The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (23 page)

I had to wonder if all of this contact was necessarily a healthy thing. The more closely related two species are, the higher the risk of them swapping diseases. Since macaques are reasonably close relatives of humans, it isn’t out of the question that they might trade illnesses with us. Among the nasty diseases that have been found globally among macaque species are simian foamy virus, tuberculosis, and the monkey equivalent of HIV. Herpesvirus simiae is not a concern for infected macaques, but it kills 70 percent of humans who acquire it. Are Barbary macaques a risk to Gibraltar residents or tourists? In recent years, the macaques have been screened for a range of diseases and found to be nearly disease-free. The only one of significance is hepatitis A. Of course it is not impossible that the macaques in Gibraltar became infected by contact with people.

Each bus driver allowed his charges to play with the monkeys for fifteen minutes before herding the passengers back onto the coach. Several monkeys took departing buses as an opportunity for a ride downhill. Each gave a look to their colleagues that said, “So long, suckers!” I resumed my descent. Every couple of minutes I was passed by an embarrassed-looking monkey walking back up.

The early evening provided me with a not-to-be-missed opportunity. Some of the subtleties of the Ceremony of the Keys were lost on me, but I think I got the gist of it. A portion of the central parade of Casemates Square was roped off, and police chased everyone out of the partitioned area. Along with the other general riffraff, I seated myself in the bleachers on the Casemates’ west side; others stood outside the rope. Gradually, Gibraltar’s elite arrived in suits
and fancy dresses and sat in chairs on the Casemates’ east side. Gibraltar’s super-elite followed, chauffeured in Ford Fiestas to be seated in the choicest spots on the east side. These were followed by a military marching band, dressed all in red, accompanied by an armed guard. Together they marched up and down the square. The governor arrived in his chauffeur-driven Nissan Micra. He held the keys to the gates of Gibraltar. After inspecting the guard, he turned over the keys so that the gates could be locked, after which he got the keys back. Flags were lowered. The band played “God Save the Queen.” Everyone felt happy and patriotic. We all left.

O
N MY LAST EVENING,
I found a courtyard on Cornwall’s Parade in which the after-work crowd was winding down. I ordered a glass of red wine, but should have ordered a
vino rojo.
Walking Gibraltar’s streets over the past few days, I had found Spanish to be used at least as commonly as English. As I drank my wine, a stout white gentleman in a regimental blazer walked by with his Yorkshire terrier, but everyone else—absolutely everyone else—in the area was either of Mediterranean or African descent.

Gibraltar had been ruled by Phoenicians and Greeks, through Moors, then Spaniards, back to the Moors, back to the Spanish, and eventually on to the British. A referendum in 1967 had asked the residents of Gibraltar if they wanted more Spanish involvement or to remain under the umbrella of Britain. By an overwhelming majority of 12,138 votes to 44, they had voted for the latter. How British is Gibraltar? On my ride from the airport, the taxi driver had been listening to a British radio station describing traffic snarls on the M25. Sitting in a restaurant, I found myself watching the BBC. The breaking news at 4:00 p.m. was of a young boy who had gone missing in Lancashire. When, at 4:10, the station announced that the boy had been found, a waitress called out, “Sally, they’ve found that little boy. Yeah, they’ve found him!” with obvious relief, even though the event was happening 2,000 kilometres away.

There was a time when Gibraltar was more English than England, but it seemed to me that the region was slowly being taken
over by everyone else. The official currency in Gibraltar is pounds sterling, but every shop accepts euros. At the Ceremony of the Keys, the gentleman beside me had enthusiastically sung along to “God Save the Queen” but had done so in a thick Spanish accent. I had to wonder how long Gibraltar would remain a Crown colony of Great Britain, whether the apes remained or not.

On this uncertain rock lives a primate species whose own future is less than perfectly certain. Given its small and declining global population, and the anticipation of future declines, the Barbary macaque is considered endangered. In Gibraltar, officials are faced with the conflicting tasks of nurturing these threatened creatures, while killing some to keep their numbers in check.

The next morning, I refilled my backpack and walked north along Main Street, through the gates at Casemates Square, marched across the airport runway, and crossed the border into southern Spain in search of sexy ducks.

REASON NUMBER TEN FOR INTRODUCING A FOREIGN SPECIES: BECAUSE THEY ARE SO GOSH-DARNED CUTE.

O
N A SMALL LAKE,
not so many kilometres from my former home in Canada, breed small ducks whose mating displays are so devilishly cute that they cause me to laugh. Although female Ruddy Ducks are not particularly resplendent, males have baby-blue bills and stiff tails that they point skyward while courting. This explains two of the rather less imaginative nicknames that hunters have for this species—stifftails and bluebills. When amorous, a drake Ruddy Duck bobs up and down in the water furiously, calling
pita-pita-pita-pita-pita-peuuuuuu.
Some trick of his breast feathers means that, while bobbing, the water around him erupts into a bubbly froth. This is apparently irresistible to females.

Ruddy Ducks have a wide breeding distribution in Canada and the United States, which is all well and good. The problem began about a half century ago when someone in England decided to import Ruddy Ducks. Nothing ever stays in captivity for long, and these ducks soon managed to establish a modest breeding population on the wrong side of the Atlantic. By itself, this wasn’t an issue. Ruddy Ducks in Britain didn’t compete with local waterfowl, didn’t eat anything endangered, and
didn’t transmit nasty diseases. And, best of all, they are terribly, terribly cute.

If the Ruddy Duck had stayed put in England, there would have been no reason for concern, but in the 1960s a few Ruddy Ducks left the British Isles and flew to continental Europe. When they arrived in Spain, they caused a major problem for a closely related local bird. Numbers of the White-headed Duck,
Malvasía Cabeciblanca,
were in decline all over Europe as a result of overhunting and wetlands degradation, and they had earned endangered status. Just when things looked bleakest for the White-headed Duck, things got worse. For reasons best known to themselves, when given a choice of mating partners, White-headed Ducks are rather keen to breed with Ruddy Ducks,
Malvasía Canela,
and it was feared that the former species, already in crisis, might be exterminated as a unique biological entity through hybridization.

In an attempt to save the White-headed Duck, the call went out to kill any Ruddy Duck that had the audacity to show up in Spain; this was not a universally popular decision. Even more controversial was the move to attempt to wipe them out in England, the source of the immigrants. This was clearly a complex case, and I was in Spain to find out more.

C
ROSSING THE BORDER
from Gibraltar into Spain proved to be a remarkably straightforward affair, a pleasant relief considering earlier tensions between the two regions. In 1965, General Franco closed the border, which was only fully reopened after his death and the entry of Spain into the European Common Market. At the frontier, a uniformed woman asked to see my passport but declined the opportunity to stamp it. Moments later, another woman asked if I had anything to declare and seemed disappointed that I didn’t. And that was pretty much that. I set down my pack, put on my hat to shade me from the blazing sun, and settled in to wait for Carmen Yuste, my Spanish guide and translator.

At the stroke of eleven, Carmen and her boyfriend, Cesar, pulled up in his grey Peugeot 205, but spotting me a moment too late, had
to pull a U-turn and wait across the street for me. They were immediately pounced upon by the
policía
for stopping illegally, but they avoided a ticket by pointing out the hapless Canadian waving at them from across the boulevard. Because the Peugeot is a typical European car, there was no room in the trunk for my backpack, so it joined me in the back seat as we set off to pick up our rental car in Algeciras.

Like so many of his compatriots in southern Spain, Cesar spoke virtually no English, and as we drove, Carmen explained my adventures to him. He said something in Spanish, which Carmen translated as, “He says that you are like Indiana Jones.” Well, I have always thought so, only cuter. After securing the rental, Cesar set off for his home in Huelva, while Carmen and I went in search of ducks.

Carmen was a recent biology graduate seeking full-time employment, and was charming and full of smiles. I was told that I could address her in a number of ways, including Carmen, Carmen Sol (“Carmen Sun,” her family’s preference), and Carmen Soledad (“Carmen Solitude,” the preference of the priest who baptized her). As we drove, we discussed the difference between a nap and a siesta. It mainly came down to length: a siesta should be no longer than twenty minutes and is apparently far more rejuvenating than a nap. Carmen stopped just short of claiming that a nap was unhealthy.

We stopped for lunch in Nerja. This proved something of an issue, at least for the car’s windshield-mounted navigation system, which shouted at us in a female voice. Carmen had programmed in the address of our hotel in Almería, and as soon as we left the main highway, the device told us in no uncertain terms that we were to turn around and get back on track. She really was a pushy little creature, and did everything but call me an
híbrido.

I was keen to refine my use of Spanish, and Carmen was more than pleased to correct me, politely but firmly, when I made an error of usage or pronunciation. For instance, I needed to be reminded to drop the letter “H” from words, turning Carmen’s home town of Huelva to “Well-va.” Although spelled “Córdoba,” a peculiar trick
involving
b
s and
v
s meant that the city’s name is pronounced “Cordova.” Carmen said that I would not be incorrect in describing my beautiful wife with the expression
“Lisa es muy linda,”
but that it was really more of a Latin American expression. In Spain, I should say,
“Lisa es muy guapa.”
I learned that
“guiri”
is a less than fully flattering expression for a sunburned tourist from abroad. Carmen’s command of English was brilliant, but she did show some interesting peculiarities. Just as “Spain” was pronounced “Espain,” “school” became “eschool.”

We passed from the province of Cádiz to Málaga, through Granada, and on to the city of Almería and our hotel. After a two-hour nap for me and six 20-minute siestas for Carmen, we hit the streets, and Carmen explained the Spanish tradition of celebrating life late into the evening. In the following days, it became apparent that Carmen is one of the Mediterranean’s greatest supporters of this tradition.

We walked the waterfront and many back streets. We came across a Horse and Wine Festival, which seemed an awkward combination. We also found that the region’s wedding season was in full swing, and it can be no coincidence that Almería is pronounced almost exactly like “I’ll marry ya.” We spotted a bride being escorted to her reception, and a trio of women called out
“¡Que se besen!”
which I understand to mean “We want to see kissing!” Over dinner, we spotted a group of sixteen men sporting identical T-shirts. Each shirt had the caption
“Se nos casa Pepe,”
which to me suggested that Pepe had nowhere to live but according to Carmen meant “Pepe is getting married.” When I commented on how well behaved the stag-night revelers were, Carmen explained that it was because the night was so young. And sure enough, the next morning as I stood on my hotel room balcony, I spotted the same group of sixteen men, now staggering and singing loudly:
“Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, hemos venido a emborracharnos, el resultado nos da igual.”
According to Carmen, this means: “Alcohol … we’ve come to get drunk, the result is the same for us.” A passing police car gave the group a wide berth.

F
OR MY FIRST BIT
of Ruddy Duck business, Carmen had arranged for us to meet Mariano Paracuellos at a small café in the vast and uncharted tracks of Almería province. Paracuellos works for a firm that monitors environmental issues in the region. He conducts research on wildlife, including a range of waterbirds, and collaborates with researchers at Universidad de Málaga. Finding him proved a bit tricky, because even though our navigation system accepted the café’s address as legitimate, she wasn’t quite sure how to get there. As long as we followed her directions she was happy, even when the directions were clearly wrong. If we went off in the more correct direction, she went into a sulk before giving us an alternative route in a rather intimidating voice. I told Carmen that I was coming to think of the navigation device as “Audrey.” “After Audrey Hepburn? Oh, that’s nice,” she said. Actually, I was thinking of Audrey II in
Little Shop of Horrors.

Paracuellos deserves double nice-guy points. He had a newborn daughter at home, but on the Sunday morning that we met, he was still pleased to give up several hours of his day off. When we arrived at the café, a bit late thanks to Audrey, we found that Paracuellos had been nursing a hot drink that looked like chocolate mousse. Carmen ordered tea and a toasted baguette, and I had a small pastry and a blow-the-top-off-your-head coffee in a demitasse cup.

I immediately liked Paracuellos. He sported long sideburns and bits and pieces of a goatee. He wore a pendant that looked like the tail of a whale but probably represented some sort of plant leaf. Each of my five-cent questions received a two-dollar response from Paracuellos. Carmen, working hard to keep up, was able to give me a thirty-cent translation. Paracuellos was particularly erudite when it came to White-headed Ducks, about which he seemed very passionate.