378 EURAMERICA purposes, as is clearly evident from their book covers: Buck’s feature tigers leaping to attack, indicating the thrill of the hunt, while Durrell’s show him hugging wide-eyed lemurs, emphasizing his role as protector and caregiver.5 Both Buck and Durrell understood the entertainment value of animals, and the power of storytelling to portray their relationships with them. Both created distinct and dominant personae to tell their capture narratives that blur fact and fiction. Their accounts not only combine tales of pursuit and care, but also reflect changes occurring in their societies’ perceptions of animals in the wild and in captivity. Moreover, the narratives reveal differences in their American and British heritages, both in their types of humor as well as in their styles of presenting wildlife on film. Their dual hunter-zookeeper perspective continues to shape popular wildlife documentaries and television programs that “capture” animals on camera—featuring both the dangers savored by hunters and the sentimental affinity favored by caregivers. Both writers depict how they relate to wildlife from a particularly privileged vantage point that exists primarily among people whose lives do not depend directly upon those animals; they are by, and for, people for whom wild animals are a cause and a pleasure—not the next meal, nor an immediate threat to their lives and livelihoods. In their expeditions to Asia, Africa and South America, Buck and Durrell each relate how they rely heavily on native people’s knowledge of habitats and animals, and include native attitudes towards the species they capture. The ecological worlds Buck and Durrell present differ from those of the indigenous people who create folklore and mythologies that integrate themselves and their origins with the animal world. Instead, they focus on the intimacy of their individualized relationships, for 5 The conservationist Durrell would not like to find himself linked to the showman Buck—the epitome of the self-promoting adventurer Durrell frequently mocked— and yet he began his career following in Buck’s footsteps. During his first expedition to Cameroon in 1947, he writes in his diary, “I engaged a hunter the next day, and two boys, and armed with a shotgun sallied into the jungle à la Frank Buck” (Botting, 2000:120).
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