Gerald Durrell - A Zoo in My Luggage

Generally one had to wait four or five minutes for the smoke to percolate to every part of the tree before one got any response, but in this particular case the results were almost immediate. The first beasts to appear were those nauseating-looking creatures called whip-scorpions. They cover, with their long angular legs, the area of a soup plate, and they look like a nightmare spider that has been run over by a steamroller and reduced to a paperlike thickness. This enables them to slide in and out of crevices, that would allow access to no other beast, in a most unnerving manner. Apart from this they could glide about over the surface of the wood as though it were ice, and at a speed that was quite incredible. It was this speedy and silent movement, combined with such a forest of legs, that made them so repulsive, and made one instinctively shy away from them, even though one knew they were harmless. So, when the first one appeared magically out of a crack and scuttled over my bare arm as I leant against the tree, it produced an extraordinary demoralizing effect, to say the least.

I had only just recovered from this when all the other inhabitants of the tree started to vacate in a body. Five fat grey bats flapped out into the nets, where they hung chittering madly and screwing up their faces in rage. They were quickly joined by two green forest squirrels with pale fawn rings round their eyes, who uttered shrill grunts of rage as they rolled about in the meshes of the nets while we tried to disentangle them without getting bitten. They were followed by six grey dormice, two large greeny rats with orange noses and behinds, and a slender green tree-snake with enormous eyes, who slid calmly through the meshes of the nets with a slightly affronted air, and disappeared into the undergrowth before anyone could do anything sensible about catching him. The noise and confusion was incredible: Africans danced about through the billowing smoke, shouting instructions of which nobody took the slightest notice, getting bitten with shrill yells of agony, stepping on each other’s feet, wielding machetes and sticks with gay abandon and complete disregard for safety. The man posted in the top of the tree was having fun on his own, and was shouting and yelling and leaping about in the branches with such vigour that I expected to see him crash to the forest floor at any moment. Our eyes streamed, our lungs were filled with smoke, but the collecting bags filled up with a wiggling, jumping cargo of creatures.

Eventually the last of the tree’s inhabitants had appeared, the smoke had died down and we could pause for a cigarette and to examine each other’s honourable wounds. As we were doing this the man at the top of the tree lowered down two collecting bags on the end of long strings, before preparing to return to earth himself. I took the bags gingerly, not knowing what the contents were, and inquired of the stalwart at the top of the tree how he had fared.

‘What you get for dis bag?’ I inquired.

‘Beef, Masa,’ he replied intelligently.

‘I know it’s beef, bushman, but what kind of beef you get?’

‘Eh! I no savvay how Masa call um. ’E so so rat, but ’e get wing. Dere be one beef for inside ’e get eye big big like man, sah.’

I was suddenly filled with an inner excitement.

‘’E get hand like rat or like monkey?’ I shouted.

‘Like monkey, sah.’

‘What is it?’ asked Bob with interest, as I fumbled with the string round the neck of the bags.

‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s a bushbaby … if it is it can only be one of two kinds, and both of them are rare.’

I got the string off the neck of the bag after what seemed an interminable struggle, and cautiously opened it. Regarding me from inside it was a small, neat grey face with huge ears folded back like fans against the side of the head, and two enormous golden eyes, that looked at me with the horror-stricken expression of an elderly spinster who had discovered a man in the bathroom cupboard. The creature had large, human-looking hands, with long, slender bony fingers. Each of these, except the forefinger, was tipped with a small, flat nail that looked as though it had been delicately manicured, while the forefinger possessed a curved claw that looked thoroughly out of place on such a human hand.

‘What is it?’ asked Bob in hushed tones, seeing that I was gazing at the creature with an expression of bliss on my face.

‘This,’ I said ecstatically, ‘is a beast I have tried to get every time I’ve been to the Cameroons. Euoticus elegantulus , or better known as a needle-clawed lemur or bushbaby. They’re extremely rare, and if we succeed in getting this one back to England it will be the first ever to be brought back to Europe.’

‘Gosh,’ said Bob, suitably impressed.

I showed the little beast to Elias.

‘You savvay dis beef, Elias?’

‘Yes, sah, I savvay um.’

‘Dis kind of beef I want too much . If you go get me more I go pay you one one pound. You hear.’

‘I hear, sah. But Masa savvay dis kind of beef ’e come out for night time. For dis kind of beef you go look um with hunter light.’

‘Yes, but you tell all people of Eshobi I go pay one one pound for dis beef, you hear?’

‘Yes, sah. I go tell um.’

‘And now,’ I said to Bob, carefully tying up the bag with the precious beef inside, ‘let’s get back to Mamfe quick and get this into a decent cage where we can see it.’

So we packed up the equipment and set off at a brisk pace through the forest towards Mamfe, pausing frequently to open the bag and make sure that the precious specimen had got enough air, and had not been spirited away by some frightful juju. We reached Mamfe at lunch-time and burst into the house, calling to Jacquie and Sophie to come and see our prize. I opened the bag cautiously and Euoticus edged its head out and surveyed us all in turn with its enormous, staring eyes.

‘Oh, isn’t it sweet ,’ said Jacquie.

‘Isn’t it a dear ?’ said Sophie.

‘Yes,’ I said proudly, ‘it’s a …’

‘What shall we call it?’ asked Jacquie.

‘We’ll have to think of a good name for it,’ said Sophie.

‘It’s an extremely rare …’ I began.

‘How about Bubbles?’ suggested Sophie.

‘No, it doesn’t look like a Bubbles,’ said Jacquie surveying it critically.

‘It’s an Euoticus …’

‘How about Moony?’

‘No one has ever taken it back …’

‘No, it doesn’t look like a Moony either.’

‘No European zoo has ever …’

‘What about Fluffykins?’ asked Sophie.

I shuddered.

‘If you must give it a name call it Bug-eyes,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes!’ said Jacquie, ‘that suits it.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘I am relieved to know that we have successfully christened it. Now what about a cage for it?’

‘Oh, we’ve got one here,’ said Jacquie. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

We eased the animal into the cage, and it squatted on the floor glaring at us with unabated horror.

‘Isn’t it sweet?’ Jacquie repeated.

‘Is ’o a poppet?’ gurgled Sophie.

I sighed. It seemed that, in spite of all my careful training, both my wife and my secretary relapsed into the most revolting fubsy attitude when faced with anything fluffy.

‘Well,’ I said resignedly, ‘supposing you feed ’oos poppet? This poppet’s going inside to get an itsy-bitsy slug of gin.’