The display is made so much more attractive and beautiful because of the imposing panorama of the mountainous ranges whose hills, in whimsical manner, make up a true marvel of Nature. Added to this, is the warm climate and the flora and fauna of the place.
Mexican Guide Book
One day, when I had finished reading the mail and was skimming through the various periodicals that appear on my desk, my attention was caught by an article in the magazine Animals by a Mr Norman Pellam Wright. It was all about a strange little rabbit called the Volcano rabbit or Teporingo. I knew of this rabbit’s existence but hadn’t realised, until I read the article, that it was in danger of extermination. The Teporingo has a very limited range; it is only found on a few of the volcanoes that surround Mexico City. It is small and quite useless from the point of view of eating, but although it is a strictly protected animal the local hunters use it for target practice and for training their hunting dogs. Mr Pellam Wright ended his article with a plea that some zoological garden or park should try to obtain some of these little rabbits and establish a breeding colony of them in captivity in case they became extinct in the wild state.
This, I thought, was a job for the Trust. It was an animal we could easily cope with because of its small size, and although I knew that none of the hare or rabbit family were easy to keep in captivity I felt certain that, with a certain amount of patience and perseverance, we would be able to do it, I sat back thoughtfully and pondered on the problems involved. First of all I checked in my reference books and found that there would be a feeding problem rather like the one we had come up against in the case of the Colobus, for the Volcano rabbit lives at a very high altitude in the tall zacaton grass in the pine forests. It appears to feed almost exclusively off this zacaton grass, and I wondered how it would take to other greenstuffs. Secondly, there was the question of altitude. This could be a very great problem indeed, for we would have to fly them out of Mexico to Jersey, and that would mean that they would be coming from something in the neighbourhood of ten thousand feet above sea level to practically sea level itself. Still, I believed that these two problems could be overcome somehow or other.
I thought about the difficulties for quite some time but, meanwhile, there were many other things that I had to do. I couldn’t just leap on a boat and go to Mexico at the drop of a hat. I kept the idea in the back of my mind and whilst I was pondering over it I received a letter from Mr Pellam Wright. Curiously enough, I had been on the point of writing to him myself on the subject that was occupying the thoughts of both of us – Volcano rabbits. In his letter he said that he’d heard about the Trust and the work we were trying to do and he felt, if he might be so bold, that the Volcano rabbit ought to be one of our objectives. He assured me that he himself would give every help and assistance he could, should I want to try and catch some. Well, that settled the matter as far as I was concerned. Apart from anything else, Jacquie and I had always been longing for an excuse to go to Mexico and this was the perfect one.
Getting a strictly protected animal from its country of origin is not as easy as it sounds, even for a recognised scientific organisation, so both Mr Pellam Wright and I had to undertake a long correspondence with the Mexican Government before, finally, they agreed that I could go and try for Volcano rabbits. After doing a bit of research I had discovered that there were three other species found in Mexico which were in danger of extinction in the wild state, and which were also strictly protected. They were all birds. There was the Quetzal – a beautiful green-gold bird with a scarlet breast and long glittering tail feathers; the Horned Guan – a bird about the size of a turkey with a strange, pointed, rhinoceros like horn on its forehead; and the Thick-billed parrot – a bright green bird wearing a mask of scarlet feathers across its face and touches of scarlet on its wings and thighs. The Mexican authorities gave me permission to capture the Volcano rabbits and the Thick-billed parrots, but not the Horned Guan or the Quetzals, as they said they were becoming too rare. In any case, they had their own ideas -- which they were going to put into operation shortly – for controlling the area in which these birds lived. To get two out of four permits was more than I had expected and I was quite jubilant about the result.
We set about making plans for the trip. Collapsible cages had to be designed and built; various foodstuffs packed; nests made; and, most important of all, we had to find a ship that called at Vera Cruz, the nearest Mexican port to Mexico City, for I knew I would have to go up to the city in order to make my obeisances to the authorities. Eventually we accomplished all this, but it took several months of hard work and a lot of telephone calls and letters. At last we were on board ship and heading towards Mexico.
Our party consisted of Jacquie and myself, Shep – since we were going to collect birds I thought he was the best member of the staff to go, and I like, whenever possible, to take them in rotation anyway – Doreen, my secretary (Ann Peters had left for another job), and Peggy Caird, a very dear friend of ours who had worked for a long time with the BBC and was now free-lancing. I’d asked her to join us as I thought she might get some interesting recordings of the animals so that we could supplement the photographs that we hoped to take of our efforts at catching the Volcano rabbits. I took Doreen along with us because she was a first-class driver, and we would certainly need that in the parts of Mexico we were going to visit, and, anyway, I intended to write another book on the way out.
Four weeks later, the S.S. Remshied steamed into Vera Cruz and tied up, and I went up on deck and stared at what could be seen of the town. It seemed gay and alive and warm, and there were pleasant smells in the air, so I decided immediately that I liked Mexico very much indeed. It’s unwise to go on first impressions – as I soon found out when we got into the Customs shed. Customs officials all over the world are inclined to be difficult at the best of times and they can be doubly so with an animal collector because he has to take with him such a weird assortment of equipment, ranging from mincing machines to hypodermic syringes, so that they really cannot believe that his sole purpose in coming into the country is to collect animals. They think he must be some highly suspicious sort of travelling salesman. When our mountain of equipment had been spread out along the Customs bench, it stretched for about twenty-five feet and was enough to give any Customs officer pause for thought.
To my astonishment the Customs officer turned out to be a woman, and a handsome one at that. She looked like an enlarged version of Eartha Kitt, and I took to her immediately. In her smart green uniform, and with her beautiful pale brown face, she was a heart-warming sight and I felt sure that we would get on splendidly together. My heart sank when I saw her scowl at our long line of assorted luggage. It appeared that she was not going to be what I had hoped she would be, which is what they call in South America ‘simpatica’. Fortunately I had Peggy to translate for me because my Spanish is not good enough to go into all the intricacies of why you are collecting animals to a Mexican Customs official. She began, in a rather desultory way, opening our suitcases and poking her hand down the sides. At this rate it seemed to me that we were going to be here for hours and hours – if not for days. Once, in Argentina, I had had all my collecting equipment confiscated by the Customs, and it had taken me weeks to retrieve it so that I could start on the work I had gone to do. I had a horrible suspicion that this was going to be repeated in Mexico. After Eartha Kitt had disputed the contents of the third suitcase (and she still had about another forty to do) she looked at Peggy rather disdainfully.
‘Are these all yours?’ she inquired.
‘Yes,’ said Peggy.
The woman thought for a moment, then she beckoned Peggy away to the other end of the counter. Peggy came back, her brown eyes gleaming mischievously.
‘She says she wants gratification,’ said Peggy.
‘Gratification?’ I said in amazement. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Well, she says if we will gratify her she won’t bother to look at the rest of the luggage.’
I stared at Peggy in total disbelief.
‘But hasn’t she got a husband?’ I inquired. ‘This seems a very strange way of getting luggage through Customs.’
‘No, no!’ said Peggy, giggling. ‘She means a tip of some sort.’
‘God in heaven!’ I said, shocked, for I’d never attempted in all my life to bribe a Customs official. It’s almost like going and spitting in a Chief Constable’s eye.
‘How much do you think we ought to give her?’ I inquired, when I’d recovered from the shock.
‘I’ll go and see what she wants,’ said Peggy, and trotted off to the end of the counter.
Presently she came back.
‘She said if we give her three hundred pesos it will be all right,’ said Peggy.
‘What does that work out to in English money?’ I inquired.
‘About ten pounds.’
‘Oh, well, anything to get the damned stuff cleared.’
I pulled out my wallet and handed the money to Peggy. She went down to the end of the counter where the woman was busy with some other people. I expected the handing-over of the bribe to be done with some circumspection, and so, indeed, did Peggy. She lurked there rather furtively, like some secret service agent who is not quite sure that his disguise is on straight. Eventually the woman noticed her, leant out across the counter over the baggage, and simply held out her hand. Peggy, startled, pressed the money into it and darted back to me.
‘Good heavens!’ she said. ‘So blatant!’
‘Well, at least we’ve got our stuff through,’ I said.
We got hold of an ancient gnome of a porter and he took all our luggage, piled it up and said he would arrange for a lorry to pick it up and for it to be taken to a place where it could be stored for a time. For by now I had discovered a new snag. While Peggy and I had been clearing all the equipment, Jacquie and Doreen and Shep had been attending to the paperwork necessary to get our Land Rover off the ship. I found them in a harassed, sweaty group at the other end of the Customs building.
‘Well,’ I said cheerfully, ‘it’s all fixed. All the luggage is through. All done in next to no time . . . marvellous . . . Best system I’ve come across in any Customs house in the world.’
‘Then you’d better come and try and sort this one out,’ said Jacquie, acidly. ‘Apparently we’ve got the wrong papers for the Land Rover.’
‘Oh, God,’ I groaned. ‘Not again.’
The Customs officer was charming, he couldn’t have been more polite. At the same time he couldn’t have been more firm. He was very much afraid that we had got the wrong papers and that the right papers couldn’t be issued there, but could only be issued in Mexico City with the Land Rover. What did he suggest? He gave one of those expressive Latin shrugs, rather like a duck shaking water off its back. The Señor would have to go up to Mexico City and get the appropriate documents before he could release it. He was sorry, he could do no more. We foregathered in a gloomy cluster and reviewed the situation.
‘There’s nothing for it,’ I said. ‘We were going to stay a day in Vera Cruz anyway, so we’re booked in at the hotel. We’ll have to hire a car, go up to Mexico City and get the right papers.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Jacquie. ‘But what a waste of time and money. I don’t know why the fools at the other end made this mistake over the documents. They knew perfectly well we were only bringing it in for a few months.’
‘There’s no good arguing about it,’ I said. ‘Let’s get our other luggage into store and get installed in the hotel and we can work from there.’
So that is what we did.
As slight compensation for our frustration, the Hotel Mocambo, lying a little way outside Vera Cruz, proved to be so bizarre and enchanting that it took our minds off our troubles for a brief moment. To begin with, it was enormous and had been designed by an architect who, I’m sure, was either deeply influenced by Salvador Dali in his youth or else was a frustrated sea captain, because everywhere there were old sailing-ship wheels. Even the entrance hall itself, which was enormous and circular, had a gigantic one hanging from the ceiling. It must have been about twenty-five feet across. All the windows were barred with wheels of sailing ships. Everywhere there were pictures of ships on the walls. The rest of the edifice – and it can be dignified with no lesser term – was a mass of broad staircases leading hither and yon, open balconies that looked down over the trees to the sea, and great patios with Grecian columns that seemed to have been put up haphazardly with no reason at all. I’m sure any professional architect would have gone mad having spent one night in it, but I found it so extraordinary that I was fascinated by it.
We spent the rest of the day organising a car to take us to Mexico City the following morning, and that evening went down to Vera Cruz in order to sample our first Mexican food. We’d been warned that it was atrocious, so we were more than pleasantly surprised to find that it was anything but. The little Vera Cruz oysters were the sweetest, most delicious oysters I’d ever tasted anywhere in the world, and the great fat prawns, which they split in half and roasted on a flat piece of tin over a fire, were wonderful. They cooked in their own juice and the shells became so crisp that you could eat them as well as the contents of the prawn; it was like eating a sort of strange pink biscuit. Then there were the tortillas, which were new to us, a pancake which you could either have in a rather flaccid condition (which I didn’t care for) or else fried so that they were thin and crisp like biscuits. With them you ate black beans, and a lovely hot sauce made out of green peppers. We gorged ourselves and began to feel brighter in consequence.
The following morning Jacquie, Peggy and I climbed into the car and drove up to Mexico City, leaving Shep and Doreen to enjoy the fleshpots of Vera Cruz. The countryside we travelled through was extraordinary and totally unexpected. One minute we were in the sort of tropical zone that lies round Vera Cruz, where you get pineapples and bananas and various other tropical fruits, and later, as we started to climb, the scenery became totally different; semi-tropical trees and lovely colouring and beautiful shape. Then, quite suddenly, we came to a pine forest zone where the air was cool and we had to put on jerseys. We drove across a great, barren plain and presently could see, looming ahead of us, the volcanoes Popocatepetl, Ixtacihuatl and Ajusco and, huddling at their feet, a great, grey-white cloud.
‘That’s Mexico City,’ said Peggy.
‘What? . . . Do you mean that cloud?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was told it was like that. That’s smog.’
I looked at her incredulously.
‘Do you mean to say that’s all smog? But they must be suffocating in there.’
‘Well,’ said Peggy ‘they say they have worse smog than anywhere else in the world.’
‘God! It’s going to be pleasant staying there for a couple of days.’
We drove through the outskirts of the city which had a rather tatterdemalion air about them, but once we started getting into the city proper the architecture, although mostly modern, was quite handsome. It was true what Peggy had said about the smog: the smell in the air was almost unbearable; diesel fumes, smoke, petrol fumes, and humanity all mixed up together, so that you felt that your lungs would never be the same again. If you got caught in a traffic jam, which we frequently did, you had the choice of rolling up the windows and roasting to death or trying to breathe once every five minutes in an effort to save yourself from catching lung cancer. How people can live and work in Mexico City I just don’t know. We booked in at a hotel and then, while Jacquie and Peggy went to try to sort out the Land-Rover problems, I seized the opportunity to phone all the contacts I’d been given, to alert them as to our arrival and what we intended to do. I went round to see Mr PeIlam Wright and he was exceedingly kind and helpful and gave me a lot of useful information. He then went with me to see Dr Corzo who is in charge of the conservation of Mexico’s fauna, and his second-in-command Dr Morales. I explained to Dr Corzo what I wanted and he readily agreed to everything, although – in spite of pleading with tears in my eyes – he wouldn’t agree to let me have a permit for the Horned Guan. Apparently they were going to create a special reserve for it and have it properly patrolled so that no poaching could take place. Although I was disappointed that I couldn’t move him on this, at least I felt happy to know that something constructive was being done towards preserving it in the wild state.
The people at the Shell office in Mexico City were extremely helpful to us, and we used their office as a forwarding address for our mail. One day when I went in there the manager, Mr McDonald, happened to catch sight of me as I was inquiring whether there were any letters for us, and called me into his office.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘I know you have a party of five, but do you need any extra help at all?’
‘Well, I . . . I might . . .’ I said, cautiously, thinking that perhaps he had a maiden aunt who had adored animals from childhood and felt she would like to join the expedition. ‘Why?’
‘There’s a young man I know,’ he said. ‘He’s a first class chap, knows the country inside out, speaks Spanish, naturally, and he’s also very keen on animals. At the moment he’s waiting to go back to university, but he’s got a couple of months on his hands, and I wondered whether he’d be a suitable person for you to take along. He’s also got his own car, which might help.’
This sounded extremely promising. We needed a second vehicle and we’d been investigating the possibilities of hiring, but the prices were so astronomical that with our dwindling currency we couldn’t afford to indulge in one. If this person had a car of his own it would solve the problem as far as we were concerned.
‘What’s his name?’ I inquired of Mr McDonald.
‘Dix Branch,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell him to come round to the hotel and see you? You needn’t take it any further than that if you don’t want to.’
‘Yes, tell him to come round this evening. Round about five.’
At five o’clock I went down into the foyer of the hotel and found waiting a tall, loose-limbed, well-built young man with long dark hair that had a tendency to flop over his forehead, and rather brooding eyes. I liked him instantly although, after five minutes of conversation, I discovered that he took life very seriously, if not too seriously. I explained what we’d come out to do and asked him what sort of car he had. When he said that it was a Mercedes my spirits rose, and on examining it we found that the boot was so enormous it could take practically half our equipment. I said that as far as I was concerned I would be willing to cover his out-of pocket expenses if he’d join the expedition to help us with our work. This he agreed to do. From that moment Dix became invaluable. Not only did he know all the highways and byways of Mexico City, the best places to eat, the best shops to get the various things that we needed, but he also had tireless patience in dealing with officialdom, which was something that we needed badly during the later stages of our trip.
Jacquie and Peggy were having no luck with the Land Rover problem. They were merely being shuffled from office to office and would come back at the end of each day looking thoroughly exhausted and irritable. We had a week of this and then, one day, they came back and found Dix and me sitting in the strange, palm-filled lounge of the hotel, sipping cool drinks. They sank wearily into their chairs.
‘We’ve done it,’ said Jacquie.
‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘But you don’t look very jubilant about it.’
‘I’m not,’ said Jacquie. ‘You know what it is? Those fools down in Vera Cruz – it’s their mistake. It’s nothing to do with our papers. The Land Rover could have come in straight away. They were looking at the wrong numbers.’
Peggy groaned.
‘Never do I want to see another government office,’ she said.
‘Do you mean to say that we can go and get the Land Rover out?’ I asked.
‘Yes. It’s all fixed,’ said Jacquie. ‘They phoned through to Vera Cruz and gave them a rocket, I’m glad to say. So we can go back tomorrow.’
As we drove back to Vera Cruz the following morning I outlined my plan to Dix: Although I’d been refused permission to capture the Horned Guan and the Quetzal, at least I wanted to see the sort of country that they inhabited. And so I suggested, as a preliminary, once we’d got the Land Rover out and our luggage properly sorted, that we drove straight across Mexico and then down to the Guatemalan border, which was the area in which these birds lived. I thought that this would give us a good overall picture of Mexico and there were many places of interest that we could visit en route. Then, when we’d done this, we would come back to Mexico City, make a base there, and work up the volcano slopes after the Volcano rabbit.
We extracted our Land Rover from the grip of the, by now, suitably servile and apologetic Customs officials, sorted through our luggage in the macabre setting of the Mocambo and left in their custody those items which we thought we would not need. Once we’d done this we were ready and so, at the crack of dawn one morning, we set off to drive right across Mexico to the Pacific coast and then down to the Guatemalan border. I don’t think that anywhere in the world have I travelled through such extraordinarily varied country in such a comparatively short space of time. The first part of our journey took us through the flat lands around Vera Cruz, through sub-tropical creeks and canals where we saw a mass of bird life. There were huge flocks of Boattailed Grackles which flew across the road looking like congregations of small black magpies with short heavy beaks. In the creeks and canals, which were thickly overgrown with water-weed of various sorts, were numerous jacanas or Lilytrotters, those strange little birds with elongated toes that allow them to walk on the water plants lying on the surface of the water. At a casual glance, as they bob their way busily across the water lilies and other plants that grow so thickly in the canals, you could mistake them for moorhens, but as the cars disturbed them they would fly up and you would see their long trailing toes and catch a glimpse of the buttercup-yellow flash of the underside of their wings as they flapped away to safety. We saw numbers of Boat-billed herons which I think must be the most lugubrious of all the water birds; with their squat, boat-shaped beak and large sorrowful eyes they sat in clusters in the trees, their strange beaks tucked into their chests, looking like depressed conventions of Donald Ducks.
We passed through villages and towns which were a shimmering blue haze of jacaranda trees and the houses themselves seemed almost weighed down under the great shawls of bougainvillaea – purple, pink, orange, yellow and white. Then, as the road climbed a little higher, we passed through almost tropical forest where the branches of the trees sprouted great waterfalls of greeny-grey Spanish moss, and the trunks of the trees were sometimes almost completely obscured by orchids and other epiphytes that grew on them. Here the steep banks of the road were covered with a tapestry of smaller plants and shrubs and, in particular, great masses of enormous ferns. The plant life was so varied and extraordinary that I cursed myself for not knowing more about botany.
It was while we were travelling through this magnificent country that it began to rain – and rain as it can only rain in the tropics. Great gouts of water plummeted down from the sky so that the road, which was an earth one, was immediately turned into a dangerous mire, and visibility cut down to a few inches. Jacquie, Doreen and Shep were travelling in the Land Rover, and Peggy and I and Dix were in his Mercedes leading the way. We kept the Land Rover behind us so that, should the Mercedes – for some reason or other – get into trouble, the Land Rover could always pull her out. As visibility was cut down to nil by this grey sheet of water that was pouring from the skies, I enlivened the time by reading some extracts from an enchanting guide book that I had been fortunate enough to come across in Mexico City.
‘We’re not touching in at Acapulco, are we?’ I inquired of Dix, for my knowledge of the geography of Mexico was still slightly hazy.
‘No,’ said Dix, morosely, ‘and I wouldn’t advise you to go there anyway. It’s just a playground.’
‘Well, according to this book, it sounds fascinating. Listen to this: “Its particular topography offers impressive panoramas: Quiet and crystalline bays and inlets; beaches worthy of seeing due to the huge waves; the water is warm as well as the climate with soft winds almost the year round (77°F) which makes the clothes to wear must be light. It is rare the Sun does not shine, as usually it rains by night. The natives have kept their old customs, specially in dressing.”’
‘Wonderful,’ said Peggy. ‘What a pity we’re not going there.’
At this point we had a puncture and Dix and I had to get out and change the wheel, although Dix did most of the work. We got back into the car, dripping wet, and continued at our snail’s pace down the road through the torrential rains. When I had mopped the water off my face and hair and hands, I turned once again to my guide book.
‘Now here’s the place we ought to go to,’ I said. ‘Just listen: “Due to its temperate climate, its clear sky and shining sun almost all over the year, this place can be considered as ideal for relaxing. The hospitality and friendliness of the inhabitants make the visitor to feel at home, the peaceness of this town is a real soothing for those who are looking for a place to relax their broken nerves because of the excitement of the present way of life almost everywhere. Its Parish and picturesque main square must be visited, as well as its market.”’
Presently the rain stopped and soon afterwards we came to the end of this tropical forest and, in the extraordinary way that vegetation grows in Mexico, passed straight out of tropical forest into pine forest at high altitude. As the sky cleared we drew up to have some coffee that Jacquie had thoughtfully provided. Whereas, some ten minutes previously, we had been sweating gently in the tropical heat, we now found the air so crisp and cold that we were forced to put on all the warm clothing we could find.
Now the road went mad and wriggled its way down into valleys and up precipitous mountainsides and around and along them. The vegetation grew more and more extraordinary as we went along. In the valleys there would be the lushness of the tropics and then a few minutes of climbing up a winding road along a hillside and you would come to a great area in blazing hot sunshine, dry and desiccated, covered with rank after rank of trees that were completely devoid of leaves and whose trunks were of the most beautiful silky-red colour. Both trunks and branches were so twisted that it looked, for mile after mile, as though you were passing through an enormous frozen corps de ballet. And then you would round a corner and suddenly there was not a red tree to be seen, but in their place were similar ones, only with a silver-grey bark that gave off an almost metallic gleam where the sun hit it. Again, these were completely leafless.
Round yet another corner and the trees had all disappeared and in their place were gigantic cacti, some of them about twenty feet high. They were the candelabra variety, which meant that they have curving arms sticking out from the main stem so that they look like extraordinary green candlesticks growing thickly all over the mountainside. Here, unidentifiable hawks wheeled in slow circles in the blue sky like little black crosses, and frequently across the road would gallop a Road-runner – a strange little bird with a crest and a long tail and enormous flat feet. When they ran, their feet almost touched their chins, and they leant forward with the earnest air of somebody trying to break the record for the mile. The bird life and the super-abundance of vegetable life made me wish that we could stop more often on the road, but I knew that this would be fatal, for our time in Mexico was short, dictated by the amount of currency reluctantly allowed us by the Bank of England. It was a race against time.
Presently we came to a small town called Tule. To my surprise Dix parked the car carefully alongside the railings of what looked like a little park with a church in it. The Land Rover drew in immediately behind us.
‘What are we stopping here for?’ I inquired.
‘To see The Tree,’ said Dix, in his normal rather gloomy fashion, and giving the tree capital letters. ‘Peggy wants to see it.’
‘What on earth’s The Tree?’ I inquired.
‘But don’t you know?’ said Peggy excitedly. ‘It’s the tree that everyone in Mexico comes to see.’
I glanced at the road. Apart from the three sloe-eyed little girls, in tattered frocks, playing in the dust, there was not a soul in sight.
‘It doesn’t seem to be over-popular as a tourist attraction,’ I said.
‘But you must come and see it,’ said Peggy earnestly.
‘Well, in that case, I certainly will,’ I said.
We got out of the car and as we did so I heard the sound of weird piping music and the dull thumping of a drum. We went through the gateway into the little park that surrounded the tiny church and there, towering over it, carefully protected by a fence around its base, stood The Tree. It took me aback. It was not only that it was incredibly tall – in fact, I think I have seen taller trees – it was the sheer massiveness of it that took your breath away. A great, towering, whispering pinnacle of leaves, standing on a trunk whose proportions made one gasp; a trunk whose buttress roots thrust out defiantly into the ground, making it look like the foot of some enormous predatory bird, clasping the earth – Sinbad’s Roc, perhaps, or something similar. I knew nothing of its history or its age, yet even I, in my ignorance, could see that this was a tree to end all trees. It exuded personality. We were all dazed by it, with the exception of Dix who had seen it before. But even he gazed at it with a sort of reverential awe because he had a great passion for trees.
‘They say,’ said Peggy, in hushed tones such as one would use in front of a deity, ‘they say that it is three thousand years old. It was a big tree – a very big tree – when Cortes came through here, because the population showed it to him.’
I looked at the great fountain of leaves above me and thought that, in that case, it must have been already a young sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ.
The only other people who were there were an elderly, blind Indian clad in tattered, faded clothing and a battered straw hat, who was playing on a flute – a strange, uncanny, almost oriental tune – and standing beside him a little boy of six or seven who was beating out a complicated tattoo on a drum. They took no notice of us whatsoever.
‘What do you think they are doing?’ asked Peggy, since they hadn’t turned their attention on us and were therefore, presumably, not seeking to earn a few pesos by playing to us.
‘I bet you he’s playing to the tree,’ said Jacquie.
‘Good God! He might be,’ I said. ‘Go on, Peggy, go and ask him.’
‘Well, I don’t really like to interrupt him,’ said Peggy, who tended to get shy at moments of this sort.
But at that moment came the opportunity, for the man took the flute from his lips and wiped his mouth and just stood there facing the tree, and the boy ceased his drumming and stood looking at the ground and shuffling his bare toes in the dust.
‘Go on . . . Go and ask him now,’ I said.
Rather timidly, Peggy went over and we heard her speaking to the man. She came back, her face alight with delight.
‘He is playing to the tree,’ she said. ‘He is playing to the tree!’
‘There you are,’ said Jacquie triumphantly. ‘I knew it!’
‘But what’s he playing to the tree for?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t like to ask him that,’ said Peggy. ‘I felt it would be rather . . . rude, somehow.’
‘Well, I think you ought to get a recording of him,’ I said.
Peggy got her recording equipment out of the car and when the man next put the flute up to his lips, turned his blind eyes to the tree and started playing, she recorded the whole thing. Was he, I wondered, playing to the tree in the hope that it would restore his sight to him? Or just because it was the tree to end all trees? We none of us felt like asking him, and presently we walked out of the little garden and got back into the cars. As we drove away we could still hear the plaintive noise of the blind man’s flute and the rat-a-tat-tat of the little boy’s drum as they played to the giant tree.
Our trip towards the Guatemalan border, in order to try and see the Horned Guan and the Quetzal, was completely abortive, though the trip itself was fascinating. We ended up in the village of San Cristóbal and from there we could go no farther because at that time there was some political upheaval going on in Guatemala and guerrilla forces were dodging to and fro across the border. We were warned that, should such a rich looking party venture any farther, we might run into one of these bands of guerrillas, in which case they would undoubtedly shoot us out of hand for the sake of our equipment and clothing and any money we had with us. With the utmost reluctance, we turned back and headed once again for Mexico City.
When we got back to the city we decided that it would be cheaper for us to live in a flat and through the good offices of a friend in Shell we did manage to find one that was ideal. It was centrally situated, it had three double bedrooms, two bathrooms, an enormous living-room and a kitchen. Once installed in this we went our various ways, for the female members of the party wanted to do shopping and sightseeing, while Dix and Shep and myself were going to go on rabbit hunts.
I decided that our first attempt should be on Popocatepetl itself and so, very early one morning, we piled all our equipment into the car and drove off towards the giant volcano. As we climbed higher and higher and it became colder we looked back. In the pale dawn light, in the great bowl formed by the ring of volcanoes, we could see the patchwork quilt of Mexico City, a glitter of coloured lights – for at that hour of the morning the smoke had not built up. By afternoon, from the same vantage point, you wouldn’t have been able to see the city at all.
At the base of Popocatepetl there were several little hotels. We chose the least scruffy-looking and established ourselves there. The owner of the hotel was a loquacious, crafty Mexican. We asked him about Volcano rabbits, since he was a keen hunter and possessed a couple of hunting dogs. He told us that the Volcano rabbit was found right up as far as the edge of the snowline on the volcano, and that he would try to contact a friend of his whom he thought might be able to help us.
While we were waiting for this friend to materialise we drove up the volcano as far as the road allowed, into the Popocatepetl National Park, for I felt that, if we talked to the park rangers, they would be sure to be able to give us information about the whereabouts of the Teporingoes. The road zigzagged up the volcano and presently we were driving through thick pine forest. Underneath it grew the zacaton grass in great golden clumps like enormous uncombed wigs. When we eventually got to the park and out of the cars, the atmosphere was beautiful, the air so sharp and clean that it almost hurt your lungs to breathe. Above us towered the enormous dome of snow that was the top of the volcano. We had some difficulty in finding a forest guard but eventually, when we did find one, he became quite eloquent about Volcano rabbits. Yes, he knew them, and had seen them quite frequently in different parts of the park and on the other slopes of the volcano. In fact, he had actually caught a couple, he said proudly.
‘Where,’ I inquired, ‘are they?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I ate them.’
This is an animal which, on paper at least, is one of the most strictly protected creatures in Mexico, and this was a forest guard, inside a national park, speaking to me. This sort of thing is not just common to Mexico, it is common all over the world where animals receive what I call ‘paper protection’ but are not protected in fact.
Having established that at least there were, in spite of the guard’s efforts, some Teporingoes left, we returned to the hotel where we found that the owner had run his friend to earth and brought him round to see us. He was an enormous, well-built man, with a great slab of a face, rather like one of the more unattractive Mayan carvings, and he had quick, shifty eyes that seemed almost too small for his face. But he certainly seemed knowledgeable about the whereabouts and habits of the Volcano rabbits. The only way to catch them, he told us, would be to dig them out. This was a laborious process, but he suggested that, with two other men and himself and Dix and Shep and myself, we should be able to do the job. So we arranged to go up the volcano once again the following morning and start on our first rabbit hunt.
I had read up all I could about the Volcano rabbit and its habits – which was precious little because nobody seemed to have studied it to any great extent – and we knew that they lived only in the zacaton grass and fed almost exclusively on it. One authority does say that they feed on an aromatic wild mint that grows up there, but we could never even find this herb, let alone catch a rabbit feasting on it. The zacaton grass, we soon discovered, is not the easiest sort of place to hunt for anything. It is tall – as much as three feet high – a very pale golden-yellow in colour, and it grows in huge tussocks all over the soft, black, volcanic soil. In this soil the Volcano rabbits dig long and complicated burrows. Under the overhanging zacaton they work out a network of little runways, almost like tunnels, and they seemed to browse on top of the zacaton tussocks, feeding on both the new and the old grass, for a number of tussocks we found had been chewed as flat as a mown lawn on top, only leaving a sort of rim of overhanging grass round the edges. We drove up the slopes of Popocatepetl to about ten thousand feet, slowly, keeping a sharp look-out in every direction for any sign of a Volcano rabbit. I didn’t really think that we had any hope whatsoever of seeing one, for I felt sure that the noise of the car would send them diving for their burrows. But then we rounded a corner, and there to my complete astonishment, sitting like a sentinel on top of a large clump of zacaton, was a Teporingo.
In spite of the fact that we skidded noisily to a halt, the Teporingo, in a well-bred way, continued to sit on his clump of zacaton and ignore us completely. Although he was only some thirty feet away I examined him minutely and avidly through my field-glasses. He was approximately as big as the domestic rabbit known as a Netherland Dwarf – that is to say about the size of a fairly plump guinea-pig. His small, neatly-rounded ears were pressed close to his skull so that you had to look carefully to notice them at all, and there was absolutely no tail visible. His colouring was predominantly brown with a tiny white ring round the eyes which set it off, and his pelage had a sort of greenish tinge to it where the sun struck it. Having assured myself that it really was the animal that I’d come so far to find, and not one of the other species of rabbit that inhabit Mexico, we all vacated the car in a body. At this the Teporingo gave a slight squeak, like somebody rubbing a damp thumb over a balloon – but more piercing – jumped vertically into the air, landed once again on the tuft of grass he’d been sitting on and, using it as a sort of springboard, dived into the zacaton and disappeared.
Immediately we set to work. We rigged up a net round the entire area and then searched under the zacaton clumps to block up any exit holes that we thought his burrow might have. Having done this we concentrated our attention on the burrow down which we thought he’d disappeared, and started to dig. Dix, Shep and I were unaccustomed to this altitude and we found that the smallest action made us gasp for breath. Even the setting up of the nets, which was a simple enough operation in itself, left us gasping and wheezing like ancient cart-horses on their way to the knacker’s yard. So when it came to the digging we found it exhausting, to say the least, and after a time just had to sit down and leave the operation to our three hunters. They didn’t mind in the least and dug away with great vigour, apparently unaffected by the altitude. They dug and dug and produced a mountain of soft, almost powder-like black volcanic earth as they excavated the burrow: but there was no Teporingo. It was obvious that there was some side passage which we had not discovered and had left unblocked, and he had escaped. I was bitterly disappointed and could see that catching Volcano rabbits by this method was not going to be at all easy. However, we moved farther along the slope of Popocatepedl and when we found an area which we knew to be inhabited by the rabbits, we set to work again.
First we searched for a burrow that had fresh droppings outside so that we were reasonably sure it had an occupant before we started to dig. Then again we went through the laborious process of blocking up every other hole we could find in the vicinity, and digging commenced once more. Five times we did this and five times we met with no success. Then, at last, on the sixth dig we were lucky. One of the hunters who had been digging suddenly gave a small inarticulate grunt, got down on his knees in the black soil, thrust his hands into what was left of the burrow they were excavating, and pulled out a young, bright-eyed, and very much alive Volcano rabbit. After one preliminary wriggle it made no movement at all but just lay in his hands. Fearing that it might be suffering from shock, we hastily sexed it, found it was female, and transported it with the utmost tenderness to one of the cages that we had brought with us.
Knowing that both rabbits and hares, when they are put in captivity, show an extreme tendency to nerves and can easily kill themselves by jumping straight at wood or wire if what they consider an enemy is too close, I was a little frightened that this, our first Teporingo, might do the same when put into the cage. I had a coat ready to put over it so as to make her feel safer. But when we put her in the cage she simply sat there, placidly staring at us. After a moment or so I tentatively put out my hand and scratched gently against the wire to see what effect it would have. I was quite taken aback when the Teporingo gave a tiny hop, came over to the wire and smelt my finger. It was as though we had captured a domestic animal instead of a wild one, she seemed so tame and phlegmatic about the whole thing.
It was growing towards evening now and the great snowcap of Popocatepetl was turning a delicate shade of pink in the falling sun. I decided, when I’d finished gloating over our capture, that the best thing would be to take her back straightaway to Mexico City and see how she settled down before progressing any farther. This we did, and on the drive back to the city I gave the subject of Volcano rabbits and their capture some attention. It was obvious that if we were going to pursue them at such heights the three of us were useless as hunters because of the altitude, but I knew that they did exist in little pockets farther down the flanks of the great volcano. It seemed to me that the sensible thing to do would be to choose several villages that lay along the base of Popocateped and use the method that I’d employed in many parts of the world before, which was to alert the villagers and offer a reasonable price for any Teporingoes brought in unharmed. However, before we did this, I wanted to make sure that the Teporingo we had caught was going to settle down and adapt itself to captivity. It was one thing to catch your animal, I reflected, thinking of past bitter experiences, and quite another thing to keep it.
When we got back to the flat in the city the Teporingo, in her wire cage, was placed reverently on a large sheet of newspaper in the middle of the living-room floor, and we then sallied forth to a local market where we purchased as many different kinds of fruit and vegetable, green-stuffs and herbs, as we could lay our hands on.
When we got back to the flat the Teporingo still seemed as unperturbed as she had been the moment she was caught. We carefully prepared the food and counted it – so many sprigs of this, so many sprigs of that, so many pieces of apple, and so on, so that we could tell exactly what had been put into her cage and what, if anything, she was going to eat and show a preference for. Then we placed these delicacies in the cage, covered her over so that the cage was partially dark and would give her a greater sense of security, and went out.
We had a very good dinner to celebrate and when, some three hours later, we came back, I cautiously removed the covering from the cage to see if she’d eaten something. I didn’t expect for a moment that she had, because it generally takes a wild-caught animal a certain length of time to settle down, and I knew that the food was completely new to her. So I felt slightly incredulous when I found that she’d eaten nearly everything in the cage with the exception of one herb which apparently was not to her liking. She’d even eaten the apple, which I didn’t think she’d touch. While delighted with this response I knew that we would still have to wait a few days to make sure that the new diet was not going to affect her in any way and produce enteritis or some similar malady which might easily kill her. But it was a first class start; almost too good to be true.
The following day, leaving our first Teporingo in Jacquie’s care, Dix and Shep and I investigated the villages that lay along the lower slopes of Popocatepetl. There were quite a number of them but only two had what we considered to be Teporingo colonies within easy striking distance. We interviewed the equivalent of the mayor of each village, told him what we wanted and offered what was, for the poverty-stricken Mexican, a very high price for any Teporingo brought in unharmed. We left them with a suitable supply of cages and promised that we would come back in two days’ time to see if they had achieved any results.
For two days I watched our rabbit like a hawk for any sign of distress or disturbance, but she remained placid and, with the air of a gourmet, ate practically everything that we put into her cage. I hoped fervently that the two villages we had been to had been successful, because our time in Mexico was growing short and, although we had achieved what we had come out to do, one solitary female was of no earthly use. What we wanted was the full complement allowed by my permit, ten in all, of which I hoped at least four would be males. In this way we could set up a colony with some hopes of breeding.
Now that I appreciated the difficulty of obtaining the Teporingoes I had, mentally as it were, scratched off the list the other species which I had permission to capture but which I didn’t think we’d have time to acquire. That was the Thick-billed parrot. But during the two days we were waiting before we went back to the villages to see whether they had caught any Teporingoes or not, we had an extraordinary piece of luck. I had been told about an animal dealer whose establishment was on the outskirts of the city, and although I knew that the animal dealers were carefully controlled by the Ministry and were not allowed to handle any strictly protected animal, I thought it would be worth going down to see what he’d got. When we arrived, to my delight, there was a cage with three pairs of Thick-billed parrots clambering about, gaudy, raucous, with a glint of mischief in their eyes and not a feather out of place. After some protracted bargaining I purchased all three pairs and we carried them in triumph back to the flat. They were beautiful young birds in perfect condition and Shep went into ecstasies over them. Although they were delightful and colourful and I was pleased to have got them so effortlessly, I still concentrated mainly on the problem of the Volcano rabbit. Having obtained one, it would be a bitter blow if we could get no more before we were due to leave and I knew that, should we not be able to obtain any more, we would have to take this female and release her again where we had caught her, thus defeating the whole object of the expedition.
The days passed, and at regular intervals we visited the two villages. They assured us that they had dug and dug with no success – which I could well believe. All I could do was to raise the price we were willing to pay for the rabbits to an astronomical degree, in the hopes that this would give them the incentive to go on trying no matter how often they failed. But each time we came away from the villages empty-handed I felt more and more depressed.
And then, one day, our, luck seemed to change. We went on our routine call to the villages and in the one called Parras, as soon as we drew up in the dusty main street opposite the mayor’s house, we could tell from the way he rushed out beaming and waving to us, that they had had success. He led us through his house and out into his tiny backyard and there, in the cages that we had left with him, were three Teporingoes. They were all unharmed, sitting placidly in the cages and seeming as phlegmatic about their capture as the original one. Carefully we lifted them out and sexed them, and my spirits dropped slightly, because all proved to be female. Nevertheless, four Teporingoes were better than none, so we paid the triumphant mayor for the rabbits and took them back to the flat. As an experiment we tried putting two in one cage, but we soon found that they were of a pugnacious disposition and had to keep them all caged separately.
The new rabbits took to the strange diet that we had to give them as easily as the first one, and this was a hopeful sign. The one thing that really worried me was that our time was running out. We had only a few days left before Shep was due to fly back to Jersey with whatever we had managed to acquire, and the one thing that we didn’t have was our full quota of Volcano rabbits. Most important of all, we still had no male. A couple of days after Shep’s departure the rest of us were due to make our way down to Vera Cruz to board the ship, so there would be no time left for us to catch more Volcano rabbits. We went out to the villages every day now, inciting them to further efforts and raising the price to a ridiculous sum but, although they obviously were working hard at it, no more Teporingoes were forthcoming. In desperation, I felt that there was only one thing to be done. Taking Dix with me to act as translator I went back to see Dr Morales of the Ministry of Agriculture, and explained my predicament. I pointed out that, having travelled so far and spent so much money trying to obtain the Volcano rabbits, to take only four – and all of them females – back to Jersey was futile to say the least. If he would allow my permit to be re-issued in Dix’s name, Dix could then try and obtain six more Teporingoes after I’d left. Among those I was fairly certain there would be some males. To my relief, Dr Morales was most sympathetic. He saw my point, and immediately agreed to transfer my permit to Dix, for which I was most grateful.
The next twenty-four hours were a tremendous rush. Special traveling cages had to be built for the Teporingoes, and a special cage for the Thick-billed parrots – one that would not only be suitably light for air travel but which would be indestructible – for the parrots had formidably large beaks and could demolish anything made out of plain wood in a quarter of an hour or so, and I had no desire to have them loose in a plane flying across the Atlantic.
The day came when Shep had to leave with his precious cargo, and we went down to the airport to see him off. He promised me that he would get Catha to phone me a couple of days after his arrival to let me know how our four Volcano rabbits were faring. We had found that it was simpler to communicate with the Trust by telephone than by cable because the cable came out at the other end in such a garbled form that whoever you’d sent it to was forced to reply by asking you what you’d said in the first place. By the time this had gone on for two or three cables it became infinitely cheaper to telephone.
A couple of days later Catha phoned me. She told me that the Volcano rabbits, the parrots, and Shep, had all arrived intact. The rabbits had settled down, as had the parrots, and there was nothing to worry about. This was a tremendous relief, but the next thing was that Dix should procure some more Teporingoes for us, among which would be a male. I briefed him on this job so often that I must have become a bore. I impressed upon him that he must sex carefully all the rabbits that might be caught and, although he could accept another three females, after that – if any females were caught – he must let them go and keep trying until he got a sufficient number of males to make up the complement on the permit. He knew how to feed and look after them and how to cage them for the journey, so I was not worried on that score, and I knew that his natural love of animals and his sensitivity would make him look after them properly. Having tied up all the loose ends, we made our way back to Vera Cruz and got on board the ship. It had been a fascinating but also a frustrating trip. If Dix could pull off the final thing and get us a male Teporingo I felt that the whole expedition would have been a success, but I could only wait with my fingers crossed and hope for the best.
On our arrival in Jersey one of the first things I did was to make a beeline for the Teporingoes to make sure they were all right. I learnt from Gill, the girl who had been looking after them, that nineteen days after their arrival the oldest female had given birth to twins and that for forty-four hours everything seemed to be going all right. Then the babies were found dead in the nest. I think this must have been caused by inadequate attention on the part of the mother. She had, after all, been caught when she was pregnant, transported from a high altitude to a smog-ridden city, taken by air to Jersey and a very low altitude, and had not really got accustomed to her surroundings before she had been faced with the problem of bringing up two babies. It was disappointing from our point of view but you could hardly blame the mother.
Weeks passed and there was still no word from Dix. I kept writing him encouraging letters, urging him on, to which he didn’t bother to reply and I began to have a feeling that, having worked so hard and tirelessly with us on the trip, he’d grown dispirited with the whole idea of Volcano rabbits. Then, one morning, the telephone rang. Was I prepared to take a telephone call from Mexico? I couldn’t tell the operator how eagerly I’d been awaiting this call, so I merely said ‘Yes’ in a flat voice. Dix came on, and it was one of those miraculous lines where his voice was as clear as a bell, almost as though he’d been in the room speaking to me. He told me that he’d succeeded at last in getting six more rabbits, two of which were males, and that they’d settled down in his house and were feeding well. He’d just completed constructing the travelling boxes for them, and he’d be sending them off within the next twenty-four hours. I got from him the flight number of the plane from Mexico and all the other details. I was wildly excited. When you go on an expedition you can’t always guarantee success, but so far, on all my expeditions, I’d had incredible luck. It seemed that now the Mexican expedition was not going to be a failure either. As soon as Dix was off the line I contacted London Airport. I spoke to every official I could think of on the subject of Volcano rabbits; I stressed their rarity and the importance of their being sent to the Animal Shelter should they arrive too late to catch a connection to Jersey; I phoned up Mr Whittaker at the Animal Shelter itself, which is run by the RSPCA, told him the glad tidings, and gave him minute details as to what to do should they have to be in his care overnight. There was nothing more I could do except sit back with ill-concealed excitement and wait for their arrival.
We had worked out that their flight would arrive in the morning, which would give plenty of time for them to be put on another plane to Jersey, and when the great day dawned I waited impatiently for some news. Two hours after the plane must have touched down at London Airport I phoned to see what was happening. None of the officials knew anything about Volcano rabbits. I got on to Mr Whittaker. No, he’d not received the rabbits, although he had everything prepared for them. At lunchtime I phoned again, and still the officials denied all knowledge of Volcano rabbits. By this time I was getting a little desperate and was wondering whether I should put in a phone call to Dix to find out whether he had, in fact, succeeded in getting them off on that particular flight. At four o’clock that afternoon I phoned London Airport again. Again they denied all knowledge of the rabbits.
Once again I got on to Mr Whittaker and told him that I was exceedingly worried. He said that nobody had been in touch with him about any livestock in the airport, but that he would investigate and phone me back. Eventually he told me that he had tracked the rabbits down, and they were now in his care. Apparently, there had been some small discrepancy in the papers so necessary for the petty civil servant, and the rabbits had been pushed into a hangar somewhere and left while the vital work of fixing their papers had gone on. Mr Whittaker assured me that he’d had a look at them and, although obviously frightened, they all seemed in good health. It was too late that day for him to get them on a plane to Jersey so he had to keep them overnight and fly them across to us the following morning.
When the cage arrived at the zoo we tore the sacking from the front as gently as our eagerness allowed and peered in. There were five rabbits alive, looking somewhat startled. The sixth was dead. Carefully, we unpacked them and sexed them. The dead one, needless to say, was a male. Among the other five was one male and four females. To say that I was angry would be putting it mildly. I felt that the quite unnecessary delay at London Airport had deprived us of this male. Our new arrivals were put in cages separate from the ones that we had already got, to await all the tests that were so necessary before we could introduce them.
I paced up and down the office and wondered what was the best way of blasting London Airport out of existence. Suddenly I had an idea. Sir Giles and Lady Guthrie were members of the Trust, took a deep interest in our work and had helped us on many occasions. Sir Giles was the Chairman of BOAC. If he couldn’t scald somebody’s tail for them, nobody could. I picked up the telephone and asked for his number. It turned out he was away in Switzerland but Lady Guthrie answered. I told her the tale of the Volcano rabbits and I explained that the only reason I wanted to make a fuss was that should other rare creatures be consigned to us at some future date, and for some reason or other they had to spend some time at London Airport, I didn’t want the same sort of thing to happen.
‘Of course not,’ she said briskly. ‘Absolutely ludicrous! I’ll see to it myself. As soon as Giles gets back I’ll get him on to it.’
And this is exactly what she did. Over the course of the next week or so I got letters of abject apology from various officials at London Airport, making innumerable excuses for the bad handling of the rabbits. These were satisfying in that I knew in future anything consigned to us would automatically light up a red warning light in the minds of officials. But no amount of apologies would bring back to life our male Teporingo.
What we did now was examine the females at regular intervals and when we found they were in oestrus we would introduce the male into the cage for a few hours and keep a careful watch. This was necessary because, as I said before, the Teporingoes were highly pugnacious, and we didn’t want to run the risk of the last male being killed by one of the females. This went on for some time and then, one day, we found that one of the females had built herself, in her bedroom, a neat nest of straw lined with fur from her own body. In it were two babies. This was, of course, a terrific thrill for us. We watched the babies’ progress day by day, and as they grew bigger and bigger we felt more and more swollen-headed. But perhaps we became a little too proud of our achievement for, as often seems to happen on these occasions, fate dealt us a couple of nasty blows. Firstly, Gill went down one morning and found that, in some inexplicable way, one of the baby rabbits had managed to strangle itself with a hawthorn branch, getting it wound round its neck and jammed in the wire. This left us with just one female baby. The next thing was that our male died. The post mortem showed that he’d died from coccidiosis which is one of those diseases very difficult to diagnose in the early stages. Immediately all the remaining rabbits were given ‘Sulphamezathine’ as a preventative against them catching it – for all of them, at one time or another, had been mixed with the male, but, in spite of this, we lost two females in the same way.
We were now, it seemed, back to square one. We had a lot of females and no male. However, at this time we had just prepared and published our fifth Annual Report in which there was a full account of the Mexican expedition, together with photographs of the female rabbit with her baby. I sent copies of this to both Dr Corzo and Dr Morales and, of course, to Dix Branch, and at the same time I wrote to Dix and asked him if he’d be willing to undertake a rabbit hunt on his own, should I be able to get permission from the Mexican government for some more rabbits to be captured. He wrote back enthusiastically, saying that he would do everything possible to help. I sat down and wrote to Dr Morales explaining our predicament. I said that, although we had a group of females which we couldn’t turn into a breeding group because there was no male, we had at least proved a number of things and that therefore our efforts had not been entirely in vain. For example, we’d proved that the Volcano rabbit could be kept in captivity and, moreover, kept at a much lower altitude than it was used to, and that it could be bred in captivity. We’d also found out a number of interesting pathological things about it, including the fact that the particular ‘brand’ – if you like to call it that – of coccidiosis that it was suffering from might be a brand peculiar to that animal. And we had worked out the gestation period which hitherto had been in doubt. In view of our success rather than our failure I asked Dr Morales whether it would be possible to issue Dix Branch with a permit to try for some more Volcano rabbits for us. To my great delight he wrote back the most charming letter saying that, as we had been so successful, he would most definitely grant Dix a permit to capture some more rabbits. I hope that this will come to pass shortly, and that this time we will have greater luck and establish a colony of these rare and attractive little creatures in the Trust’s collection.
