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Shortly before dinner an excited Malay appeared at the door and made a short but impassioned speech.  I could get the words binatang and rumeh, and called Jennier and Davis, sensing that something was wrong with an animal at the neighbor's house.  They went over on a dead run, and found that a huge monitor lizard which had been brought in that afternoon had escaped.  It was an aggressive beast, about six and a half feet long, and they had quite a struggle getting it into a cage.  The native who brought it had tied it to a pole, tied its feet together, and put the pole in a box, but it got out just the same.  Luckily it had not hurt anybody, for there are children about the neighbor's house.  

They 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 American alligator from the States.  The alligator has been presented to the Siantar Zoo, but no quarters are ready for it, so we are keeping it, as well as the bear, jaguar and opossums, for the present.  The alligator is tame, and he was installed in one of the vacant bathrooms.  Then Jennier and Daivs and Gaddi worked for a strenuous quarter hour, while I held the flashlight on them, getting the irate monitor into the new cage.  He lashed his tail and made a terrific blowing sound, but finally went where he was directed.

Dinner hour came, and passed, and no food.  Finally the boys said they would walk up to the hotel and find out what was the matter.  It was ten-thirty before they returned, with [[strikethrough]] dinner [[/strikethrough]] ^[[insertion]] ^[[food]] [[/insertion]] in a full dinner-pail - one that comes in five sections, with a different item in each one.  The manager said he had not understood that we wanted to start eating to-night.

There were mosquitos in our newly scoured klambo; outside on the verandah the bear pawed and grunted in his cage; in the distance dogs and unidentifiable animals howled through the night, so that our first night was rather a wakeful one.

March 23 - 

We were up early and scanned the highway for signs of an approaching breakfast.  About eight-thirty a boy from the hotel brought us some mail, and we asked him about food,  He said he had understood we never ate breakfast (this was because Bill and I always had fruit and coffee in our room and called that a meal).  When he saw our horrified faces he scurried back as fast as he could go, and presently we had hot coffee, bananas, fried eggs, cold sausage and sliced Dutch cheese.

An elderly Chinaman came in from Atchi bringing a miscellaneous collection of animals - a wild dog, martin, otter, hog badger, loris, a cage of Loriculus and some other small birds.  Davis and Jennier worked all day trying to house them, for the cages they had come in were small and dirty and inadequate, [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] all the boys' baggage is held up at Customs, and they feel completely lost without any carpenter tools.  Making a cage out of packing boxes, [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] driving nails without a hammer, making locks out of scraps of bent wire, is unsatisfactory business.

Bill and I went shopping in the morning for camp supplies.  Had a great time trying to buy a broom, for the word in my Malay dictionary seems to mean nothing to the shop keeper, and we had