REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
29 
the far corner of the cage. So the little game goes on until the artful 
dodger thinks it is safe to try the experiment of touching the baby’s 
hand very gently, or of smoothing away a pucker in its forehead, or of 
making the parting in its hair just the thousandth of an inch straighter. 
The mother’s nervousness makes her interfere, and once more there is 
a straightening up on the intruder’s part, and a perfect simulation of 
indifference. Thus she wins the mother’s slow confidence, and is 
allowed to play with the baby fingers. She settles down as if absolutely 
content with this privilege. Occasionally she will turn and scold the 
other females, as if vigorously informing them that because she has been 
allowed this inestimable privilege they must not look for it, and so she 
is proving all along that she is to be counted upon as helping the mother 
to keep all enemies at a safe distance. She, poor deluded being, knows 
nothing of the faithlessness of those who do protest too much, and so her 
fears are finally put soundly asleep. Now is the time for the other to 
act, and she watches like a lynx until she sees she can catch the baby 
around the waist and jerk it out of the protecting arms. The attack 
is so sudden and so strong, that the baby is gone before the mother 
can comprehend what is taking place, and as she raises her voice in 
anguish, the thief is off to the top of the cage with the baby securely 
tucked under one arm. There is now a frightful uproar. Every 
member of the colony joins in the hot pursuit, and naturally each impedes 
the other to the top of her bent, in her eagerness to be the rescuer. 
They fly from bar to bar, from side to side, from floor to ceiling, banging 
the resounding chains and bars with all their might as they dash about, 
and shrieking in an ear-splitting fashion, like the rats of Hamelin, in fifty 
different sharps and flats. As soon as one comes within touch of the 
unfortunate baby, it is clutched viciously and wrenched violently back 
by the thief ; it is knocked about in an appalling manner as the culprit 
springs from one hot corner into another, and altogether it has a fearful 
time during the scrimmage. Sometimes it is almost torn limb from 
limb before the chase ends, and usually when the mother gets it back 
again it is more dead than alive. The kidnapper, too, has a good deal 
to think about in the next few days. Not only the mother, but the 
father and all the nearest monkeys, bite and scratch her cruelly, and she 
is sent with ignominy out of the the company of the respectable ones. She 
remains a pariah among her fellows until another of the females does 
the same thing, and then her escapade is forgotten, and the next one 
becomes the victim of tribal displeasure in her stead. If one of these 
attempts should be made so unskilfully that the mother manages to 
circumvent the snatching, and the unlucky thief is caught at once, the 
mother has the undiluted joy of being the sole chastiser of the guilty, and 
