Animal Crackers
Continuing our series in which we talk to people who are crazy about animals, Tony Wardle meets Peter, a gamekeeper turned poacher…
Doctor Dolittle liked to talk to the animals. He did it in a frock coat, top hat and an accent similar to the Queen’s. Peter talks to the animals all the time but he does it with tattooed hands, a Cornish burr and a fag in his mouth. Whether they understand him or not is another issue – but I suspect they do. Certainly they know there is absolute safety in his soft, non-stop purring – “…there you are my beauty, aren’t you a gorgeous little thing, we’ll have you up and about in no time.”
It might be a baby hedgehog not much bigger than the head of a tooth brush, or a fledgling pied wagtail, squawking open mouthed, demanding to be fed. On the other hand it could just as easily be a terrified sheep who, hours before was in a stinking, overcrowded lorry on its way to France or Italy or Spain to be brutally slaughtered.
The irony is, this man who now devotes his life to saving animals once made his living out of helping to kill them. He is the gamekeeper turned poacher – literally – and now he doesn’t mind where he poaches animals in order to save their lives.
“You can see your errors – anyone can come over the fence, you know.” Yes, I do know, Peter, because I came over that same fence.
Peter has responsibility for the day to day running of Carla Lane’s Animal Line Sanctuary at Broadhurst Manor in West Sussex. Once you’ve found the place – and it’s not easy – it’s like stepping into an animal wonderland. ‘You are entering an animal safe zone’, it says. A jumble of ancient thatched barns, four lakes and 40 acres are literally crammed with animals of every kind – wild and domesticated. Everything but cats and dogs which are passed on to another sanctuary – except for 26 cats and nine dogs which arrived and never left!
Three old shire horses and a donkey look at you as you arrive, one of the shires with such worn feet that he has to wear specially designed wellies. The yard is littered with pigeons, geese, ducks, chickens, turkeys and peacocks, all sharing the same feed trough with opportunistic sparrows. One of the peacocks spreads his tail in a glorious profusion of colour metaphorically shouting: “Look at me, look at me, aren’t I beautiful”. And, yes, he is – breathtaking.
A huge black turkey, with pendulous scarlet jowls, tries to mount a smaller,
white turkey which doesn’t look too happy, probably because it’s
another male. Around and on the lakes is a myriad of ducks and drakes. Most
have been brought in damaged and injured, have been nursed back to health
and released back into the wild. But Broadhurst Manor has become like the
Grand Hotel to them, an excellent bed and breakfast stop over. On the day
the shooting season starts the birds flock to the pond’s safety.
There are guinea fowl, a cage of kestrels, a three-legged deer, specially made badger sets beneath the laurel bushes for road casualties and peeking curiously from a small wooded enclosure, an array of orphaned fox cubs who disappear at your first movement.
Ask where the animals come from and sometimes you receive a straight answer from Peter and sometimes he diverts the question: “Isn’t she a beauty – love having your tummy rubbed don’t you my dear?” And he rubs away while the sheep’s expression drifts away into rapturous appreciation. You don’t ask a second time. “I’d sooner you didn’t take my picture”, he says, with charm and an undeniable smile and you realise that his ability to carry out discerning rescues depends upon him remaining unrecognised.
He began life as a country boy in Cornwall, son of a farmer from a family of rabbit ‘clearers’. On moving to Wiltshire at the age of 13 he was for the first time fully exposed to the hunting/shooting fraternity:
“I was very unhappy and witnessed things that I wish I’d done something about but didn’t – but then how could I? Old Tommy was our neighbour, a terrierman with the Beaufort hunt. He was a brutal bastard and used to shut his terriers in a stable with a fox to give them the blood lust. He always had captive foxes and I never thought anything of it. I realise now he was releasing them so his masters had something to chase.”
Peter joined the army – hence the tattoos – as a strapping 4ft
11in, seven stone 15 year old and served as a drummer boy infantryman in
the Duke of Edinburghs Royal Regiment for 11 years. On discharge, his list
of employers reads like a page of Burke’s Peerage – Lords Rotherwick,
Hickman and Wright and, just for good measure, Sir Charlie Clore. Peter was
their gamekeeper but not the usual kind even then:
“I always hated hunting and never killed foxes. In my day most gamekeepers would kill anything that moved except the pheasants – they didn’t give a damn.”
The change came for Peter when he was assisting at a Tarmac public relations shoot where business is done while blasting birds out of the sky: “I found it dreadful to watch these poor creatures being slaughtered, fluttering to the ground with a wing blown off and half their head missing. The truth is I couldn’t put up with it any longer and so I gave my notice in and joined an animal sanctuary in Dorset. I started to get good vibes and realised just what had been wrong with my life.”
Peter started to learn about prosecuting for cruelty and became extremely good at it: “That’s when I started to realise what I was after.”
He has the ability to make you feel you’re a special friend and his whole body language is such that you are drawn towards him as he speaks. His voice is soft and confidential and the tone is that of one mate talking to another. And all the time there are interruptions as people arrive with animals – most extraordinary of all while I was there, an albino hedgehog: “You won’t last long out there, will you my beauty? We’ll find you a special place – you can stay with us.”
When the Dorset sanctuary began to run into trouble Peter didn’t hesitate to put the animals first. They were decanted into a convoy of vehicles and took to the road – 22 horses, 150 pigeons, cats, dogs, herons – ending up as the first inhabitants of the Animal Line Sanctuary. It’s now impossible to count how many animals there are but this year alone over 800 baby birds have been saved and innumerable injured mammals. You can find anything from a mouse to a horse - oh, and a python and an iguana. Bill and Ben were two New Forest ponies almost certainly destined for the continental meat trade. They were adopted and supported by Paul and Linda McCartney – “Our Lady Linda”, smiles Peter with sadness in his eyes.
Running costs are frightening at £1,200 per week every week. They were originally paid for entirely by Carla but now some help comes from M&S who donate out-of-date food, without which there would be a further £200 a week to find. Biostat, TMC Construction and Care for the Wild pay the running costs of the lorry and Care for the Wild also financed the animal hospital. Animal Line’s new shop at 3 Station Road, Portslade, Brighton, now makes a valuable contribution but it’s still a struggle. There is a supporters club which costs only £5 a year and includes two magazines and sponsorship of individual animals is welcomed for anyone who would like to help.
Carla’s house is alongside the sanctuary and gradually Peter has taken over her garden. The last bit to go was the herb garden – acquired for the hedgehogs. When possible, Carla still lends a hand at the sanctuary but it isn’t all roses.
“The other day Carla asked if she could help so I set her to on combing the tail of Charlie, a huge shire horse. I did warn her that if he raised his tail to stand to one side. Well he did and she didn’t. Old Charlie passed wind with such force that it was measured on the Richter scale and parted Carla’s hair. I have never seen anyone look so green.” Peter chuckles mischievously and you wonder if he really did warn her.