"When he was given money for marketing he would spend some of it on a small animal - an ailing mouse-deer or pelandok, a twittering yellow bird in a bamboo cage. He adored Lalage but Lalage mistrusted his big brown feet. Lalage became the nucleus of a whole domestic zoo. Yusof brought in, with the help of a friend, a huge turtle that slept in the bath at night but, during the day, clanked around the house, knocking its shell against the wall. We were also given a musang or polecat which stank to heaven and ate two katis of bananas every day. The polecat was named Farouche and the turtle Bucephalus. Two rhesus monkeys, male and female, were also imported, but these swung on the ceiling fans and were destructive. All over the walls cheeped chichaks or house lizards, hunting or copulating loudly. Black scorpions clung to the bedroom walls and greeted one on waking with twitching tails an inch or so over one's head."
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Anthony Burgess, biographies
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