AT THE ZOO [III] ... JUMUNA PAYS HER WAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 192, 26 February 1943, Page 14

AT THE ZOO [III] ... JUMUNA PAYS HER WAY

sad SUPPOSE Jumuna eats like an elephant," I said to the keeper, as we walked towards the ele-phant-house. "Well," he said, "you’d be surprised. She doesn’t eat all that much," "For instance, if I give my horse a couple of buckets of chaff and oats mixed for his breakfast, how much would I give to Jumuna?" "You’d give her the same," he answered. "Only she has bran. And of course, she has her hay and | green’ feed as well."

By this time, we had arrived. Jumuna greeted us with a honk-honk which she pronounced through her nose "henk-henk." Her way of saying thank you, the keeper said. So I gave her a piece of bread, and she honked again. She was swaying gently from side to side, continually raising and lowering her huge feet, decorated on their lower edges with half-moon toe-nails. Her ears fanned backwards and forwards like gigantic moth wings. Her elastic trunk was busy all the time lifting straw on to her back and in between times pushing wisps into her great crinkled pink mouth. "Oh, she’s no lady, she eats her bedding," the keeper said. "And drinks her bath water?" "Yes, drinks that, too. But at least she pays her way. In January, for instance, she carried 5,500 children at 2d a time. Of course we had a huge attendance — more than 10,000 visitors these holidays." Cheaper Than A Horse! Jumuna is an Indian elephant and is about 35 years of age; she has been in the zoo for 16 years and it costs about £85 a year to feed her on her bran and hay and maize. But she has always paid her way and this year she has already earned £130, with two months still to go till the accounts are balanced. A big racing man in England says that it costs him £600 a year to keep one horse. In New Zealand it probably costs about half that-or perhaps only about a tenth of that if you keep him off the race-track. It’s obviously a better paying proposition to keep an elephant. But then, "We can’t all and some of us don’t," as I think Winnie the Poch said about something else. Moreover, Jumuna costs nothing in dentist’s bills. She has four teeth, one in each corner of her mouth. When one is worn out she puts in her trunk and pulls it out and another grows. This can happen six times, as elephants have six

sets of four teeth. After that they die -in the wilds at about 100 years, in captivity rather later, because they eat slightly softer food. It’s a Hap-Hap-Happy Day The day after the school holidays finished was a happy one for Jumuna, As I walked down the hill into the zoo I heard her blowing off steam blithely as she sauntered at ease in the paddock with her keeper. She was fingering the grass and the leaves of trees with that exploratory tip of her trunk and she kept making short "Whoo-onk" trumpetings much as if she were a small railway engine not very energetic about its whistling. In fact she reminded me in this and in her obvious happiness of the little train in Walt Disney’s Reluctant Dragon-you'll remember how it sang "Aall-aboooard!" I offered Jumuna an apple and she lumbered towards me’ and put that snuffling waving trunk under my hand. I dropped the apple in the convenient hole and sloosh! it was thrust down her mouth and followed by a mouthful of grass. "A sandwich," explained the keeper. "She must always have her bit of hay or grass to wrap round apple or bread." Jumuna’s own keeper was sitting on the grass; she went over to him and waved her trunk about him. Suddenly I noticed her "go lame" in her near hind leg. It began to crumple, concertinafashion. Then both hind legs and slowly the front ones began to crumple, and then WUMP! Jumuna was lying on her side by her keeper, pushing him with her trunk for a little room. "Well," said the head keeper, "in 16 years I’ve never seen her do that before." But Jumuna’s keeper said that she often does this when he and she are out in the paddock in the free time in the mornings, or on a day such as this when there are no children to be carried. Jumuna and her keeper, you see, are devoted to each other; but the keeper (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page} has a pet kitten as well, and that kitten Jumuna cannot abide. If the keeper calls Jumuna and she does not come at once, he has only to say "Puss-puss, meow!" and Jumuna comes up at a lumbering canter and looks jealously round for that brat of a kitten to hunt it away. When Jumuna got up off the ground, by the way, she seemed to do so all at once, not distinctly front first like a horse, or hind first like a cow. "A Wicked Old Devil" At the apple-weighted request of the keeper, Jumuna played us a tune-well, it had two notes, anyway-on the mouth organ which she clutched in her trunk between her "nose" and "lip." That lip — is a very mischievous member; with it Jumuna explores the concrete walls and floor (after she has eaten all her bedding, I suppose, and is rather bored), and finds at last a little crack. At this she will worry away for hours until she has dug "a hole fit to bury a wheelbarrow," Well, remembering that wallpaper above my bed in the nursery, I can sympathise with Jumuna-wonder-

ful patterns can’ be torn in wallpaper, and these days in plaster, I believe. "She’s a wicked old devil," said the keeper. But I’ve never known these words said with such an affectionate look before. ba * * You need not expect to get away from ! : ss Jumuna paying court and making your bow to that most superior of creatures, the peacock. Ten to one he will spread his tail for you; and if you're very lucky he’ll behave like a mannequin on the films and turn slowly round to show you that his back view is just as smart as his front view. Meanwhile, that drab little person his wife, does no showing-off, but contents herself with keeping an eye as bright and watchful as an eagle’s on her three chicks — built on her own ostrich-like lines. These are the pride of the zoo, the first to be raised. It seems to me that if anyone wants a lesson in the art of walking gracefully, of catching public attention and holding it and yet appearing not to give a fig whether anyone watches or not-well he (or she) couldn’t do better

than watch the brilliantly-coloured peacock for a while. But I intend to go to see him in April when he has cast his beautiful feathers; I want’ to know if he is really a fine bird or if it is just the fine feathers that make him one. * * * *VE already been here three and a-half hours, but there’s someone standing here on tip-toe begging for a word

before my bread is all gone. He whistles the first three notes of Beethoven’s Archduke trio, and I am so charmed I can scarcely leave him. He is Whistling Rufus, the pink-billed, pink-legged little duck from Australia. He keeps up his whistling without apparently pausing for breath, and replies with a fresh volley-though not a fresh tune — whenever the keeper speaks to him. Is it really a whistle or only a quack? Well, compared with the quack of a duck it’s a whistle; but compared with the whistle of a musterer it’s a high-pitched quack. \ "What’s your favourite creature in the zoo?" my friends ask me. "Whistling Rufus," I promptly reply. "And, of course, the fallow deer, and Jumuna, and I’m very, very fond of the smallest tortoise. Oh. and did.I mention the sea-

lioness? She’s charming. Oh, yes, you did say favourite, didn’t you? All richt. if I must have only one. I'll have

Whistling Rufus."

J.