Gerald Durrell (9 page)

“Masa, Masa,”
yelled Daniel, hitting me again with the butterfly net, “na big boa . . . na
big snake. . . . Go back, sah, go back. . . .”

“Shut up,” I
roared, “and stop hitting me with that bloody net.”

Daniel subsided
into a trembling heap, and I crawled in and crouched beside him, taking charge
of the torch. I flashed it around and located Andraia’s lanky body sitting next
to me.

“Andraia, which
side dis boa?”

“I no see um,
sah,” he answered. “Daniel ’e say ’e see um for dere . . .” and he gestured
with a long arm into the deep passage in front of us.

“You
see
um?” I asked Daniel, whose teeth were chattering.

“Yessah, I see
um for true, sah, ’e dere dere for inside. ’E get mark mark for his skin, sah.
. . .”

“All right. Be
quiet and listen.”

We crouched in
silence, only broken by the chattering of Daniel’s teeth. Suddenly I became
aware of another sound in the cave, and by the way Andraia cocked his head on
one side I could see that he also heard it. It was a faint hissing, purring
noise, welling up out of the darkness ahead of us. Daniel started to moan, and
I rapped him sharply on the shins with my torch.

“You hear it,
Andraia . . . na whatee?” I whispered.

“I no savvy,
sah,” said Andraia, in a puzzled voice.

The noise had a
rather ominous and malignant quality, coming from the darkness. The atmosphere
of the cave was icy, and we were all shivering. I felt that something must be
done, or else in another minute Daniel would attribute the noise to some form
of
ju-ju
, and then I should be trampled to death in the rush to get out
of the tiny opening. Taking the torch I told my shivering hunters to stay where
they were and started to crawl forward to the place where the cave sloped down
into the bowels of the earth. I did not relish this exploration very much, for
I felt that this was not the place to have words with a python of unknown size,
particularly as one hand was fully occupied holding on to my only source of
illumination. On reaching the edge I leant forward and shone the torch, peering
down into the large cave below me. From its interior the noise was coming, and
as I flooded it with light it seemed to me that the whole roof of the lower cave
left its moorings and swept up towards me in a great gust of wind and ghostly
twittering. For one heart-stopping moment, as this great black mass swept
towards me, I wondered if my treatment of
ju-ju
had not been a trifle
offhand. Then I realized that this great cloud was composed of hundreds of tiny
bats. The air was thick with them, like a swarm of bees, and the roof of the
lower chamber was still covered with hundreds more, like a furry, moving rug
over the rock face. Twittering they wheeled round me, flicking in and out of
the torch beam, creating a tremendous fluttering wind with their beating wings.
I probed the cave below with the torch beam, but I could see no sign of
Daniel’s “boa”.

“Andraia,” I
called, “no be boa, na bat. . . .”

Thus encouraged,
Andraia and Daniel scuttled across and joined me.

They peered down
into the bat-filled cave.

“Eh . . . aehh!”
said Andraia.

Daniel said
nothing, but his teeth stopped chattering.

“Now,” I said to
him sarcastically, “which side dat big boa, eh?”

He started to
giggle, and Andraia joined in.

“All right. Now
let’s have no more foolishness, you hear? Go for outside and ask Elias for the
rope and the catch-net quickly.”

Daniel scrambled
off to the entrance.

“Masa want dis
kind of beef?” inquired Andraia, while we were waiting for Daniel’s return.

“No, I no want
dis small-small bat; I want the big kind. Some time we go find um for inside,
you think?”

“By God power,
we go find um,” said Andraia piously, peering into the depths.

To get to the
lower cave we would have to lower ourselves down the steep fifteen-feet slope
of rock, on the edge of which we were now squatting. Ropes were the only
answer, and I looked about for something to tie the end to. There was nothing.
In the end, when Daniel had returned with the ropes and net, we had to send him
back with one end of the rope and instructions that it was to be tied to a tree
outside. This done, we covered the tunnel that joined the two caves with our
net, left Daniel sitting there to disentangle any bats that flew into it, and
Andraia and I descended into the depths. The slope, at first sight, appeared to
be smooth, but on close contact with it we discovered that the surface was
covered with fine longitudinal furrows, like a ploughed field, and the ridges between
the furrows had an edge like a razor. At length, torn and bloody, we reached
the sandy cave floor. Here the bats were so thick that the air vibrated with
their cries and the flutterings of their wings. With Andraia holding the torch,
I leapt about with the long-handled net, and after much exertion I succeeded in
catching four of these small bats. I wanted them merely as museum specimens,
for small insect-eating bats such as these are difficult to keep alive, and
would not survive the long journey home. They had a wing-span of about eight
inches, and their fat, furry bodies were about the size of a walnut. But it was
their heads that astonished me, as I examined them by the light of the torch.
Their great, petal-shaped ears stood up from their heads, transparent in the
torchlight. On their noses the flesh was bare, and fluted and curled and
scalloped into an incredible bas-rehief design, like a misshapen Tudor rose in
miniature. These gargoyles’ tiny eyes glittered, and their teeth shone white in
their open mouths.

After this we
searched to see if any of the larger fruit-eating bats shared the caves with
these little monsters, but we searched in vain. We sent Daniel up to the
surface with the nets, and then I followed. As I crawled, blinking, out into the
sunlight, the Carpenter rushed forward to help me to my feet.

“Welcome, sah,”
he said, as though I had been on a long journey.

“You think
ju-ju
done get me, Carpenter?”

“No, sah, but
sometimes you go get bad beef for dis kind of place.”

“And
ju-ju
?”

“Ehh . . .
sometime you get
ju-ju
also,” he admitted.

Andraia now
emerged, scratched and earthy, and we sat in the sun to get the chill of the
caves out of our bones.

“Which side
Elias?” I asked, having just noticed his absence.

“He go come
small time, sah,” said the Carpenter, “he done go for bush look some other
hole.”

“Is there
another hole?” I asked eagerly.

The Carpenter
shrugged.

“Sometime Elias
go find one,” he answered, not very hopefully.

But the
Carpenter was wrong. When Elias returned he said that he had found another
cave, about haifa mile away, which was bigger than the one we had just
investigated and, moreover, was full of large bats. We followed Elias there
with all speed.

Sure enough,
this second cave was bigger than the first: it was a great hollow carved into a
cliff face on the hillside, its mouth almost hidden by undergrowth. Inside it
proved to be some seventy yards long, and the roof was at least thirty feet
high. This was covered with a thick palpitating layer of squeaking fruit bats.
It was a most encouraging sight, and I congratulated Elias on this find.
However, soon difficulties became apparent: the roof of the cave was too high
to reach even with the long-handled nets we had, and the mouth of the cave was
so large that we could only cover part of it with our big net. After
considerable thought I formed a plan. Two of the hunters were sent into the
surrounding forest to cut us each a sapling about twenty feet long; these were
then carefully trimmed, leaving only a bunch of twigs and leaves at one end.
Having covered as much of the entrance as we could with our nets, I then armed
each man with a soft cloth bag to put his catch in. Then I stepped back, and,
aiming the shotgun at the floor in the interior of the cave I let fly with both
barrels. Then the sudden roar of the gun, and the subsequent echoes, were
overwhelmed and lost in the pandemonium that broke loose in the cave. The
entire colony of bats, which must have numbered about five hundred, took
flight, and as they wheeled and flapped their way, panic-stricken, round the
cave, they shrieked and chattered. The noise of their wings beating the air was
like the sound of heavy surf on a rocky coast. Pausing long enough to make sure
that the roof of the cave was not in imminent danger of collapse from the shock
of the explosion, we rushed inside. The air was thick with fruit bats, flying
low over our heads, swooping to within a foot of our faces before twisting to
one side, leaving our hair ruffled with the wind from their wings. We set to
work, and dashed round the cave, whirling our sticks above our heads as we ran.
It was useless to try and aim at a bat, for they simply slid away with the
greatest of ease. But, by choosing the place where the bats were thickest, we
had considerable success, and with each whirl of our bushy sticks several bats
would be knocked on to the sandy floor. Then we would drop our weapons and
pounce on them before they could regain the air. The knocks they received were
not severe, owing to the twigs and leaves on our sticks, but it was sufficient
to make them lose control and fall to the floor. Here they would flap their way
along the ground, trying hard to get into the air again. Even when in this
helpless state they showed a great turn of speed, and it required considerable
agility on our part to corner them, and great care in stuffing them into the
cloth bags, for their teeth were sharp and very large.

In
three-quarters of an hour, during which we vied with the bats in performing
strange gyrations round the cave, we had caught twenty-five of these creatures.
By now the bats had become wise: some had flown outside, where they hung
festooned in the trees like bunches of quivering black fruit, while the others
had discovered that if they all crowded to the highest point of the cave’s roof
they would be safe from us. I decided that twenty-five specimens would be
enough to cope with as a beginning, so we called a halt. Some distance from the
cave we sat on the ground and enjoyed well-earned cigarettes, and watched the
bats dropping from the trees, one by one, and then swooping into the dark
interior of the cave to join their chattering companions. It was, in all
probability, the first time in the centuries that the colony had lived and bred
there that they had been attacked like this. It would probably be the same
length of time before they were attacked again. Taking all things into
consideration, it must be a pleasant life to lead: all day they sleep, hanging
in the dark, cool security of the cave, and then in the evening they awake
hungry and fly forth in a great flapping, honking crowd into the light of the
setting sun, above the golden treetops, to alight and feed in the giant fruit
trees aglow with the sunset, gorging on the sweet fruit as the shadows creep
through the branches. Chattering and flapping among the leaves, knocking the
ripe fruit off so that it falls hundreds of feet down to the forest floor
below, to be eaten by other night prowlers. Then, in the faint light of dawn,
to fly back to the cave, heavy with food, the fruit juices drying on their fur,
to bicker and squabble over the best hanging-places, and gradually fall asleep
as the sun rises above the trees to ripen a fresh crop of fruit for the next
night’s feast.

As we left, the
shadows were lengthening and I turned for one last look at the cave. It lay
like a dark mouth in the cliff face, and as I watched I saw the vanguard of the
colony flutter out and soar off high above the trees. Another and another,
until a steady stream of bats was pouring forth, like a wisp of smoke at that
distance. As we stumbled through the forest in the gloom we could hear them
high above us, honking loudly and clearly as they flew off to feed.

CHAPTER
FOUR

THE FOREST BY NIGHT

THE results of
our days spent hunting in the forest, and the prodigious efforts of the
villagers for miles around, soon filled my cages to overflowing, and then I
found my whole day taken up with looking after the animals. The only time I had
for hunting was after the day’s work was done, and so it was that we took to
hunting at night with the aid of torches. I had brought four great torches out
from England with me, and these threw a very strong beam of light, I
supplemented our lighting with four more torches purchased on arrival in the
Cameroons. Armed with this battery of lights we would scour the forest from
midnight to three o’clock in the morning, and by this method we obtained a
number of nocturnal beasts which we would otherwise never have seen.