A few minutes later I regretted my optimism. For once in the cage, the lioness swiveled and faced us, slashing at the fence while Abdullah and Husham held on with bone-white knuckles.
Then she backed into a corner and refused to budge, roaring at the two men. Suddenly someone behind us, thinking they were helping, leaned over and threw a bucket of water over the poor creature. She went ballistic, jumping at the fence and slashing dementedly.
“It's no good,” I said, by now concerned at the feline's frenzy. “This one we must sedate.”
Dr. Husham agreed and went to fetch a hypodermic syringe and the last ampoule of our drugs.
On his return, a dapper gray-haired man who had been watching in the background stepped forward and took the syringe from Husham. As the team jammed the yowling cat between the gate and cage bars, he reached over and at arm's length injected the lion. Within minutes the animal was out for the count and gently carried into the transport cage.
This was Dr. Adel Salman Mousa, the zoo's director, whom Husham had told me about. Although he had visited the zoo several times before, we somehow had always missed each other. But today some American soldiers back at the zoo had told him we were at the palace and he hurried over to meet us. Husham introduced him to meâand the look of gratitude on Adel's face now that he had some outside assistance for his beloved zoo reminded me of why I had come to Baghdad. I knew right away that we were going to become friends.
The cheetahs were far weaker than the lions and, despite putting on a token snarling show, were relatively easily rounded up. All the animals were then transferred to the zoo as rapidly as possible, as the soldiers were now needed for night patrols around the city's Red Zonesâthe danger areas where safety catches on weapons were always kept off.
The lions, although emaciated, had had full run of the open-air enclosure and were in a redeemable condition considering their dire circumstances. But the cheetahs had been cooped in tiny pens and were in a terrible state. The zoo vets immediately got them food and water, then inspected them thoroughly. They were smothered in lice and mange and so wasted they would have died within days. One also had a nasty leg injury and was limping. The vets sprayed the wound with antiseptic, as any infection in the foul cage she had been cramped up in could be life threatening.
To my surprise, the rescue of the palace cats had gone perfectly. A few men had got into a den with four angry young lions and virtually barehanded corralled them into transport cages. And not
one had even been scratched. And a good thing it was, too, for we had no first-aid kit and didn't even know where the nearest hospital was.
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AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL ROUNDUP of the palace animals, soldiers alerted us to another menagerie that was caged in equally horrific conditions at a building they labeled “Uday's love nest.”
The so-called love nest was in fact a smallish cottage on the banks of the Tigris where it was said Uday seduced his legions of “conquests,” willing or otherwise. We were given vague directions on how to get there, and the next day I took the two Kuwaitis, Adel, and Husham, with me to investigate further.
After driving in circles on the riverbank for a while, we eventually discovered the cottage's secluded entrance. The steel gates were locked, so we smashed our way in with a hefty crowbar and drove cautiously up the winding road until we reached a Western-style building with a peaked tile roof, unlike the usual flat-roofed Middle East house. It looked very ordinary compared to all the opulent palaces surrounding it. In fact, the only thing extraordinary was that the front of the building had caved inâthe aftermath of a B-52 bombing raid that also left a massive crater in the front garden.
On the far side of the premises I saw a series of cages, and I set off to inspect them. However, I had barely covered a few yards when I sank almost to my knees in thick mud. The entire garden had been turned into a quagmire thanks to a burst underground pipe that was still spewing water up through a bubbling sinkhole. I was stuck fastâfor a moment I thought I was in quicksand.
Abdullah, seeing me marooned in the muck, wisely skirted around the marsh and arrived at the cages first.
“Monkeys,” he shouted. “All dead.”
Somehow I managed to extricate myself from the glutinous sludge and sloshed over to him.
It was a wretched sight. Six or seven emaciated green monkeys
lay huddled against one another on the floor, killed by thirst. They had been locked in the cage and left to die.
I shook my head, disgusted beyond belief. It would have taken Uday Hussein or his staff perhaps a minute to open the cages and let the animals free before fleeing themselves. Instead they had condemned the poor creatures to suffer the most awful death imaginable.
Once again it hit me with bitter clarity exactly what we were up against. To callously allow animals to perish so horribly beggars description.
Sadly, man has an obsession with keeping wild animals as pets or ornaments. Indeed, the illegal trade in animals is so vast that only drugs and arms trafficking are more profitable. It is cruel beyond words; all captured exotic animals are denied their freedom and a normal life for the amusement or financial gain of their barbarous owners and with few exceptions end up living miserable lives. Worse still, they are clearly treated as objects rather than living creatures. They can be abandoned as soon as they become inconvenient to their owner.
Surveying the scene, I heard a whimper and looked up. A baby monkey was sitting on top of the cage, the sole survivor of the family. He was the only one small enough to squeeze through the bars and find water. I imagined his anguish as he watched his parents and siblings slowly and agonizingly wither in front of him, not knowing what was going on or how to help.
I remembered I had a couple of apples in the car and walked back to get one, circling the mud. I offered the apple to the baby monkey and he gingerly came toward me, taking the apple and stuffing it into his mouth as fast as he could. These monkeys were tame, I thought. They were pets, which made their cruel abandonment even more treacherous.
We then explored the house, taking great care not to disturb anything, as we were worried the shattered roof might cave in completely. We also meticulously checked for booby traps wherever we went.
In one room we could see pictures of Uday Hussein and decided to take some as souvenirs, but we soon changed our minds, as the bombed building was simply too unstable to venture farther inside and I was concerned about booby traps.
As we came out, the baby monkey was waiting for us and, tempting him with another apple, I was able to coax him into the car. He would get a good new home at the zoo.
Driving out, I noticed another large cage, and we stopped to investigate. Inside were three ostriches and four or five peacocks. They stared at us with dull, listless eyes, sure signs of dehydration.
“Water,” I shouted. “They need water.”
Husham strode off and returned minutes later with a bucket, which we filled from the broken pipe and ferried to the birds.
I have never seen any creature drink so much. Bucket after bucket after bucket of water went down their long, withered throats like huge bubbles until I thought they would burst.
Next we watered the peacocks, which also gulped each bucketful down as if it was their last. Dr. Adel found some bird food in a shed and we filled the feeding troughs.
We couldn't take the birds with us in the vehicle, so I told Adel and Husham we would later return and walk the birds to the zoo past the checkpoint, which was only a couple of miles away.
I alerted the American soldiers at the checkpoint about what we planned to do, but it took us so long to prepare the birds for the journey that by the time we were ready the guards I had spoken to had changed shift. Consequently no one was prepared for what was undoubtedly one of the craziest scenes in war-torn Baghdad at the time ⦠.
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THE YOUNG SOLDIER at the roadblock guarding Saddam's palaces yanked off his aviator sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. He was seeing things; he was sure of it. There coming up the street were three ostriches, running full tilt at him.
Every soldier manning a roadblock was understandably edgy.
Stories of suicide bombers pouring through Iraq's sievelike borders were commonplace. Four marines had already died at Narjaf, and every checkpoint in the country was on hair-trigger alert.
And here some giant fowl were charging him. Was this some new tactic? Were these suicide ostriches?
But hang on, there were some Iraqis behind them, holding on to the stampeding creatures' wings with grim determination. And behind them was an armored troop carrier with an ostrich neck sticking out the top. What crazy mirage was this? Was the bird actually driving?
The Iraqis were yelling something incomprehensible. The poor sentry didn't know what to do. He cocked his gun.
“Halt,” he shouted with as much ragged authority as he could muster under the surreal circumstances. But he could see there was no way these birds were going to stop, nor could the Iraqis hanging desperately on to them. The soldier had the presence of mind not to fire. This was too crazy even by Baghdad standards.
The soldiers in the truck behind were now close and he could just make out what they were yelling: “It's okay, man. We're taking these buzzards to the zoo.”
Then they whizzed past. The men at the roadblock watched, weapons still cocked, surprise grooved on their sweat-streaming foreheads. One of the soldiers leaped off the troop carrier to explain. The ostriches had been found at Saddam's eldest son Uday's riverside love nest and were being transferred to the Baghdad Zoo. But they were too large to all fit all into the vehicles, so zoo workers had planned to walk them the two miles or so to the cages. However, the birds had been cooped up in confined spaces all their lives, and suddenly finding open road in front of them had been too much of a heady drug. They started stretching their legs in glorious exhilaration until they were at ecstatic full gallop. It is a credit to the zoo staff they didn't let go, or they would never have seen the birds again. They would have ended up as ostrich steaks or starved exhibits on the black market.
“Where are they from again?” asked the soldier at the roadblock.
“Uday's love nest. The zoo guys found a whole freaking menagerie there.”
I think the guards spent the rest of their day scratching their heads. But one thing was for certain: almost all the soldiers in Baghdad now knew there was a zoo in their midst.
Tragically, that was the only lighthearted moment of “Operation Uday's Love Nest.” For that nightâthe first time in perhaps months that these animals got proper food, care, and attentionâa despicable gang of looters raided the cages. Fortunately, they didn't get the ostriches, but the baby monkey and peacocks were seized. The heavy-duty locks on their cages were smashed to scrap. The beautiful birds had their necks twisted and were sold as meat.
The little orphan monkey that had survived so much and seen his family die horribly was probably destined for the black market, spending the rest of his life in a cramped cage. But he, too, may have been eaten.
Once again I appealed to the soldiers to help guard the zoo; once again they regretfully said they were too busy fighting Ba'athist fanatics.
Other creatures rescued from the palace hellholes fortunately fared better. All were now getting watered and fed regularly, and their skeletal rib cages were slowly starting to flesh out a little. I was considerably cheered by the fact that they seemed to be recovering so well.
Consequently we decided to reunite the dogs and lion cubs. We had separated them for obvious reasons, but they pined for each other so intensely it seemed more humane to put them together again.
The reunion was an absolute eye-opener, the dogs furiously wagging their tails and the cubs scampering up to greet them. One needed an arctic heart not to be moved at how fiercely protective the two bitches were, rushing up to guard the cubs if anyone came near the cage.
The incredible story of this unlikely bond between canine and feline spread and many soldiers made long journeys to Al Zawra
Park to see the “lion dogs.” This was priceless publicity, as anything that elevated our embattled zoo onto the conscience of the outside world was vital to its survival.
However, I later learned that keeping dogs in lion dens was not that unusual among private big-cat owners, of whom there were a number in Iraq. They believed by mixing dogs with a newly born litter it was possible to tame the cubs. The cubs would witness humans handling the dogs and come to trust them as the hounds did. If some dogs got devoured in the process, so be it.
That still doesn't explain why in this case the lions had decided, almost mystically, to starve rather than eat their friends. It was an unusual but welcome case of sympathy in the harshest conditions.
However, there was some disquieting news concerning the male and two femalesâone about to give birthâadopted by the Special Forces that by now were always referred to as “Uday's lions.” Most Iraqis considered these three to be serial man-eaters. According to local legend, they had feasted upon an array of Uday's opponents, ranging from political activists to unfortunate love rivalsâjust as the equally sadistic Ugandan dictator Idi Amin had thrown anyone who crossed him to his pet crocodiles.