"Martel, Yann - Life of Pi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martel Yann)

The black swans.

"With their beaks they'll crack your skull. With their wings they'll break your arms."

"Yes, Father."

The smaller birds.

"They'll cut through your fingers with their beaks as if they were butter."

"Yes, Father."

The elephants.

"The most dangerous animal of all. More keepers and visitors are killed by elephants than by any other animal in a zoo. A young elephant will most likely dismember you and trample your body parts flat. That's what happened to one poor lost soul in a European zoo who got into the elephant house through a window. An older, more patient animal will squeeze you against a wall or sit on you. Sounds funnyЧbut think about it!"

"Yes, Father."

"There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is. Every animal is ferocious and dangerous. It may not kill you, but it will certainly injure you. It will scratch you and bite you, and you can look forward to a swollen, pus-filled infection, a high fever and a ten-day stay in the hospital."

"Yes, Father."

We came to the guinea pigs, the only other animals besides Mahisha to have been starved at Father's orders, having been denied their previous evening's meal. Father unlocked the cage. He brought out a bag of feed from his pocket and emptied it on the floor.

"You see these guinea pigs?"

"Yes, Father."

The creatures were trembling with weakness as they frantically nibbled their kernels of corn.

"Well..." He leaned down and scooped one up. "They're not dangerous." The other guinea pigs scattered instantly.

Father laughed. He handed me the squealing guinea pig. He meant ito end on a light note.

The guinea pig rested in my arms tensely. It was a young one. I went to the cage and carefully lowered it to the floor. It rushed to its mother's side. The only reason these guinea pigs weren't dangerousЧdidn't draw blood with their teeth and clawsЧwas that they were practically domesticated. Otherwise, to grab a wild guinea pig with your bare hands would be like taking hold of a knife by the blade.

The lesson was over. Ravi and I sulked and gave Father the cold shoulder for a week. Mother ignored him too. When I went by the rhinoceros pit I fancied the rhinos' heads were hung low with sadness over the loss of one of their dear companions.

But what can you do when you love your father? Life goes on and you don't touch tigers. Except that now, for having accused Ravi of an unspecified crime he hadn't committed, I was as good as dead. In years subsequent, when he was in the mood to terrorize me, he would whisper to me, "Just wait till we're alone. You're the next goat!"




CHAPTER 9

Getting animals used to the presence of humans is at the heart of the art and science of zookeeping. The key aim is to diminish an animal's flight distance, which is the minimum distance at which an animal wants to keep a perceived enemy. A flamingo in the wild won't mind you if you stay more than three hundred yards away. Cross that limit and it becomes tense. Get even closer and you trigger a flight reaction from which the bird will not cease until the three-hundred-yard limit is set again, or until heart and lungs fail. Different animals have different flight distances and they gauge them in different ways. Cats look, deer listen, bears smell. Giraffes will allow you to come to within thirty yards of them if you are in a motor car, but will run if you are 150 yards away on foot. Fiddler crabs scurry when you're ten yards away; howler monkeys stir in their branches when you're at twenty; African buffaloes react at seventy-five.

Our tools for diminishing flight distance are the knowledge we have of an animal, the food and shelter we provide, the protection we afford. When it works, the result is an emotionally stable, stress-free wild animal that not only stays put, but is healthy, lives a very long time, eats without fuss, behaves and socializes in natural ways andЧthe best sign-reproduces. I won't say that our zoo compared to the zoos of San Diego or Toronto or Berlin or Singapore, but you can't keep a good zookeeper down. Father was a natural. He made up for a lack of formal training with an intuitive gift and a keen eye. He had a knack for looking at an animal and guessing what was on its mind. He was attentive to his charges, and they, in return, multiplied, some to excess.