We Bought a Zoo

I went back to France, Melissa to her children in Gloucester, and Nick went back to Whipsnade, where he prepared the report that was to dictate the direction of our lives. If it was negative, it would be definitively so, and there would be no point chasing this dream any further. In many ways, as before, I was half hoping that this would be the case and I could finally lay the idea to rest knowing categorically that it would be a mistake to proceed. If it was positive, however, we knew we had to continue, and the report itself would become instrumental in finding the backing to make it happen.

Meanwhile I was learning more about the zoo every day. Ellis had once been seen as a visionary, designing innovative enclosures, putting in disabled access on a difficult sloping site long before legislation required him to do so, and developing an aggressive Outreach education programme, one of the first of its kind in the country and now copied by almost every other zoo. But he had absolute, total control. There was no one to tell him when to stop. And with over-investment in expensive infrastructure like the enormous restaurant (against advice which he overruled), an expensive divorce, and other zoos learning, copying and developing his techniques and continually changing their game while he began to grind to a halt, visitor numbers declined.

My life became a series of long phone calls to lawyers, estate agents, bankers, family members and Ellis. Every time I spoke to Ellis, I noticed, he inexorably steered the conversation towards conflict. We were frank with him. We didn’t have the money to buy it yet, but we had assets of equal value, which we could borrow against or sell, if he could only hold on. ‘You’d think when someone offered to buy a place they’d at least have the money to do it,’ he said once, the type of observation which gave me an indication of why so many other sales had fallen through. Apart from anything else, Ellis was in the terrible position of having to sell his much-loved park, built largely with his own hands, the expression of his life’s vision over the last 40 years, so it was no wonder he was irascible. The only bidder left was a developer wanting to turn it into a nursing home, and Ellis didn’t want that. So, to his enormous credit, he agreed to wait for us.

In this tense situation, I was genuinely concerned for Peter Wearden, who had become the focus of Ellis’s vexation, crystallized as the deliberate, Machiavellian architect of his downfall. It had all started with a routine inspection several years ago which had concluded that the hand-painted signs on the animal enclosures were now illegible and needed replacing. Ellis escorted the inspector from the park (some say at the end of a shotgun), and refused to carry out the directive. This activated a one-way process of head-on confrontation with the authorities, which escalated into many other areas over the years, and ultimately led to him handing in his zoo licence in April 2006. When we’d visited that last time, after so many years of gradual decline, it felt like we’d been to the Heart of Darkness, to a place where a charismatic visionary had created an empire once teeming with life and promise, but where human frailties had ultimately been exposed by the environment, with terrible consequences. I telephoned Peter and told him of my concerns. Ellis was, in my opinion, a man with his back to the wall, and I was genuinely worried about his safety. ‘Oh, I’m not bothered about that,’ laughed Peter, with a bravery I doubt I would have shown in his position. ‘He does seem very difficult to deal with’, I said. ‘Is there anyone else it might be possible to talk to there? His lawyer? Rob?’ ‘Try Maureen, his sister,’ advised Peter. ‘She talks sense.’

And so another vital piece fell into place for the acquisition of the park. Maureen was devoted to her brother, and on both tours of the house we had been shown a picture of her as a teenager falling out of the back of a stock car during a jump Ellis was performing (among other things he had been a stunt-car driver). But she had worked outside the park in a hotel all her life, and understood the pressures of the outside world perhaps better than he did. I spoke to Maureen two or three times a day as we tried to piece together a plan which would save the park.

Another key person, without whom we would never have succeeded, was Mike Thomas. To get backing we needed a site survey, which would cost about three thousand pounds. But I knew that several (nine, in fact) such surveys had been commissioned recently, and was reluctant to pay for another. I asked Maureen if she knew of anyone of the recent potential buyers who may be prepared to sell us their survey. ‘Try Mike Thomas,’ she said. So I ended up pitching down the phone to a complete stranger that we were trying to buy the park and had heard he had commissioned a full site survey recently. ‘Go on,’ said a gravelly voice. I told him everything about our inexperience and lack of funds, surprised as I continued that he didn’t put the phone down. ‘You can have the survey,’ he said at the end. ‘Where shall I send it?’ This was the first of many generosities from Mike, whose reassuring voice often saw me through difficult times in the months ahead.

Mike was the former owner of Newquay Zoo, which he had turned from a run-down operation with 40,000 visitors a year, to a thriving centre of excellence with about 250,000 visitors, in the space of nine years. He knew what he was doing. His bid had foundered on the twin rocks of Ellis and Mike’s business partner, but he wished the park well. More importantly, he had been appointed by Peter Wearden to oversee the dispersal of the animal collection to other zoos, should it be necessary. He was in daily contact with Rob, as holder of the DWA licence, and Peter, and as a man on the inside could not have been better placed. His unswerving support and sound advice were absolutely pivotal for us in securing the park.

Weeks dragged on and the main positive development – apart from the arrival of Nick Lindsay’s report from ZSL which gave a ringing endorsement to the park as a future enterprise – was that a cash buyer was found for my mum’s house. But he was a cautious man in no hurry, and any inclination that we desperately needed the money right now would have almost certainly reduced his bid. Bridging loans – those expensive, dangerous arrangements offered by commercial banks in the hope of snaffling all your assets in a year – were arranged, and fell through. Commercial mortgages, likewise, were offered and withdrawn. Several high-street banks let us down badly. Lloyds three times extended the hand of friendship and then, just as we were shaking it, pulled it away, put their thumb up to their nose, and gave it the full hand waggle. Very funny, guys. Private banks were similarly fickle. Perhaps eight banks altogether promised support in protracted negotiations on which we relied, and then we passed the good news on to the naturally keenly interested other side, and committed more funds on the basis of. Then the offer would be withdrawn. Corporate managers were generally persuadable and good at giving you a 100 per cent verbal agreement and a physical shake of the hand. But the back-room boys with the calculators and grey suits, known as Risk Teams, invariably baulked. Lawyers were also busy. At one point a six-acre paddock disappeared from the map of what was included in the price, which I made clear to Maureen was a deal breaker, and it re-emerged.

For light relief at the end of a 12-hour day of circular phone calls, we were watching the series 24, boxed sets of which were doing the rounds of the English mums in France. Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer, a maverick CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) agent who, over several series, always has to save the world in 24 hours, shown in real time an hour at a time over 24 episodes. The ground shifts under his feet as he pursues leads with total commitment which turn out to be blind alleys, is betrayed by his superiors, double agents and miscellaneous villains, and faces new disasters with every tick of the clock. Allies become enemies, enemies become friends but then get killed, but he somehow adapts and finds a new line to go for. I knew exactly how he felt. Every day there were impossible obstacles, which by the afternoon had been resolved and forgotten, in preparation for the next.

But the situation at the other end seemed far more desperate. Running costs – seven tigers, three lions and six keepers to feed – continued without ticket sales to cover them, interest on debts stacked up, and creditors brushed up close with increasing frequency. Then, just as the buyer for my mum’s house agreed to sign sooner rather than later, Maureen told me we had to begin paying running costs for the zoo in order to stop it going to the nursing-home developer. By now we were pretty committed, so Duncan and I melted credit cards to pay, by whatever means possible, £3,000 a week to keep our bid open. This was way beyond our means and could not last long, particularly for something which may not actually pay off. Luckily, Duncan conjured a donor, who wants to remain anonymous, who lent us £50,000, for a ‘semi-refundable deposit’. This was good news, but obviously it needed to be paid back, win or lose, and the lose scenario didn’t really have that contingency.

By agreeing to pay a ‘semi-refundable deposit’ (we got half back if it fell through), we were now one of Ellis’s creditors. We were going up river to see Kurtz. We’d done the recce. Now we had to see if we could go all the way. All we had to remember was not to get out of the boat. Then, just as the sale of my mum’s house was finally agreed, we had our worst moment. My brother Henry, who had been supportive of the venture at the beginning, suddenly lost his nerve and mounted a costly legal battle against the rest of the family. Henry was executor for my dad’s half of the estate, so could delay the release of funds as he saw fit. He refused to be contacted except by letter sent through the post, which in a situation changing hourly was simply untenable for such a key player. Mum, myself and Duncan tried to go round and discuss it with him, several times, but he wouldn’t answer the door or phone. It was looking bad. We felt for Henry with whatever it was he was going through, but there was a bigger picture that every single other member of the family was in agreement on.

Finally the whole family door-stepped his expensive lawyers (paid for out of the estate), and after being kept waiting for three hours, persuaded them that this was mum’s wish and the wish of all the beneficiaries of my dad’s will. We all wanted to buy the zoo.

Eventually Henry agreed, as long as we all signed a clause that we wouldn’t sue him when it all went wrong, and each sibling took the full £50,000 they were entitled to under the Nil Rate Band legislation. This meant that there wouldn’t be enough to buy the zoo unless at least four of us gave the money straight back, which the other four siblings instantly agreed to, though in order to do so we each had to seek independent legal advice first. This meant finding another lawyer and paying for written evidence to show that we had been made aware of the risks, which was fun.

Also, instead of the zoo being bought in the name of a Limited Company, a business and tax efficient vehicle and the basis of all our months of negotiations, it had to be bought in mum’s name. And no one lends a 76-year-old lady half a million pounds, however spritely and adventurous. Back-of-the-envelope calculations revealed that if everything went according to plan, there would be enough money to buy the zoo, pay all the legal fees and still have £4,000 left over, equivalent to about ten days running costs.

We leapt at it. Well, my two brothers, sister and mum did. Katherine had remained slightly bemused by the idea throughout the negotiations, partly because of the inherent uncertainty about whether we would get the zoo, but also because running a zoo had never featured very high on her ‘to-do’ list. However, she thought about how much the children would enjoy it, she observed my enthusiasm, and investigated a role for herself doing graphics and money management. These were both well-honed skills from her days as art director on glossy magazines, and once she was able to equate the whole thing to organizing a large, complicated ongoing photo-shoot, she was fine and gave her cautious support. Now that it was becoming a reality, she knew what she had to do, and she was ready. The children, as you can imagine, were very enthusiastic, jumping up and down, clapping and squealing, though I’m not sure they still really believed it – but it was true.

Chapter Three

The First Days

From the outset, we knew that it was going to be tough. Employ 20 staff, when we had never employed staff before? Take care of 200 wild and exotic animals? The house we had moved into was as rundown as the zoo over which it looked. Though once a grand, 12-bedroom mansion, now its plumbing groaned, its paper peeled, its floorboards creaked – but it was home. Most people, especially at mum’s age, are looking to downsize their lives, but we were upsizing dramatically, into an utterly unfamiliar avenue of work, and the stakes were high. Everything, frankly, that my mum and dad had worked for over fifty years together was on the table. And still we needed more – half a million more – just to be able to take the chance that the zoo might be able to reopen, and that when it did, it would work. Normally this level of uncertainty over something so important would seem impossibly crazy, but the late legal challenge from our own side had forced our hand, leaving us uncertain, penniless and paddling like mad to find some money. But, in the context of the last six months negotiations, it just seemed like yet another bad, but, probably, weatherable development.

We were also comforted by the fact that although we hadn’t done anything like this before, and we didn’t have a licence to trade, nor even a particular curator in mind (Suzy in Australia was having health problems which put her out of the frame), at least we owned the entire place outright. This, surely, stood us in good stead with creditors. Plus we had a whole £4,000 left over.

The meticulously researched business plan I had evolved with Jim – or more accurately, Jim had put into spreadsheets based on his business knowledge and rumours I’d picked up from the twenty or so leading attractions in Devon – was now very much hypothetical. The urgent spending which was due to commence as we arrived was now delayed as we searched for new lenders, who circled again, sniffing with renewed interest as we had lurched to a new status with their back-room boys, as holders of actual assets.

As it turned out, the back-room boys remained less than impressed. We could hear their collective eyebrows creak up, releasing small puthers of dust from their brows, but the calculators were quickly deployed, and though some offers were tentatively made, all were swiftly withdrawn. This was a problem which was going to catch up with us fast, so with phones glued to our ears, we set about trying to solve immediate problems on the ground without actually spending any money. In those first few days, we walked in wonder around the park, meeting the animals, gathering information, marvelling at the bears, wolves, lions and tigers, getting to know the keepers, and grinning wildly that this was our new life.

The first time I met Kelly, with Hannah one of the two dedicated cat keepers who had stayed on against the odds to look after the animals, sometimes not being paid, and having to pay for vitamin supplements for the animals (and rudimentary sundries like torch batteries, and toilet paper for their own use) out of their own pockets, I got a surprise. ‘Are you the new owner?’ she asked, wide eyed and intense, to which I replied I was one of them. ‘Can you please do something about the situation with these tigers?’ I had no idea what situation she was talking about, but Kelly soon filled me in. The top tiger enclosure is a moated range of 2100 square metres called Tiger Rock, after the enormous Stonehenge-like boulder construction which is its centrepiece. It contained three tigers: Spar, at 19, the elderly patriarch of the park, and two sisters, Tammy and Tasmin, 10 and 11. But only two tigers were ever out in the enclosure at any one time. This was because Spar, though old, was still a red-blooded male, and occasionally tried to mate with the two girls, even though his back legs were arthritic and wobbly, and they were his granddaughters. Five years earlier, Tammy and Tasmin were given contraceptive injections to prevent inbreeding (and because Ellis was not allowed to breed tigers anymore, having recently been prosecuted for 32 counts of illegal tiger breeding). The unfortunate result of this hormonal change in the two sisters was that they suddenly hated each other and began to fight, and fighting tigers are very difficult to separate. It could only end in death, so one of the sisters was locked into the tiger house for 24 hours, while the other played fondly with her granddad. Then the other tiger would be locked away for 24 hours, allowing her sister a day-long taste of freedom. As Kelly explained this to me, she drew my attention to the a-rhythmic banging coming from the tiger house, which I had assumed was some maintenance work. In fact it was Tammy, frustrated by her confinement in a 6 x 12ft (2 x 3m) cell, banging on the metal door to get out. Kelly was on the brink of tears as she told me that this had been going on for five years, causing enormous suffering to the tigers (and keepers), and making them much more dangerous to handle. ‘It’s unacceptable in a modern zoo,’ Kelly ended, slightly unnecessarily, as even an amateur like me could appreciate this. I immediately promised her that we would do whatever was necessary to rectify the situation, which turned out to be finding one of the warring sisters a new home. A new tiger enclosure was expensive and unfeasible (we already had two), and would have meant permanent isolation for one of the girls. I asked Kelly to research new homes for whichever tiger was most suitable to pass on, and walked away from the encounter amazed that such an ongoing systemic problem had not arisen in the negotiations to buy the zoo. On the bright side, it was a big improvement we could make for almost no cost, but it was one we hadn’t been expecting, and it was worrying that we hadn’t known about it before we bought the zoo. Why had Peter Wearden or Mike Thomas not told me about this? What else would emerge?

It was all the more surprising given that Peter and Mike had not been shy about throwing me in at the deep end with difficult animal-management decisions already. On the phone from France, probably about three months before we bought the park, Peter sprang something on me as the last bidder planning to run the place as a zoo: ‘What are you going to do about the two female jaguars?’ he asked. ‘Er, they’re lovely. What’s the problem?’ ‘The house fails to meet with industry standards and there is a serious concern about the possibility of an escape.’ ‘Can’t it be rebuilt, or refurbished?’ ‘It’s been patched up too many times already, and rebuilding it with the animals in the enclosure is unfeasible. They have to be moved. If you’re going to be the new owner, you have to decide now what you are going to do.’

Standing barefoot in my hot, dusty, French barn office, looking out over sun-drenched vineyards throbbing with cicada song 700 miles away from this unfamiliar problem, I was taken aback. I wriggled for a bit, suggesting they be rehoused in the puma enclosure and move the less dangerous pumas elsewhere, desperately searching for a way of keeping these two gorgeous big cats on the site. Hand reared from cubs, they were particularly responsive to humans, answered their names and rubbed up against the wire-like epic versions of domestic moggies. Sovereign, the male jaguar housed separately, only got on with one of the females, who could be tried with him, but the sister cats were inseparable from birth and would pine for each other. As a keeper of cats (albeit domestic ones) since childhood, I understood the very real suffering this would cause, and instinctively shied away from that option.

In the end I realized that this was a test, and the correct response was to roll with it, however uncomfortable it felt. For the good of the animals, and in the interests of demonstrating a break from the past to the council, I asked Peter what he recommended. ‘Re-house them in another zoo as soon as you take over,’ he said. ‘Mike Thomas will organize it for you.’ I canvassed Mike and Rob, the head keeper currently responsible for the jags under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, and they both said the same thing. To prevent the very real risk of an escape, we should re-house as soon as possible. With a very deep sigh, I eventually agreed. ‘That’s the right answer,’ said Mike. ‘For that, you can probably get a couple of those zebras you’ve been on about, some way down the line when you’re ready to receive them. And probably a breeding female for Sovereign later on.’ This I liked, spots for stripes, and it made me feel a little closer to the zoo world, knowing I had made a tough decision everyone approved of, and was building credibility.

But with two prime big cats going, the Tammy/Tasmin question loomed large. In the first few days it also came out that a wolf and three of the seven vervet monkeys had also been ostracized by their groups and needed re-housing. Would we have any animals left by the time we re-opened? One well-meaning relative called to helpfully explain that I had made an elementary blunder with the jaguars. ‘If you’re going to run a zoo, it has to have animals in it,’ she said. The sense of siege from all sides was tightening, but I was sure that I’d made the right decision with all the information available to me on the ground, and it only made me more determined.

In these very early days a lot of time was spent clearing out the house and grounds of junk, and burning it on a huge fire in the yard. This was cathartic for us and the park as a whole, but must have been hard for relatives of Ellis like Rob, his grandson, who had to help haul furniture which was dilapidated but still things he had grown up with, onto the pyre. I’d already agreed that Rob could stay in the run down cottage on site, and offered him anything he wanted to salvage, but generally he seemed relieved by the process, and Rob was extremely positive and helpful towards us.

But then, four days after we took over Dartmoor Wildlife Park, while chatting to Rob about what to do with our surplus stock, the unthinkable happened. One of the most dangerous animals on the park, Sovereign, was accidentally let out of his enclosure by a catastrophic blunder from a junior keeper. At about 5.30 pm I was sitting with Rob in the kitchen when Duncan burst in, shouting ‘ONE OF THE BIG CATS IS OUT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,’ and then ran off again. Now, Duncan doesn’t normally shout, or get agitated, but here he was clearly doing both. Rob disappeared like a puff of smoke, and I knew he’d gone to get the guns and organize the staff’s response. I sat for an increasingly surreal moment, and then decided that, as a director of a zoo I probably ought to go and see exactly what was going on. I started making my way towards the part of the park where the big cats are kept. This was one of the strangest moments of my life. All I knew was that a big cat – a lion, a tiger? – was out, somewhere, and may be about to come bounding round the corner like an energetic Tigger, but not nearly so much fun. I saw a shovel and picked it up, but it felt like an anvil in my hand. What was the point? I thought, and dropped it, and began walking towards the sound of screaming. Was I about to see someone being eaten alive? I had images of someone still alive but fatally mauled, ribcage asunder, being consumed before a horrified audience. Then a car pulled up with Duncan and Robert in it. ‘GET IN THE CAR!’ I was told, and gladly complied.

At the top tiger enclosure it was clear that the jaguar, Sovereign, was inside with a tiger, Tammy. Both animals were agitated and the keepers were shouting to discourage them from fighting. My first thought was relief that the animals were contained and no one was injured. I conferred with Robert, now backed up by his brother John armed with a high-powered rifle, and we began to build up a picture of what had happened. If the animals began fighting he would have to shoot one of them, and we decided it should be the tiger, because she was more dangerous and also the less endangered animal, but he would fire a warning shot first to try to separate them. I asked that he only do this as an absolute last resort, as letting guns off would seriously up the ante for the assembled personnel, who at the moment were all tense, but calm.