Gerald Durrell (15 page)

Another one of
the unwritten rules of collecting, however, seems to be that you may go to
endless trouble to get your first specimen, but, once having got it, the others
follow thick and fast. So, some time later, I was pleased, but not unduly
surprised, when a youth wandered into the compound carrying a wicker fish-trap,
inside of which crouched a lovely young Giant Water Shrew. It was a female and
could not have been more than a few months old, for she measured about twelve
inches with her tail, against the two feet of the adult I had captured. I was
very elated with this arrival, for I thought that, being a young specimen, she
would settle down to captivity and a substitute diet in a more satisfactory manner
than an adult. I was perfectly right, for within twenty-four hours she was
eating the substitute food, snorting like a grampus in her bathing pool, and
even allowing me to scratch her behind the ears, a liberty I could not have
taken with the adult. For a month she lived happily in her cage, feeding well,
and growing rapidly. I was confident that she was to be the first Giant Water
Shrew to arrive in England. But, as if to warn me against undue optimism, and
to prove that collecting is not as easy as it sometimes seems, fate stepped in,
and one morning on going to the cage I found my baby Shrew dead. She had
apparently died in the same mysterious way as the adult, for she had seemed as
lively as usual the night before, when I had fed her, and she had eaten a good
meal.

The Giant Water
Shrew was really the zenith of our night hunting results. Short of getting an
Angwantibo (an animal which by now I was coming to look upon as an almost
mythical beast!), we could not have beaten it as a capture. For weeks after
every waterway for miles around was filled with hunters who, spurred on by the
price I had offered, were determined to get me another Shrew. But they had no
luck, and after two weeks of intensive night hunts, during which I wore myself
out looking for Shrews and Angwantibos, I had to give up night hunting and
confined my attentions to the camp, where the ever-growing collection provided
me with quite enough work.

CHAPTER
SIX

BEEF AND THE BRINGERS OF BEEF

THE camp site
was a rectangular area hacked out of the thick undergrowth on the edge of the
forest. Fifty feet away a small stream had carved itself a valley in the red
clay; and it was on the edge of the valley that the camp was situated. My tent
was covered with a palm-leaf roof for extra protection, and next door to this
was the animal house, a fairly large building constructed out of palm-leaf mats
on a framework of rough wood saplings, lashed together with forest creepers.
Opposite was the smaller replica which served as a kitchen, and behind some
large bushes was the hut in which the staff slept.

It had taken
considerable time and effort to arrange this camp just as I wanted it. At one
time there had been three separate gangs of men building different houses, and
the noise and confusion was terrible. The whole area was knee deep in coiling
creepers, palm mats, boxes of tinned food, wire traps, nets, cages, and other
equipment. Africans were everywhere, wielding their machetes with great vigour
and complete disregard for human life. Through this chaos came a steady trickle
of women, some old and withered with flat dugs and closely shaven grey heads,
smoking stubby black pipes; some young and plump with shining bodies and shrill
voices. Some brought food to their husbands, some brought calabashes full of
frogs, beetles, crabs, and catfish, specimens they had caught while down at the
river, and which they thought I might buy.

“Masa . . .
Masa,” they would call, waving a calabash full of clicking, bubble-blowing
crabs, “Masa go buy dis ting? Masa want dis kind of beef?”

At first, with
no cages ready for the reception of specimens, I was forced to refuse all the
things they brought. I was afraid that, as I had to do this, they would become
disgruntled and give up bringing animals; I need not have worried: some women
returned with the same creatures three and four times a day to see if I had
changed my mind.

Before accepting
any creatures I wanted to get the camp site more or less organized, and then I
had to get down to the construction of cages to house the animals. With this
end in view I engaged a man who had once been a carpenter, and he squatted down
with a great pile of broken boxes in the middle of the camp and proceeded to
work quickly and well, undeterred by the noise and upheaval around him. Soon my
stock of cages had grown, and I felt I was then in a position to deal with any
eventuality, so the message went whispering around the village that Masa was
now buying animals, and the trickle of beef bringers swelled into a flood, a
flood that threatened to overwhelm both the carpenter and me. Sometimes we
would be working by the light of hurricane lamps until two and three in the
morning, hurrying to finish a cage, while near us, on the ground, would lie a
row of sacks and bags, each heaving and twitching with the movement of its
occupant.

The Bringers of
Beef were divided into three categories: the children, the women, and the
hunters. From the children I would get such things as palm spiders, great brown
palm weevils, various types of chameleon, and the lovely silver and brown
forest skinks. From the women I would get crabs, both land and river, frogs and
toads, water-snakes, an occasional tortoise, a few fledgeling birds, and the
great whiskered catfish from the muddy river. It was the hunters who brought
the really exciting specimens: mongoose, brush-tailed porcupine, squirrels, and
other rarer inhabitants of the deep forest. The children preferred to he paid
in the big shiny West African penny, with a hole through its middle; the women
preferred to be paid half in salt, and half in shillings; and the hunters would
take nothing but cash payments. They fought shy of accepting paper money and
would prefer to carry away a couple of pounds in pennies rather than accept a
note. And so they came, from the tiny youngsters who could only just walk, to
the oldest man or woman hobbling to the camp with the aid of a stick, each
carrying some living creature, either in a calabash, or a sack, tied to a
stick, or in a neat wicker basket. Some arrived stark naked and unembarrassed,
their contribution wrapped in their loin cloth. Every box and basket was
pressed into commission as a cage, every empty kerosene tin was washed and
cleaned, and soon contained a mass of vacant-faced frogs, or a tangled knot of
snakes. Bamboo cages full of birds hung everywhere, and monkeys and mongooses
were tethered to every post and stump. The collection was really under way.

One morning,
bright and early, I was shaving outside the tent, when a large and scowling man
made his appearance carrying a palm-leaf bag on his back. He strode forward,
dumped the bag at my feet, and stood back glowering silently at me. I called
Pious, who was in the kitchen supervising the cooking of breakfast.

“Pious, what has
this man brought?”

“Na what kind of
beef you get dere?” Pious asked the man.

“Water-beef.”

“He say it
water-beef, sah,” said Pious.

“What’s a
water-beef? Have a look, Pious, while I finish shaving.”

Pious approached
the bag and carefully cut the string round its mouth. He peered inside.

“Crocodile, sah.
It very big one,” he said, “but I tink it dead!”

“Is it moving?”
I inquired.

“No, sah, it no
move at all,” said Pious, and proceeded to shake four and a half feet of
crocodile out on to the ground. It lay there, limp as it is possible for a
crocodile to be, with its eyes closed.

“It dead, sah,”
said Pious, and then he turned to the man. “Why you go bring dead beef, eh? Why
you no take care no wound um, eh? You tink sometime Masa go be foolish an’ he
go pay you money for dead beef?”

“Water-beef no
be dead,” said the hunter.

“No be dead,
eh?” asked Pious in wrath. “Na whatee dis, eh?” He flicked the crocodile with
the bag: it opened both eyes, and suddenly came to life with unbelievable
speed. It fled through Pious’s legs, making him leap in the air with a wild
yelp of fright, dashed past the hunter, who made an ineffectual grab at it, and
scuttled off across the compound towards the kitchen. Pious, the hunter, and
myself gave chase. The crocodile, seeing us rapidly closing in on him, decided
that to waste time going round the kitchen would be asking for trouble, so he
went straight through the palm-leaf wall. The cook and his helpers could not
have been more surprised. When we entered the kitchen the crocodile was half
through the opposite wall, and he had left havoc behind him. The cook’s helper
had dropped the frying-pan with the breakfast in it all over the floor. The
cook, who had been sitting on an empty kerosene tin, overbalanced into a basket
containing eggs and some very ripe and soft pawpaw, and in his efforts to
regain his feet and vacate the kitchen he had kicked over a large pot of cold
curry. The crocodile was now heading for the forest proper, with bits of curry
and wood ash adhering to his scaly back. Taking off my dressing-gown I launched
myself in a flying tackle, throwing the gown over his head, and then winding it
round so tight that he could not bite. I was only just in time, for in another
few yards he would have reached the thick undergrowth at the edge of the camp.
Sitting in the dust, clutching the crocodile to my bosom, I bargained with the
man. At last we agreed to a price and the crocodile was placed in the small
pond I had built for these reptiles. However, he refused to let go of my
dressing-gown, of which he had got a good mouthful, and so I was forced to
leave it in the pond with him until such time as he let it go. It was never
quite the same again after its sojourn in the crocodile pool. Some weeks later
another crocodile escaped and did precisely the same thing, horrifying the
kitchen staff, and completely ruining my lunch. After this, all crocodiles were
unpacked within the confines of the pool, and at least three people had to be
on hand to head off any attempts at escape.

Some time after
this another arrival created excitement of a different sort. I had been working
late on cage building, and at length climbed into bed about twelve o’clock.
About an hour later I was awakened by an uproar from the direction of the
village. Shrill cries and screams, the clapping of hands, and ejaculations of
“Eh . . . aehh!” came to me clearly. Thinking that it was the prelude to yet
another dance, I turned over and tried to get to sleep again. But the noise
persisted and steadily grew louder. Lights flickered among the trees, and I
could see a great crowd of people approaching from the direction of the
village. I scrambled out of bed and clothed myself, wondering what on earth
could have brought such a mass of humanity to disturb me at that hour of night.
The crowd poured into the compound and it seemed as though practically the
whole village was there. In the centre of this milling, gesticulating crowd
walked four men carrying on their backs an enormous wicker basket, shaped
somewhat like a gigantic banana. They dropped this at my feet, and as if by
magic the great crowd fell silent. A man stepped forward, a tall, ugly fellow
clad in the tattered remains of a khaki tunic and an enormous dirty sola topee.
He swept me a low bow. “Masa,” he began grandiloquently, “I done bring you fine
beef. I bring Masa best beef Masa get for dis country. I be fine hunter, I no
get fear, I go to bush and I de see dis beef for hole. Dis beef get plenty
power, Masa, but ’e no get power pass me. . . . I be very strong man, I get
plenty power, I . . .”

He was at a
disadvantage. I disliked his pseudo-civilized garb, and I also disliked the
lecture on himself he was delivering. Also I was tired and eager to see the
specimen, strike a bargain, and get back to bed.

“Listen, my
friend,” I interrupted him, “I see dat you be very fine hunter man, and that
you get power pass bush cow. But I want to know what kind of beef you get
first, you hear?”

“Yes, sah,” said
the man abashed. He dragged the great basket into the lamplight so that I could
see it.

“Na big big
snake, sah,” he explained, “na boa.”

Inside the
basket, completely filling the interior, was one of the biggest pythons I had
ever seen. It was so large that they had been unable to fit all of it inside,
and so about three feet of its tail was outside, strapped tightly with creepers
to the side of the basket. It fixed me with its black and angry eyes through
the wickerwork, and hissed loudly. I contemplated his great length, coiled in
the basket, his glossy, coloured skin shining in the lamplight.

“Listen, my
friend,” I said to his owner, “I no get chance for look dis fine beef to-night.
You go leave de beef here, and you go come back for morning time. Den we go
look de beef and we go make palaver for price. You hear?”