384 EURAMERICA happened to local fauna. Dissatisfied with leaving the fate of animals in native hands or current British zoos, Durrell voiced his commitment to open his own zoo with increasing urgency because no one else seemed either interested in captive breeding or equipped to do so. He ventured forth during a period of postcolonial transition in which his gender, race, and nationality still aided him, but he was aware that that status was quickly changing. He was not the only one prescient about the natural world’s impending disappearance, which lent a palpable angst to his otherwise joyful discoveries, but he was unusual in being spurred to action to stave it off. Claiming his previous bestsellers and the promise to produce more as his only collateral, he finally managed to get a bank loan and opened the Jersey Zoo in 1959. From then on, all of his capture narratives pertain to developing and sustaining it. III. Big Cat and Big Snake Experiences While it was Buck’s job to supply charismatic megafauna— tigers, bears, elephants, rhinos, orangutans—which zoos were eager to purchase because they were popular with the American public, Durrell, instead, introduces the British public to an extraordinary array of unusual and rare animals—the giant water shrew, angwantibo, armadillo, giant horned toad, rhea, and the then littleknown pangolin. Nonetheless, the two men inevitably had some similar experiences; both describe their first encounters with large cats as highlights of their early careers, but their accounts exemplify their divergent styles as raconteurs. Buck relates that on his very first trip into the Malayan jungle he learns that a black leopard is killing village livestock—thereby justifying its capture. He employs a Malay carpenter to fashion a trap of wood and rattan: “When we visited it the next morning there was the village marauder, black as coal and angry as sin, spitting and snarling at us from behind the log bars” (1941: 107). Not satisfied with this easy triumph over a “villain,” Buck shifts emotional gears and exclaims,
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