Mijbil the Otter · Class 10 English · First Flight: 60 flashcards
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1. When and where did Maxwell travel at the start of the story?
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Early in the New Year of 1956, to southern Iraq.
2. What 'experiment' did Maxwell think Camusfearna would be suitable for?
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Keeping an otter instead of a dog — his home was with water almost at the doorstep.
3. What did Maxwell's friend suggest?
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That he get an otter in the Tigris marshes, where they were about as numerous as mosquitoes and were often tamed by the Arabs.
4. Why did Maxwell go to Basra?
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To the Consulate-General, to collect and answer his mail from Europe.
5. What went wrong with the telephone call?
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A call had to be booked a day ahead: the line was dead on the first day, the exchange shut for a religious holiday on the second, and the line failed again on the third.
6. How many days after his friend left did Maxwell's mail arrive?
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His mail arrived five days after his friend left — after the cable and the failed calls.
7. How did the otter finally reach Maxwell?
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Two Arabs were squatting in his bedroom beside a sack that squirmed from time to time, with a note from his friend saying 'Here is your otter'.
8. What does Maxwell call the state that began when he opened the sack?
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A thraldom to otters — an otter fixation — which he says is shared by most people who have ever owned one.
9. What did the otter look like when it came out of the sack?
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Like a very small dragon out of a medieval drawing, coated from head to tail with neat pointed plates of dried mud, like armour.
10. What was visible between the tips of the mud scales?
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A soft velvet fur like that of a chocolate-brown mole.
11. How long did it take to get the mud off?
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A month, before Maxwell could see the otter in his true colours.
12. What did Maxwell name the otter?
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Mijbil — usually shortened to Mij.
13. Why is Mij's species called 'Maxwell's otter'?
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Because it turned out to be of a kind science had not recorded, and zoologists christened it Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli after him.
14. How did Mij behave in the first twenty-four hours?
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He was neither hostile nor friendly, but simply aloof and indifferent, sleeping on the floor as far from Maxwell's bed as possible.
15. What happened on the second night?
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Mij came on to the bed in the small hours and slept in the bend of Maxwell's knees until the servant brought tea.
16. What did Maxwell make for Mij, and where did he take him?
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A body-belt, so that he could take him on a lead to the bathroom.
17. What did Mij do in the bathroom?
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He went wild with joy in the water for half an hour — plunging and rolling, shooting up and down the bathtub underwater, and throwing about as much water as a hippopotamus would.
18. What did Maxwell learn about otters and water?
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That every drop must be extended and spread about the place, that a bowl must be overturned or sat in until it overflows, and that water must be kept moving and put to use.
19. Why is static water unacceptable to an otter?
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Because when static it is, in Maxwell's words, wasted and provoking.
20. What does 'apathy' mean, as used of Mij?
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Absence of interest — which he began to lose on the second day, taking a keen, much too keen, interest in his surroundings.
21. What did Mij do two days after the bathroom episode?
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He escaped, ran to the bathroom, climbed on to the end of the bathtub and turned the chromium taps with his paws, producing first a trickle and then the full flow.
22. How long did Mij take to get water from the tap?
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Less than a minute for a trickle, and a moment or two more for the full flow.
23. What happened on later occasions with the tap?
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As often as not he turned it the wrong way instead, chittering with annoyance when the tap refused to give.
24. What showed that Mij had settled with Maxwell?
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Very soon he would follow Maxwell without a lead and come to him when he called his name.
25. How did Mij play with a rubber ball?
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He pushed it about the room using all four feet, like a footballer dribbling, and could send it flying with a hard flick of the neck, further and higher than seemed possible.
26. What, according to Maxwell, is the real play of an otter?
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Lying on his back and juggling small objects between his paws — Mij's favourites were marbles, rolled up and down that broad flat stomach without letting one escape.
27. Why could Mij not travel on the British airline?
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That airline would not fly animals, so Maxwell took a seat to Paris with a different airline and went from there to London.
28. What condition did the airline impose?
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That the otter travel in a box of no more than eighteen inches square, standing on the floor by his feet.
29. Why did Maxwell put Mij in the box an hour before leaving?
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So that the otter would become accustomed to it; then he left for a hurried meal.
30. What did Maxwell find when he returned to the box?
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An appalling spectacle — complete silence, and blood trickled and dried around the airholes and the chinks in the lid.
31. What had Mij done to the box?
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He had torn the lining to shreds, and was exhausted and blood-spattered; he whimpered and caught at Maxwell's leg.
32. Why did Maxwell put the otter back into the box?
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Because it was just ten minutes until the flight and the airport was five miles away; he first removed the last of the lining so that no cutting edges were left.
33. How is the drive to the airport described?
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The driver went through Basra's streets the way a bullet goes off a wall, while Maxwell sat in the back holding down the lid of the box with his hand.
34. What did Maxwell do as soon as he reached his seat?
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He covered the floor around his feet with newspapers, rang for the air hostess, gave her a parcel of fish for Mij to keep cool, and took her into his confidence.
35. Why does Maxwell call the air hostess 'the very queen of her kind'?
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Because she took the trouble in her stride — keeping the fish cool, suggesting he have his pet on his knee, and later finding the escaped otter herself with a charming smile.
36. What happened when the box was opened on the aircraft?
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Mij was out in a flash and went straight down the aisle, causing shrieking and squawking.
37. What did the woman on the aircraft shout?
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She stood up on her seat screaming out, 'A rat! A rat!'
38. What happened when Maxwell dived after Mij's tail?
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He missed — the tail had disappeared under the legs of a stout Indian gentleman in a white turban — and found his face covered in curry.
39. How did the escape end?
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Maxwell heard from his feet an agitated chitter, half greeting and half complaint, and Mij bounded on to his knee and began to nuzzle his face and neck.
40. What does 'nuzzle' mean?
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To rub gently with the nose — what Mij did to Maxwell's face and neck after being found.
41. How long did Mij and Maxwell stay in London?
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Nearly a month, in Maxwell's flat.
42. What toys did Mij have in London?
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Ping-pong balls, marbles, rubber fruit, and a terrapin shell Maxwell had brought back from his native marshes.
43. What game had Mij invented?
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He placed a ping-pong ball on the high end of a damaged suitcase whose lid lay at a slope, let it run down, dashed round to ambush its arrival, crouched to spring up and surprise it, grabbed it and trotted back to the high end to start again.
44. How long could the ping-pong game keep Mij engrossed?
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Up to half an hour at a time.
45. Why did the suitcase lid lie at a slope?
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The suitcase had been damaged on the journey home from Iraq, so that when closed the lid remained at a slope from one end to the other.
46. How did Maxwell exercise Mij in London?
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On a lead outside the house, precisely as if he had been a dog.
47. What are 'compulsive habits'?
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Habits impossible to control.
48. What compulsive habits of schoolchildren does Maxwell describe?
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Small rules of their own: stepping on the middle of every paving stone, touching one railing in every seven, or going round the outside of every second lamp post.
49. What was Mij's compulsive habit?
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On his way home, but never on his way out, he would tug Maxwell to the low wall in front of a primary school, jump on to it and tear along the whole thirty yards of it.
50. How long and how high was the school wall?
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About two feet high, running thirty yards along the frontage of a single-storied primary school opposite Maxwell's flat.
51. What effect did Mij's gallop have on the school?
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It caused the hopeless distraction both of the pupils and of the staff within.
52. What group of animals do otters belong to?
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The Mustellines, a comparatively small group which also takes in the badger, the mongoose, the weasel, the stoat and the mink.
53. What guesses did Londoners make about Mij?
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All the Mustellines except the otter, and then a baby seal, a squirrel, a walrus, a hippo, a beaver, a bear cub, a leopard that had seemingly swapped its spots, and a brontosaur.
54. Which guess reduced Maxwell to giggles?
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'Is that a walrus, mister?'
55. Where did Maxwell hear the guess 'a hippo'?
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Outside a dog show.
56. Which question did Maxwell award the highest score?
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The labourer's — he laid down his tool, stared with surprise and affront, spat, glared, and growled out a demand to know what that was supposed to be.
57. What does 'a barrage of conjectural questions' mean?
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A stream of questions filled with guesses.
58. What does the chapter teach us about otters?
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That water must be moved and spread about; that they are playful and dexterous, juggling on their backs; that they can work out mechanisms like a tap; that they become deeply attached and are distressed when shut away alone; and that they are Mustellines.
59. What is anthropomorphism, as used in this chapter?
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Giving human feelings or qualities to an animal — Maxwell tells us Mij was wild with joy, irritated, distressed and engrossed, always from an action he had watched.
60. What question does the textbook raise at the end of this chapter?
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Whether wild animals should be kept as pets — what such an animal misses when taken from its habitat, and whether it is 'cute' to see Mij on a leash.
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