Jersey Zoo

As well as zoos, another recurring dream features my old neighbourhood of Looseleigh in Plymouth. After visiting there again last summer, the frequency of these dreams increased to an almost nightly basis. I was staying in a hotel with Li, my line manager, and two friends Darren and Irina, on the same road where I used to live overlooking the woods. Because the neighbourhood was in a valley and the woods on a ridge, it always seemed as though they were looming over the houses. It was night time and the trees presented a black, formidable screen against a starlit sky. We were informed that at 12 o'clock noon the sun would rise and all the trees would glow a glorious green, so we sat around the window waiting for this to occur. The minutes ticked away with slow solemnity and I felt my anticipation rising. I made myself a cup of coffee to pass the time and to stop myself from falling asleep, but unfortunately the dream shifted before we got to witness the sunrise.

In the next part of the dream I was at Jersey Zoo, but it was a very different place to the green Eden of reality. When I was a kid I had a video called 'A Day at the Zoo with Phillip Schofield' (back before he had white hair) and this was my introduction to Gerald Durrell's famous conservation-minded zoo. Now renamed the Durrell Wildlife Park in recognition of the naturalist's legacy, it's a place I've always wanted to visit but never had the means to. In my dream, almost the entire zoo was shoved into a warehouse, with plain concrete pens for the animals. Three featureless dens separated by electric wire housed various species and subspecies of bear, including polar, Russian, Asian black, sloth, spectacled, sun, and Tibetan blue. The Russian bear rolled around the exhibit on its back, bored to death of the sterile surroundings. The gaunt polar bear was kept apart from the others and had nothing to entertain itself with. On the edges of the warehouse were filthy, cramped primate cages. A jumbled assortment of small mammals, birds, and reptiles made up the rest of the zoo.

It seems like I had some form of authority in this dream, because after witnessing the squalid conditions, I went straight to the director of the zoo and told him that he had to make some major changes. The director agreed that these changes were necessary and was only too happy to cooperate. Working together with a small body of staff, we drew up a redevelopment plan that would open up the enclosures and expand the zoo beyond the warehouse. I told them they had a year to effect the changes, and that they must prioritise the primates and bears. True to my word, in a year's time I returned to the zoo and was pleased to see improvements in progress. The monkeys had green and spacious outdoor exhibits, the gorillas enjoyed a lavish, tropical playground, and the bears... well, the bears were moved on. Much like the real Jersey Zoo, most of the animals were critically endangered, and attendance figures had proliferated since the revamp.

I took a walk around the zoo surveying the new developments, paying particular attention to the 'Bat Arch' where visitors could stand under hanging Rodrigues flying foxes and Livingstone's fruit bats.
On a sour note, I was unhappy to discover that the old warehouse had been turned into a booming entertainment arcade with obnoxious pop music blasting from speakers. I told the staff that this noise level was unacceptable for sensitive animals and she agreed to speak to the technicians. Li was with me by this point, and we were both entranced by a beautiful giant Pacific octopus that had the ability to float in the air as though underwater, and also turn invisible by mimicking its surroundings. We watched it bobbing around the arcade hall, twisting its tentacles into weird and wonderful patterns. Things took a sinister turn when it decided to attack a wheel-bound elderly woman with a bald head.

Striking out with its tentacles, the octopus grabbed the wheelchair and began dragging the woman towards an elevator shaft. Her carer let out a scream and tried to pull her away, but the animal proved too strong and won the tug of war. With the wheelchair in its clutches, it squeezed through the elevator doors and ascended the shaft. The disabled woman jumped out at the last moment and clung to a metal beam, screaming and kicking. I managed to get her down and then climbed the building's stairwell onto the roof to retrieve her stolen chair. The octopus had melted into the tropical foliage of the rooftop atrium and was beyond locating. I radioed security to keep an eye-out for it, suggesting that they confined it to a tank from now on. Despite this hiccup, I believe that my short stint as deputy director of Jersey Zoo was a resounding success.