Gerald Durrell (13 page)

my hand I placed
on something long and thin and cold which wriggled vigorously, making me let go
of the branch with rapidity, at the same time letting go of the net which
sailed downwards to the forest floor. The galagos took fright at this and leapt
wildly out into space and disappeared. I crouched very still on my branch for I
was not certain of the location of the snake I had leant on, nor was I certain
of its species.

“Andraia,” I
shouted down, “give me some light here. Na snake for dis stick and he go chop
me if I no get light.”

Andraia moved
round and shone the battery of torches at the place where I clung, and I saw
the snake. It was coiled round a bunch of twigs and leaves about a foot from my
hand. I surveyed it cautiously: the hind end of its body was tangled and
twisted round the twigs, but the forequarters were hung forward in the shape of
a letter S, apparently ready for action. It was very slender, with a brown skin
and darker markings, and a short blunt head furnished with an enormous pair of
eyes. It was about two feet long. I watched it, and it watched me, with
approximately the same amount of suspicion. I had nothing with which to capture
it, except a small length of string which a frantic search through my pockets
disclosed. I fashioned a slip-knot out of this and then broke off a large twig
to tie my improvised trap to. At this the snake decided to depart, and
proceeded to glide through the branches with a fluid rapidity. Hanging on with
one hand and my knees, I made three attempts to get the noose over its slender
neck, and with the fourth attempt I succeeded. I drew it tight, and the snake
hissed and bunched itself into a knot at the end of the string. I tied my
handkerchief round the twig to act as a marker and dropped it down to Andraia
with instructions. By the time I had reached the ground he had got it safely
into a bag. I was extremely annoyed at the loss of the galagos, for we never
saw any more specimens in spite of numerous night hunts.

CHAPTER
FIVE

THE FOSSIL THAT BITES

ONE of the chief
charms of collecting is its uncertainty. One day you will go out loaded down
with nets and bags for the sole purpose of catching bats and you will arrive
back in camp with a python in the nets, your bags full of birds, and your
pockets full of giant millipedes. You can search for days in the forest after a
certain species of squirrel, and when you have given it up in despair and are
spending a day in camp, a pair of the wretched rodents come and play among the
branches of the tree that overhangs your tent. Imagine that you can fool fate,
and spend a day in the forest with twenty assistants armed with every
conceivable device for catching anything from an elephant to a fly, and you
will walk all day and see nothing at all. You know that a certain creature that
you want is found only in one type of country, say in grass fields in the
forest. It has never been recorded in any other type of country by anyone . . .
until you start to look for it. You carefully search every grass field for
miles around, setting traps, smoking, and generally combing the territory. You
catch a remarkable variety of rats, mice, grasshoppers, snakes, and lizards, in
fact everything but the animal you want. But, knowing that it is found only in
grass fields, you persist in your futile task. After you have searched an
acreage that appears to be twice the size of Argentine pampas you give it up as
a bad job, and a week later you catch your first specimen of the animal sitting
in a thickly overgrown part of the forest, approximately twenty miles from the
nearest grass field. Of course, this sort of thing can be very trying, but, as
I say, there is a certain charm in sallying forth into the forest and not
really knowing whether you will come back empty-handed or with half a dozen of
the most priceless specimens you could wish for. There are any number of
interesting creatures to be found in the Cameroons, as there are in other parts
of the world, and at least half of them have never been seen alive in England,
or, for that matter, anywhere outside their native forests. There are other
creatures which are so rare that they are only known by two or three skins in
the museums of the world, and nothing is known about their habits in the wild
state. All that is known is that they exist. These sort of specimens were, of
course, the ones we wanted most. There are only two ways to find out about how
an animal lives, and what its habits are: one is to study it in the wilds and
the other is to keep it in captivity. As the greater proportion of zoologists
cannot go to outlandish parts of the world to study their specimens in the
field, the specimens must be brought to them. That is why I thought it was more
important to bring back an animal that had never been seen alive in captivity,
even if it was only a species of mouse, than to bother overmuch with the larger
and better-known animals. Unfortunately, even a collector has to eat, and it is
the bigger and more spectacular creatures that command the heavy prices.

There was one
inhabitant of the Cameroons which I was more anxious to obtain than any other,
and this was the Angwantibo, a small and exceedingly rare lemur, which is found
nowhere else in the world except the Cameroon forests. I had been asked
especially to try and obtain this creature by the Zoological Society of London,
as they had never had a specimen, and it would prove of great interest both to
naturalists and anatomists. Of this rare creature I had only one drawing, and
this grew gradually more dirty and creased as the days passed, for it was shown
to every hunter who came to see me, and I pleaded with them to try and obtain
me a specimen. But the weeks rolled by and there was no sign of a specimen, and
I began to despair. I raised the price I was offering for it to no avail. As
this animal is strictly nocturnal I thought that there was a fair chance of
seeing one during our night hunts, and so, whenever possible, I got Elias and
Andraia to lead me to parts of the forest where the trees were overgrown with
lianas and other parasitic climbing plants, for it was here, as the Angwantibo
was arboreal, that I thought we should find one. It was during one of these
fruitless hunts for this lemur that we came across a totally different animal
but, in its own way, equally rare and interesting.

We had wended
our way through miles of forest one night, and climbed up innumerable
creeper-enlaced trees, without seeing a single living thing. We were seated on
the floor having a smoke, all in the deepest depths of depression, when Elias
suggested that we should make our way to a stream he knew of some way away,
where he felt sure we should catch some baby crocodiles. Feeling that even a
baby crocodile would be better than nothing at all as a night’s capture, I
agreed, and we set off. This night there were four of us: as well as Andraia
and Elias there was a youth called Amos, whose duty it was to carry all the
bags and nets, thus leaving us all free to shin up a tree at a moment’s notice
if the need arose. It would be an euphemism to call Amos a half-wit. He seemed
to have only the vaguest idea of what we were trying to do, and no amount of
argument would convince him that a quiet and orderly progression was necessary
to capture, or even see, any animals. He blundered along, dropping tins with an
ear-splitting crash, or getting himself and the bags he carried intricately entangled
with any bush that he passed. We had, indeed, spent a greater amount of time
disentangling him than we had spent searching for beef. I was at the end of my
patience and threatened that if he made any more noise or got himself tied up
again I would blow his feet off with the shotgun. This threat had the effect of
making him giggle uncontrollably for the next half-hour, and fall heavily to
the bottom of a small ravine which was full of dead brushwood. His descent
sounded reminiscent of a stampeding herd of buffalo.

The stream ran
over a bed of granite slabs which the water had hollowed out into a series of
pools and waterfalls. Here and there it had worn grooves in the rocks, so that
the stream was divided into three or more channels, with ridges of rock
between. Occasionally where the stream was level the force of the water had
churned up the white sand into small banks that glistened like ivory in the
torchlight. Stopping on the bank we cut ourselves forked sticks, and then waded
into the water and proceeded upstream. Half an hour of this and suddenly a pair
of fiery eyes glowed on a small sandbank ahead. We moved forward cautiously and
discovered a small crocodile, about eighteen inches long, lying there, his head
raised alertly as he watched our approach. We kept the torches aimed at his
eyes and crept forward until we were near enough to pin him down by the neck
with our forked sticks. Then I picked him up and, after considerable argument
with Amos, who had retreated rapidly with the gear, I put him safely in a box.
We moved on, our gloom lessened by this capture, and came to a wall of rock
some twenty feet high, over which the waters of the stream tumbled in a foaming
torrent. The surface of the rock face was moist, overgrown with ferns and begonias.
With great care we started to climb, and half-way up, as I was intrepidly
edging my way along a narrow ledge above the fall, I perceived a fat and
beautiful toad squatting under a bunch of ferns. It was a vivid mustard yellow,
and it sat there gazing at me in the vacant way that toads have, breathing
rapidly. I had never seen a toad of that colour before, and I was grimly
determined that I would add him to the collection. It was not, however, as easy
as it appeared, for I was standing on a very narrow ledge and clinging to the
rock face by my finger-tips. The surface of the rock, as I say, was so slippery
that I had to exercise the utmost caution in moving, or I would crash ten feet
into the pot-holes below the falls, where the black waters swirled and foamed
vigorously. I looked up and found that Elias had reached the top of the falls
and was now squatting above me, lighting my progress with his torch.

“Elias,” I
called, “na beef for here, but I no get chance to catch um. Give me one end of
your cloth, then I get something to hold, and I fit catch um. . . .”

Elias at once
unwound the cloth from his waist and, holding on to one end, lowered the other
down to me. It was far too short. I cursed myself for not having brought any
rope.

“Get Andraia’s
cloth and tie the two together,” I instructed.

A frenzied
argument broke out as I waited. Apparently Andraia was a modest man and did not
relish the idea of standing on the top of a waterfall stark naked. At length
the cloths reappeared, with a large knot in the middle. I took hold of them and
was thus able to release one hand for the purpose of capturing the toad. I then
discovered that this creature, while my attention was engaged, had hopped along
a ledge, and was now about six feet away from me. Hanging on to the cloth I
edged after him. He had perched himself at a place where the cliff bulged out,
so that I was compelled to hang out over the waters, almost my entire weight
being supported by the cloth. Offering up a brief prayer I made a wild grab and
caught the toad by the hind leg. The movement of my grab swung me out in an arc
over the pool below, and instinctively I looked upwards to make sure all was
well at the top. To my horror I saw the large knot which joined the two cloths
start to disintegrate. I reached my former position just as the cloths parted.
Andraia, peering over the edge, was treated to the sight of his cloth whizzing
merrily round and round the miniature whirlpool below.

When we had all
reached the top safely, after rescuing Andraia’s cloth, I sat down to examine
the toad. My feelings can be imagined when I found that my rare specimen was,
in reality, the commonest form of toad in the Cameroons, one who had changed
his normal colour for this bright livery because the breeding season was near.
I released him sadly, and watched him hop off into the undergrowth with slow
measured leaps, and an astonished look on his face.

We moved along
the stream, which now flowed a broken and foam-whitened course between large
boulders, keeping a hopeful look-out for more crocodiles. Presently we
succeeded in catching two more. Then we waded for an hour and saw nothing. Once
a pair of eyes gleamed for a brief second in a tree above us, but we could not
find their owner when we searched. Amos had now become tired and waded far
behind, uttering at intervals a loud mournful groan. I knew that this was not a
complaint, only his way of keeping his spirits up, but it annoyed me none the
less, and my mind was filled with dark thoughts of what I would like to do to him.
Elias and Andraia were wading ahead, and I followed carrying their forked
sticks, thus leaving their hands free to manoeuvre the torches. Soon, as we had
not seen a living thing for what seemed hours, I did a very silly thing: in a
fit of exasperation I threw the sticks away, thinking that we could always cut
more should the need arise. Not long afterwards Elias came to a sudden halt
and, keeping the torch beam steady on something he had seen, he groped behind
him with his free hand and implored me to hand him his stick. I replied that I
had lost them.