GANNET ABANDONS SEA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 198, 24 August 1935, Page 13

GANNET ABANDONS SEA

ENGLAND’S STRANGEST FAMILY. In a tiny hut, set snugly in the cup of a rocky bay near Ventnor, Isle of Wight, lives England’s strangest family. There are three members—Mr. G. P. Howard, fisherman, a black cat, and Jack—a gannet. First of his race to play fidus Achates to the human species, Jack is the wonder and admiration of the garden isle. Pattering along the boulders of Steephill Cove, passing his murderous beak in idle banter with the black cat while he waits the return of his master, he is drawing each day a larger gallery of holiday-makers. A year ago Mr, Howard found him drooping, moribund, wave-tossed, a full 200 miles from the nearest haunt of stay-at-home gannets. He drew him aboard, cherished him, fed him with whole mackerel, and nursed him back to health. His happiest moment, he relates, came when at last the newlynamed Jack flutered a three-foot wing and cocked a cerulean eye of gratitude, which meant that the worst was over. From that day Jack has been a oneman gannet. The cat’s frivolity he will tolerate, and fur and feather together will rough-and-tumble from dawn fill ! dusk. But from the moment when Mr. Howard’s boat draws in he has but due solace in the captivity from which he never seeks to escape. Mr. Howard said to an interviewer: “I have had this hut for 45 years. But eight years ago, when I became a widower, 1 decided to live here. Jack is a rare friend to mo when I am ■ lonely. If ever he wanders and gets i shut out, sooner or later there will be 1 a tap on the door. I know the sound. I It is Jack’s beak, and Jack wants to i come in. I have been offered money for | him,” he added, ” but it wouldn’t pay for the lint and iodine I used jto I pull him round.” I J ’