You silly mongoose
YOUR article reminded me of a potentially disastrous end to Gerald Durrell’s mongoose conservation programme (Britain’s greatest masterpieces, March 23). I first met Durrell in 1954, when I was a seven year old living opposite him in Bournemouth. I volunteered to help feed his animals, reptiles and birds, kept in row upon row of cages in the back garden. Anyway, my brothers and I cornered a very large rat in our garden, which we killed and proudly showed to our father. ‘Oh dear, that’s not a rat…’
We walked it over the road to Durrell, who looked extremely downcast and proclaimed that it was his only male mongoose. Fortunately, it had done its stuff and his female mongoose was pregnant. Hence our ‘rat’ created—or procreated— all the mongooses you see in his wonderful Jersey Zoo.
Roger Wood, Surrey