Shortly before dinner en excited Malay appeared at the door 
end made a short but impassioned speech. I could get the words 
bineteng end rumeh, end celled Jennier end Davis, sensing that 
something was wrong with an animal at the neighbor s house They 
went over on e deed run, and found that a huge monitor lizard which 
had been brought in that afternoon hed escaped. ^'^JIVh n , Mt - 
aggressive beast, about six and a helf feet long, end they had quite 
a struggle gettiAg it into a cage. The native who brought it hod 
tied it to a pole, tied its feet together, end put the pole in 
a box, but it got out just the same. Luckily it hen not hurt any- 
body, for there ere children about the neighbor's house. 
Thev brought it to the hospital, and decided to transfer it 
to another cage. The only thing that seemed strong enough was the 
box that had brought the Americen alligator from the States. The 
elligetor has been presented to the Siantar Zoo, but no quarters 
are readv for it. so we are keeping it, as well as the bear, jaguar 
end opossums, for the present. The alligator is tame, end he was 
installed in one of the vecant bathrooms. Then Jennier ana Deivs 
end Geddi worked for e strenuous querter hour, while 1 held the 
flashlight on them, getting the irate monitor into the new cage. 
He lashed his tail and made a terrific blowing souna, but finally 
went where he was directed. 
Dinner hour came, end passed, and no food. Finally the boys 
said the^ would, walk up to the hotel end find out what was thjg^_ 
matter, "it was ten-thirty before they returned, with ixmf ±11 * 
a full dinner-pail - one thet comes in five sections, with a different 
item in each one. The manager said he hed not understood that we 
wanted to start eating to-night. 
There were moscuitos in our newly scoured klembo; outside 
on the verandah the bear pawed end grunted in his cage; in the 
distance dogs end unidentifiable animals howled through the night, 
so that our first night was rather a wakeful one. 
March 2Z - 
We were up early end scanned the highway for signs of en 
approaching breakfast. .About eight-thirty a boy from the hotel 
brought us some mail, and we asked him about fooa. He said he had 
understood we never ate breakfast (this was because Bill and I al- 
ways hfd fruit and coffee in our room end called that e mealy, wnen 
he' saw our horrified faces he scurried back as fast as he could go, 
and presently we had hot coffee, bananas, fried eggs, cold seusage 
and sliced Dutch cheese. 
An elderly Chinaman came in from Atchi bringing a miscellaneous 
collection of animals - a wild dog, mertiMi, otter, hog badger, Ions, 
a cage of Loriculus and some other small birds. Davis end Jennier 
worked all dav trving to house them, for the cages they had come in 
were smell and dirty and inadequate* w*d all the boys' baggage is 
held up at Customs, end they feel completely lost without any car- 
penter tools. Making a cage out of pecking boxes, xhs? driving nails 
without e hammer, making locks out of scraps of bent wire, is un- 
satisfactory business. 
Bill end I went shopping in the morning for camp supplies. 
Had a greet time trying to buy a broom, for the word in my Malay 
dictionary seemed to mean nothing to the shop keeper, an we had 
