Gerald Durrell (10 page)

The forest at
night was a very different place from the forest by day: everything seemed
awake and watchful, and eyes gleamed in the tree-tops above you. Rustles and
squeaks came from the undergrowth, and by the light of the torch you could see
a creeper swaying and twitching, indication of some movement one hundred and
fifty feet above you in the black tree-top. Ripe fruit would patter down on to
the forest floor, and dead twigs would fall. The cicadas, who never seemed to
sleep, would be screeching away, and occasionally a big bird would start a loud
“Car . . . carr . . . carr” cry, which would echo through the forest. One of
the commonest night noises was caused by an animal which I think was a tree
hyrax. It would start off its piercing whistle softly, at regular intervals,
then gradually it would work faster and faster until the sounds almost merged,
and the whistle would get shriller and shriller. Then,just as it reached a top
note and its highest speed, the cry would stop, as though cut short with a
knife, leaving the air still quivering with the echoes of the cry. Then there
were the frogs and toads: as darkness fell they would start, whistling,
hooting, rattling, chirruping and croaking. They seemed to be everywhere, from
the tops of the highest trees to the smallest holes under the rocks on the
river banks.

The forest
seemed twice as big as normal when you were hunting at night: you moved along
under the great, rustling canopy of trees, and outside your torch beam
everything was a solid wall of blackness. Only in the small pool of light cast
by your torch could you see colour, and then, in this false light, the leaves
and the grasses seemed to take on an ethereal silvery-green hue. You felt as
though you were moving in the darkest depths of the sea, where there had been
no light for a million years, and the pathetically feeble glow of your torch
showed up the monstrous curling buttress roots of the trees, and faded the
coloration of the leaves, and the silver moths fluttered in groups across the
beam, and vanished into the gloom like a silvery school of tiny fish. The air
was heavy and damp with dew, and by shining your torch beam upwards, until it
was lost in the intricate maze of trunks and branches above, you could see the
faint wisps of mist coiling sluggishly through the twigs and creepers.
Everywhere the heavy black shadows played you false, making tall slender trees
seem to crouch on deformed trunks; the tree roots twisted and writhed as you
moved, seeming to slide away into the darkness, so that you could swear they
were alive. It was mysterious, creepy, and completely fascinating.

The first night
I ventured into the forest with Andraia and Elias we started early, for Elias
insisted that we hunted along the banks of a largish river which was some
distance from the camp. Here, he assured me, we would find water-beef. What
this beast was I had only the haziest notion, for the hunters employed this
term with great freedom when discussing anything from a hippo to a frog. All I
could get out of Elias was that it was “very fine beef”, and that I would be
“glad too much” if we caught one. We had progressed about a mile down the path
that led into the forest, and we had just left the last of the palm plantations
behind, when Elias suddenly came to a halt, and I walked heavily on to his heels.
He was shining his torch into the head foliage of a small tree about forty feet
high. He walked about, shining his torch from different angles, grunting to
himself.

“Na whatee?” I
asked, in a hoarse whisper.

“Na rabbit,
sah,” came back the astonishing reply.

“A
rabbit
. . . are you
sure
, Elias?” I asked in surprise.

“Yes, sah, na
rabbit for true. ’E dere dere for up, sah, you no see ’e eye dere dere for
stick?”

While I flashed
my torch about at the tops of the trees I hastily ran over my knowledge of the
Cameroon fauna: I was sure no rabbit had been recorded from the Cameroons, and
I was certain an arboreal one had not been recorded from
any
part of the
world. I presumed that a rabbit sitting in the top branches of a forty-foot
tree could be termed arboreal with some justification. Just at that moment two
ruby-red spots appeared in my beam: I had located the “rabbit”. There, sitting
peacefully on a branch high above us, nonchalantly cleaning its whiskers in the
torchlight, sat a fat grey-coloured rat.

“That’s a rat,
Elias, not a rabbit,” I said, rather pleased to find my zoological knowledge
still secure. The appearance of an arboreal rabbit in the zoological world
would, I felt, cause rather a stir.

“Na rat, sah?
Here we call um rabbit.”

“Well, can we
catch him, do you think?”

“Yes, sah. Masa
and Andraia go wait here, I go climb de stick.”

We kept our
torches aimed at the rat, and Elias disappeared into the darkness. Presently
the tree began to shake as an indication that he had started to climb, and the
rat peered downwards in alarm. Then it ran to the end of the small branch it
was sitting on and peered down again to get a better view. Elias’s head came
into view among the leaves directly below the branch on which the rat was
sitting. “Which side ’e dere?” he inquired, screwing up his eyes against the
light.

“ ’E dere dere
for up, on your left side.”

As we shouted
our instructions the rat slid down a creeper with great speed and landed on a
branch about fifteen feet below Elias.

“ ’E done run,
Elias,” screamed Andraia shrilly, “ ’e dere dere for under you now. . . .”

Painfully,
following our shouted directions, Elias descended until he was on a level with
the rat. The quarry was still sitting on the branch, putting the finishing
touches to his toilet. Slowly Elias edged his way out along the branch towards
him, one hand cupped ready to grab. The rat watched him in a supercilious
manner, waited until Elias lunged forward, and then launched itself into space.
Instinctively we followed it with our torches, and watched it crash into a
small bush and disappear. From above came a crack, a roar of anguish and
fright, and the sound of a heavy body descending slowly and painfully
earthwards. Flashing our torches up we found Elias had disappeared, and only a
few leaves fluttered slowly down to show that he had once been up there. We
found him nursing his leg in the bushes at the base of the tree.

“Eh . . . aehh!”
he groaned, “dat stick no give me chance. It done broke, and I de get wound
plenty
.”

Careful
examination disclosed only a few scratches, and after soothing Elias’s hurt
feelings we proceeded on our way.

We had been
walking some time and carrying on a lively discussion on the difference between
rabbits and rats, when I found we were walking on white sand. Looking up, I
discovered that we had left the forest, and above us was the night sky, its
blackness intensified by the flickering stars. We were actually walking along
the banks of the river, but I had not noticed it, for here the brown waters flowed
sluggishly between smooth banks, and so there was no babble of water; the river
flowed slowly and silently past us like a great snake. Presently we left the
sand beach and made our way to the thick fringe of waist-high growth that
formed a border between the sand and the beginning of the forest. Here we
paused.

“Na for dis kind
of place you go catch water-beef; sah,” whispered Elias, while Andraia grunted
in agreement. “We go walk softly softly for dis place, and sometime we go find
um.”

So we commenced
to walk softly, softly through the lush undergrowth, shining our torches ahead.
I had just paused to pluck a small tree frog from a leaf and push him into the
bottle in my pocket, when Elias hurled his torch at me and dived full length
into the leaves. In my efforts to catch his torch as it whirled towards me I
dropped my own, which hit a rock and promptly went out. I bungled the catch,
dropped the second torch as well, and that followed the first into oblivion.
Now we only had the illumination of Andraia’s, which was very anaemic, for the
batteries were damp and old. Elias was rolling about in the undergrowth locked
in mortal combat with some creature that seemed frightfully strong. I grabbed
the light from Andraia, and in the feeble glow I saw Elias rolling about, and
held in his arms, kicking and bucking for all it was worth, was a beautiful
antelope, its skin patterned with a lovely pattern of white spots and stripes.

“I done hold um,
sah,” roared Elias, spitting leaves. “Bring flashlamp, sah, quickly, dis beef
get power too much. . . .”

I sprang forward
eagerly to help him, tripped heavily over a hidden rock and fell on my face.
The last torch flickered and went out. I sat up in the gloom and searched
frantically for the torch. I could hear Elias desperately imploring someone to
help him. Then, as my groping fingers found a light, a sudden silence fell. I
switched on the torch, after several attempts, and shone it on Elias. He was
sitting mournfully on his ample bottom getting leaves out of his mouth. “ ’E
done run, sah,” he said. “Sorry too much, sah, but dat beef get power pass one
man. Look, sah, ’e done give me wound with his foot.” He pointed to his chest,
and it was covered with long deep furrows from which the blood was trickling.
These had been caused by the sharp, kicking hooves of the little antelope.

“Never mind,” I
said, mopping his chest with the iodine, “we go catch dis beef some other
time.”

After a search
we found the other two torches, and discovered that both bulbs had been broken by
the fall. I had forgotten to bring any spare ones and so our only means of
illumination was the third torch, which looked as though it was going to give
out at any minute. It was plain that all we could do was to call off the hunt
and get back to camp while we still had some means of seeing our way. Very
depressed we set off, walking as fast as we could by such a poor light.

As we entered
the fields on the outskirts of the village Elias stopped and pointed at a dead
branch which hung low over the path. I peered at it hopefully, but it was quite
bare, with one dead and withered leaf attached to it.

“What ee?”

“Dere, for dat
dead stick, sah.”

“I no see um. .
. .”

Disturbed by our
whispering the dead leaf took its head out from under its wing, gave us a
startled glance, and then flew wildly off into the night.

“Na bird, sah,”
explained Elias.

It was,
altogether, a most unsuccessful night, but it was interesting, and showed me
what to expect. The fact that the birds slept so close to the ground amazed me,
when there were so many huge trees about in which they could roost. But a
little thought showed me why they did this: perched on the end of a long
slender twig they knew that, should anything try and crawl along after them,
its weight would shake the branch or even break it. So, as long as the branch
was long, thin, and fairly isolated, it mattered not if it was a hundred feet
up, or five feet from the ground. I questioned Elias closely about this, and he
informed me that one frequently came across birds perched as low as that,
especially in the farm lands. So the next night, armed with large soft cloth
bags, we set out to scour the fields. I was armed with a butterfly net with
which to do the actual capturing.

We had not gone
far when we found a Bulbul seated on a thin branch about five feet above us, an
almost indistinguishable ball of grey fluff against the background of leaves.
While the other two kept their torches trained on it, I manoeuvred my net into
position and made a wild scoop. I don’t suppose the Bulbul had ever had such a
fright in its life; at any rate it flew off into the darkness tweeting
excitedly. It was then I realized that the upward sweeping motion I had
employed was the wrong one. So we went a bit further, and presently came across
a Pygmy Kingfisher slumbering peacefully. I scooped the net down on him, he was
borne to the ground, and within a couple of seconds was in the depths of a
cloth bag. Birds, if placed in a dark bag like this, just lie there limp and
relaxed, and do not flutter and hurt themselves during transportation. I was
thrilled with this new method of adding to my bird collection, as it seemed far
superior to the other methods employed. We spent three hours in the fields that
night, and during that time we caught five birds: the Kingfisher, two Forest
Robins, a Blue-spotted Dove, and a Bulbul. After this, if I was feeling too
tired to wander into the forest at night, we would just walk for an hour or so
in the fields a mile or two from the camp, and it was rarely that we returned
empty-handed.