Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [97]
The day Crystal and I chose to visit, gauzy veils of sea mist had drifted in to saturate the gardens, coat the lawns in silver and hang in heavy folds through the branches of bare trees. The double gates to the Wildlife Park were bolted and chained, the place clearly closed.
Now out of season, it seemed that, from the information provided on a nearby notice board, if you wanted to walk on the wild side you could only do it on Wednesday afternoons, Saturdays and Sundays from October–March.
Crystal drove past the gates and turned down a tarmac track marked ‘Private’, through a tunnel of rhododendrons that gave way to a substantial yard, dominated on one side by a huge mobile home – all gleaming chrome and aluminium. With the forest of aerials and satellite dishes that adorned its roof, it looked as if it had just dropped in from outer space. The adjacent prefabricated building looked very drab and mundane – single-storey, painted green – an office block to judge from the bell and adjacent notice which read ‘Ring’ and ‘Please Enter’.
Not that we had to ring. As we got out of the car, we were greeted by a series of howls that echoed through the trees. Wolves? A touch of Transylvania? Was a pack about to suddenly burst through the fog-bound trees? No … though the two Alsatians that came bounding round from the side of the mobile home, teeth bared, drooling saliva, were just as scary.
‘Hey now, you two … pack it in,’ said Crystal, holding out her arm to allow the dogs to sniff her hand. They immediately quietened down with a whimper and pushed themselves against her thighs.
The man who appeared soon after the dogs was equally savage-looking but more in a Wild-Man-of-Borneo sort of way. He was wild of hair – a mass of grey and black curls that looked desperate to tear themselves away from his scalp – and it was matched by a shaggy, unkempt beard and crumpled clothes that looked as if they’d been slept in for years. Rumpelstiltskin had nothing on this man. Peering out of the tangle of hair were two pebble-black eyes distorted through glasses, worn at the end of his nose, with lenses so murky I was tempted to trace ‘clean me’ across them.
Crystal introduced him. ‘Paul, this is Kevin Winters, head keeper here.’
We shook hands.
‘Paul is our new assistant,’ she went on.
‘Being shown the ropes, eh?’ said Kevin with a smile which caused his lips to pucker out and expose a gap between his upper teeth through which his reply whistled. ‘Well, there’s plenty here to give you a challenge. There’s Cleo for starters.’
As Crystal and I donned overalls and willies, I learnt that Cleo was a camel – a dromedary – the one with one hump.
‘She’s a bit of a bugger at the best of times,’ said Kevin. ‘But now she’s gone lame she’s certainly got the hump.’ He shook his head and exhaled sharply, his breath whistling through the gap in his teeth like a kettle on the boil, the effect enhanced by the cloud of vapour which steamed into the damp air above him.
‘As you say, Kevin, nothing like a challenge,’ said Crystal. She handed me a pack of surgical instruments from the back of the car, lifted out her black bag and closed the boot with a loud thud. ‘OK, let’s get cracking.’
We followed Kevin in single file down a narrow, muddy track through the rhododendrons and emerged on to a gravel path that ran alongside a row of aviaries containing budgerigars, some screeching cockatiels and a moth-eaten mynah. As we passed the bird, I half-expected it to call out, ‘What’s your name?’ Cedric-style. Instead, it