TAMING THE SHREW

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 16

TAMING THE SHREW

THE CONVERSION OF ALPHONSE.

The London Zoo has lost one of its greatest favourites—Alphonse, the Pardine Genet, • the friendliest little creature of all the small animals in Regent's Park, and the pet of the Small . Cat House (says the London "Daily News"). Old age was one of the causes/- if not •the chief cause, of his death, for Alphonse, who was about 13 years old, had outlived the normal years of .a Genet. There was a time when Alphonse was not gentle, and was not friendly. Six years ago this lean,, silky little cat, eight or nine inches long, with a tail as long as his body and the markings of a leopard, had no friends, and wanted none, even after five ; or six years in a Zoo cage. He spat and hiised if anyone put a hand near the bars of his cage, and i" he saw a finger too near snapped at it. But a girl who visited the Zoo often determined that this lonely, unsociable little creature, the prettiest animal in the house, should become friendly. She worked her way gradually into his confidence, and then, four or five years ago, when a heavy thunderstorm was raging and Alphonee was plainly scared, she prevailed on the keeper to let her go into his cage. Alphonse at once welcomed her, and promptly sat on her lap. After that he always welcomed her regular visits. By and by Alphonse became friendly towards all human beings. The more he was played with the more he liked it. Alphonse the Spitfire had become Alphonso the Gentle. He was brought out of his cage time after time every%day. . He would sit,on your arm or your-shoulder or your camera. He would dive into one end of a woman's bag and come out at the other side of it. He would take flying leaps on tp your shoulder.- He was gentle with children too. You might have left this savage-looking creature on a baby's cradle all day—and if there were any biting done it would have been the baby biting Alphonse, and not Alphonse biting the baby.' Yet he could bite a rat in two-^-and sometimes did so.

Of late he showed signs of the effects of Anno Domini. Then he fell ill—^apparently with a cold. One or two friends went into his cage to cheer him up, but he grew weaker. When the girl, who was his oldest friend^ paid her visit of the day and found him in a corner of the cage, he failed to respond to her call, for the first time for years. She went into the cage and stooped as though to stroke him . . . but the friendly little heart of Alphonse was still. He had passed quietly away a moment or two earlier.

Alphonse's death leaves a distinct gap in the liafc of Zoo favourites. The most' eloquent •pitaph that could be written' to his memory is a saying of his devoted keeper : "We may set hundreds of Genets, but never another Alphonse."