lighting, with directions from the keepers to the nearest likely lighting emporium in nearby Plympton. As I drove off into the dusk I noticed some workmen on the main access road unloading transits with tools, but they waved me through and I thought little of it as I sped on in my quest for lighting so that the repairs could continue.

      After a couple of emergency U-turns I found a large garden centre cum-bric-a-brac emporium, selling myriad tat, but which had a DIY and a lighting section. I sprinted up the stairs, grabbed an assistant, and asked for halogen floodlights. There was a long pause. Then, as if in slow motion, she said, ‘Well … I … think … we’ve … got … some … fairy lights …’ ‘NO, no no: floodlights. Halogen floodlights. 500 watts. Completely different. Where would they be?’ As she drifted off to ask someone, I combed the lighting section again at emergency speed, eyes scanning systematically up and down the rows of frilly pink bedside lights, glass ladies holding a single bulb, and of course, fairy lights. I tried to broaden my mission statement; would any of this lighting detritus work as a compromise? I pictured our grizzled team working in a dank corridor with angle grinders and tigers in the next bay, and imagined their faces as I presented them with a Disney character desk lamp. No. And then I found it. In an unmarked box on a bottom shelf was a single exterior wall-mounted halogen lamp, but no plug or flex. I grabbed it with both hands and shot down to the DIY section, past the emerging assistant saying, ‘I’m … sorry … but … we … haven’t … got …’ ‘It’s OK. Got one. Thanks.’

      With no one around in DIY I found a plug and some flex, and finally raised an assistant to measure it out for me. It was taking too long so I decided to take the whole roll. ‘I’ll … have … to … get … a … price … for … that … and … Reg … is … on … his … break.’ ‘OK measure it out and roll it back, quickly please as I’m in a bit of a hurry.’ He got the idea and I was soon in the checkout queue, restlessly shifting my weight and craning over the three people in front of me to see how long they were likely to take. Now, my tolerance for the dead time in checkout queues is minimal even when I’m not in a hurry. Over the years I have developed Zazen breathing strategies, and trained myself not to focus on the inevitable sequence of minor ineptitudes which could have been avoided and slow the queue down. But this wasn’t working. I was in full emergency mode – a couple of hours before I was making life-and-death decisions for the first time in my life, there was still a volatile big cat prowling around up the road in the wrong place, and it was going dark and I needed to complete this purchase so that work could continue on keeping it contained. And this was not a proficient checkout. The operator seemed bemused by her till, and everyone around me was moving in treacle. Then, as the first transaction finally meandered to its conclusion, the departing customer stepped smartly back into line and reached for a packet of marsh mallows; ‘Ooh, I forgot these,’ he said. I very nearly cracked and went into manual override. My hand was twitching towards the bag of fatuous pink and white confectionery to snatch it away, stamp on it, and demand to be processed next. But I didn’t. Deep breaths. And eventually it was over and I was speeding back through the darkness towards the emergency.

      On the home straight an obstruction loomed in the headlights. Unbelievably, the guys in the transits I’d passed earlier had closed the road between me leaving the park and returning. Concrete barriers were down, and a sign said it would be closed for the next four months to build a power station. The diversion signs weren’t up yet and my mental map of the area was scanty to say the least, and it was a further half an hour of getting lost down identical single track back lanes before I eventually tore up the drive and set off at a run for the top tiger enclosure.

      A single 60 watt bulb had been rigged up, and I rapidly set about wiring up the lamp using the Leatherman tool on my belt. I’ve wired tens, maybe a hundred or so, such lights in my time, but for this one I noticed that my hands were shaking slightly, and I wasn’t doing a very good job. Doing it 18 inches away from Spar, the elderly but massive and menacing Siberian tiger, didn’t help. Sporting a small bloodied cut on his ear from an earlier encounter with Sovereign, Spar was naturally spooked by the afternoon’s events, and didn’t like unfamiliar people working in his house at strange hours of the day. He was as unsettled by my presence as I was by his, and kept up an impossibly low and ominous growl, occasionally reaching a crescendo with a roar and a short lunge at the weld-mesh between us, his big orange eyes wide and locked onto me at all times. These noises travel right through you, resonating in your sternum and sending alarm signals to your primitive midbrain, which is already awash with worry trying to suppress the distressing news from the eyes, warning of massive predator proximity and imminent death. Perhaps understandably, in stripping the flex I cut too deeply into the wire, and the terminal connections were messy. But it would do.

      When