Gerald Durrell (22 page)

John was seated
near the table, in his pyjamas: he was busy cutting down some old fruit tins to
make into water pots for the birds, and he was absorbed in his work. I was just
putting the finishing touches to my toilet when I saw something move in the
shadows beneath his chair. Putting on my dressing-gown I went closer to see
what it was. There on the floor, about six inches away from John’s inadequately
slippered feet, lay the Gaboon Viper. I had always believed, judging by what I
had read and was told, that at moments like this one should speak quietly to
the victim, thus avoiding panic and sudden movement. So, clearing my throat, I
spoke calmly and gently:

“Keep quite
still, old boy, the Gaboon Viper is under your chair.”

On looking back
I feel that I should have left out any reference to the snake in my request. As
it was, my remark had an extraordinary and arresting effect on my companion. He
left the chair with a speed and suddenness that was startling, and suggestive
of the better examples of levitation. The tin can, the hammer, and the tin
cutters, went flying in various parts of the hut, and the supper table was all
but overturned.

The Gaboon Viper,
startled by all this activity, shot out from under the chair and wiggled
determinedly towards the back of the monkey cages. I headed him off, and after
a few tense minutes got him entangled in the folds of a butterfly-net, then I
carried him and dumped him in his cage. I saw then the reason for his escape:
the reptiles had been stacked too close to the monkeys, and a female Drill had
amused herself by putting her paws through the bars and undoing all the cages
she could reach. The first one, as always happens, belonged to the Gaboon
Viper. John said little, but it was terse and to the point. I agreed with him
wholeheartedly, for should the snake have bitten him he would not have
survived: there was no snake-bite serum in the Cameroons, to the best of my
knowledge, and the nearest doctor was twenty-five miles away, and we had no
transport.

“Why don’t you
go away again?” asked John plaintively. “It’s at least three weeks since you
came back from Eshobi, high time you plunged back into the impenetrable bush in
search of more beef.”

“Well,” I said
thoughtfully, “I had thought of going off again, if you don’t mind holding the
fort.”

“Where were you
thinking of going?”

“N’da Ali,” I
replied.

“Good Lord,
that’s an idea. You might even get killed on one of those cliffs with a bit of
luck,” said John cheerfully.

N’da Ali was the
largest mountain in the vicinity. It crouched at our backs, glowering over the
landscape, the village, and our little hill. From almost every vantage point
you were aware of the mountain’s mist-entangled, cloud-veiled shape brooding
over everything, its heights guarded by sheer cliffs of gnarled granite so
steep that no plant life could get a foothold. Every day I had looked longingly
at the summit, and every day I had watched N’da Ali in her many moods. In the
early morning she was a great mist-whitened monster; at noon she was all green
and golden glitter of forest, her cliffs flushing pink in the sun; at night she
was purple and shapeless, fading to black as the sun sank. Sometimes she would
go into hiding, drawing the white clouds around herself and brooding in their
depths for two or three days at a time. Every day I gazed at those great cliffs
that guarded the way to the thick forest on her ridged back, and each day I
grew more determined that I would go up there and see what she had to offer me.
Since John seemed so anxious to get rid of me I lost little time in making
enquiries. I found out that N’da Ali really belonged to the people of a
neighbouring village called Fineschang, and naturally the mountain had a
ju-ju
on it. No self-respecting mountain like N’da Ali would be without its
ju-ju
.
Further investigation disclosed the fact that, while the people of Fineschang
were allowed, by the terms of the
ju-ju
(if I may put it like that), to
hunt and fish on the lower slopes of the mountain, only one man was allowed
access to the summit. It transpired that there was only one way up to the
summit anyhow, and this particular man was the only one who knew it. So I sent
him a message saying I would be pleased if he would take me up N’da Ali for the
day to look out for a suitable camp site. Then when this had been arranged, if
he would accompany my troop of hunters, bird-trappers, and hangers-on to the
top and superintend the whole affair. While I waited with ill-concealed
impatience for his reply, I gazed all the more longingly at the slopes of the
mountain.

John’s bird
collection was now of impressive dimensions, and was more than a full-time job.
Apart from the preparation of food (hard-boiling eggs, chopping up cooked meat,
soaking dried fruit, and so on), he would move from cage to cage with a tin
full of grasshoppers or wasp grubs and a pair of tweezers, and solemnly feed
each bird individually. In this way he was sure that every specimen was feeding
properly, and was getting the required amount of live food to keep it healthy.
His patience and painstaking methods were a joy to watch, and under his care
the birds prospered and sang happily in their wooden cages. His chief source of
annoyance was the maimed and dying birds that were brought in to him. He would
come to me holding in his hands a colourful and lovely bird, and show it to me.
“Look at this, old boy,” he would say angrily, “a beautiful thing, and
absolutely useless just because these blasted people can’t take care in
handling them. It’s quite useless, got a broken wing. Really, it’s enough to
make you weep.” He would go off and the following conversation would take place
with the hunter.

“This bird no
good,” John would say, “it get wound. It go die.”

“No, sah,” the
hunter would reply, “he no get wound, sah.”

“It’s got a
broken wing, you hold it too tight,” John would say.

“No, sah, he no
fit die, sah. Na good bird, sah.”

“What can you do
with these fools?” John would say, turning to me, “They always assure me the
thing won’t die, even if it’s got every bone in its body broken.”

“I know, they
try their best to persuade you.”

“But it’s so
annoying. I would have given him five bob for this if it had been in good
condition. But even if you explain that they don’t seem to see it. They’re
hopeless.”

One day a hunter
turned up carrying a Crested Guinea-fowl, a bird as large as a chicken, with a
blue-grey plumage covered with white spots, and its head adorned with a crest
of curly black feathers. It seemed to be in very bad condition, and after
examining it, John agreed that it was not long for this world.

“I no buy him.
He go die,” said John.

The hunter
appeared cut to the quick at this disparaging remark.

“No, sah,” he
gasped, “he no go die. Na strong bird dis. I go show Masa,” and he placed the
bird on the floor. Just as he was protesting for the second time that it would
not die, the Guinea-fowl rolled over, gave a couple of kicks and expired. It
was a very crestfallen hunter who went off down the hill with our laughter
following him, and shouted jeers from the animal staff.

Shortly before
this John had been brought another of these Guinea-fowl, together with the
clutch of eight eggs she had been sitting on when she was captured. After some
trouble we found a broody hen in the village, and purchased it. She sat well on
the Guinea-fowl’s eggs and in due course hatched them all out. The young were
delightful, if drab, little things, and scuttled around the pen in which their foster-mother
was confined as ordinary chicks will. Unfortunately their hen mother was a
great, muscular, heavy-footed bird, and was constantly treading on her
offspring. She was very proud of them, but would walk over them with complete
unconcern and a bland expression on her face. In desperation John tried to get
another foster parent, built on less generous lines, with more grace of
movement, but all in vain. The great, clumsy hen slowly but surely trod on all
the delicate little Guinea-fowl, and killed the lot. Later, John was brought
another clutch of eggs, and even found a more sylph-like hen to sit on them,
but they must have been on the hunter’s hands for some time, or else he had
handled them roughly and damaged them, for they never hatched. John was depressed
by this bad luck, for, although he had six female Guinea-fowl, he wanted to get
at least one male so that he could take a breeding stock back to England, and
there, under ideal conditions in aviaries with slim and delicate bantams or
silkies to hatch and rear, the birds could be bred.

There was one
dreadful period when an epidemic of mycosis ran like fire through his bird
cages, killing some of his most choice specimens. This disease is a deadly
thing, a peculiar fungus-like growth which develops in the bird’s lungs,
spreads with incredible speed through other organs, and kills the bird rapidly.
There is apparently no sign of this complaint until the later stages, when you
will see the bird breathing heavily, as though it had a cold. But by this time
it is too late to do anything effective. When this horrible disease took a hold
on the bird collection, John fought it in every possible way, but still the
losses increased. He was losing specimens which had taken months to obtain, and
could not be replaced. He told me that there was only one thing which could
possibly have any effect on the disease, and that was potassium iodide. Where
we were to obtain this commodity in the middle of the Cameroon forest was the
question. Now, there was a small hospital at Mamfe, and thither I went in
search of the required drug, but discovered that they had none. That seemed to
be that, and my hopes of John saving his collection dwindled to nothing. I
happened to be buying some things in the United Africa Company’s store when I
came across a row of dusty bottles piled in a dark corner of the shop. On
examining them I discovered, with astonishment and incredulity, that they were
a dozen good bottles with potassium iodide written on the label. I went in
search of the manager.

“Those bottles
down in the store, are they really potassium iodide?” I asked of him eagerly.

“Yes, blasted
stuff. They sent it up from Calabar on the last canoe. I can’t think what for,
because I can’t sell the stuff,” he replied.

“Well, you’ve
just sold the lot,” I said jubilantly.

“What in the
name of Heaven do you want with a dozen bottles?” asked the manager,
considerably astonished.

I explained at
great length.

“But are you
sure you want the whole dozen? It’s an awful lot of potassium iodide, you
know.”

“If something
isn’t done we shan’t have any birds left,” I said, “and I’m not going to take
too little and then find, when I come back for more, that you’ve sold out, or
something. No, I’ll take the whole lot. How much are they?”

The manager
named a price that I would have thought expensive for an iron lung, but I had
to have those bottles. Carefully they were packed in the lorry, and I drove
back to John in high spirits.

“I’ve got you
some potassium iodide, old boy,” I said on arrival, “so now there is no excuse
for killing your specimens off.”

“Oh, good work,”
said John, and then he gaped at the box I presented to him, “is that all
potassium iodide?”

“Yes, I thought
I might as well get a supply in. I wasn’t sure how much you would need. Is it
enough?”

“Enough?” said
John faintly. “There is enough of the stuff here to last fifty collectors
approximately two hundred years.”