I was surprised to get this lovely email tonight from John Darby who was responsible for getting the Lawrence Lions for the Otago Museum. Luckily the book has already been printed as some of his comments conjure up some interesting pictures!
Hi Clare,
Firstly,
congratulations on your little book, I managed to buy a copy when I recently
went through Lawrence. I do like it, especially the illustrations. Not sure if
the following is of any interest, but I was the person that negotiated the
Lawrence Lions for the museum. There are one or two quite interesting stories
behind the acquisition that I doubt that have been recorded and these may be of
interest to you.
Firstly, was the
problem with the Department of Agriculture who ordered their destruction by incineration, initially believing that the animals
had been brought into NZ. Not withstanding that the
animals had been touring NZ for the last year or so; I had to work my way up
the hierarchy ladder until I found someone who
would agree that they could go to OM. My last contact was the Ministry of Ag Head office in Wellington. A good day passed before I could get agreement for OM to have them,
being very much aware that the animals would be slowly
decomposing and that the longer they were out of a freezer, the less likely
we would be able to have them taxidermied. It took almost a full day of
negotiations.
I made my way to Lawrence early Friday morning.
Though I left Dunedin early, I found that the
circus wanted to have a sort of "funeral service" for the lions and this was to be conducted by the local minister after the
afternoon performance, which from memory was at 4pm, a time
frame not anticipated. By the way, I think they called themselves Circus
Carlos, not Carlos Circus. There was a certain
pathos about that afternoons performance, particularly as two of the
performers were the children of the circus owner, two boys, one about 9, the
other about 11. Their performance was one of juggling on a foot high rope which
really did not work as they frequently fell off or dropped balls, but more
usually both. In later years the boys became known as the notorious Harris Gang
of Christchurch
.The service was a very
emotional thing for the family, much wailing and tears and finally, the
lions were loaded into my Ford Transit Van. I might say that at this stage the smell from them was extraordinary,
(carnivores start to decompose very quickly, they had been
covered in a tarpaulin all day in the sun). With
all windows open, I drove out of Lawrence and about 20 minutes out of Lawrence
as I was following a Newman's bus, it went off the road and ran into a ditch
(blown front tyre). I pulled over and approached the driver to offer help. The
driver had quite a bad cut on his leg, insisted that he was fine, but could a
couple of the ladies sit in my car (one was quite hysterical).
I then said that was
OK, but I had a couple of lions in the back! All the chatter and talk on the
bus stopped immediately, and I then qualified my comment by saying that they
were dead. The bus was full of what appeared to be American Tourists and it
emptied in a flash-much to the relief of the
driver. Somewhere in
the States there will be hundreds of mostly Polaroid images of the passengers
as they posed for countless photographs of two dead lions in the back of my
van. I do recall how delighted the bus driver was as this kept the passengers
occupied until a relief bus arrived and he sort of hinted that this was all
part of the tour experience and that they would not be charged extra.
It was late dusk
almost dark by the time I got to the Museum, much later than I had hoped. I had arranged with Polarcold on Portsmouth Drive to
hold the animals in their freezer, but they and the
museum staff had all finished for the day. I slid
the animals out of the van in what was then the courtyard at the back
of the museum and left them on the ground overnight. Problem was how to get
them to the freezer. At that time I was a qualified kayak instructor and we
used to invade Moana Pool every Saturday morning and we had the pool to
ourselves until about 7.30. I then arranged for a number of our club members to
come to the museum after our session was finished and lift the lions onto a
trailer so that I could get them to the freezer. The point of this story was
that I asked them to be very careful and not to grab the lions by their fur,
for it was already releasing. If you look carefully on the right
shoulder of Sultan, you may notice a significant gap, somewhat taxidermied over
where Dr David Pilditch, an intensive care specialist at Dunedin Hospital
promptly grabbed Sultan by the mane. Among other things, this gap in his mane
dictated the orientation of Sultan when we did the diorama of
the lions when they were first displayed. Finally, if you wish to complete this
story, you will notice that a piece of the bottom part of the case door that
housed Sonia and Sultan in the Animal Attic has a piece chiselled out of it. It
was only by chiselling that piece out that we were able to fit Sonia in to the
limited display area. I rather suspect that that missing piece will puzzle
display staff to come.
Finally, the lions were responsible for a minor accident
in Christchurch when I went to pick them up after being taxidermied. The only
way they could fit in the van was to have Sultans head projecting part way over
the front passengers seat. I am fairly sure that the nose to tail, (quite
minor) at the Riccarton traffic lights was due to the lady drivers look of
horror as she pulled up alongside me. The message I got from the top was that
If I wanted to display the lions at the museum, then it was my responsibility
to raise the money to have them taxidermied. There was of course keen
competition between a number of service clubs to raise the money to get them
stuffed, the Lions club among them, who missed out to another service club. At
the time this happened I was the Assistant Director of the Otago Museum and in
the absence of the Director made an executive decision to acquire the lions for
the Museum. When the Director returned to the museum a week or so later his
only comment was "Thank God they were not bloody elephants"!.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We would love to hear your comments and feed-back: