Gerald Durrell - A Zoo in My Luggage

I sent this missive off by messenger together with two bottles of whisky which he was given strict instructions not to drink on the way. We then waited hopefully, day after day, while our mountain of luggage smouldered under tarpaulins in the sun, and the orange-headed lizards lay dozing on top of it. Within a week, the messenger returned and drew a letter out of the pocket of his tattered khaki shorts. I ripped open the envelope hastily and spread the letter on the table, where Jacquie and I craned over it.

Fon’s Palace,

Bafut, Bemenda.

25th January 1957.

My good friend,

Yours dated 23rd received with great pleasure. I was more than pleased when I read the letter sent to me by you, in the Cameroons again.

I will be looking for you at any time you come here. How long you think to remain with me here, no objection. My Rest House is ever ready for you at any time you arrive here.

Please pass my sincere greetings to your wife and tell her that I shall have a good chat with her when she come here.

Yours truly,

Fon of Bafut

To: The Zoological Officer.

U.A.C. Manager’s House,

Mamfe.

Dearest Sir,

I have once been your customer during your first tour of the Cameroons and get you different animals.

I send here one animal with my servant, I do not know the name of it. Please could you offer what price you think fit and send it to me. The animal has been living in my house almost about three weeks and a half.

With love, sir.

I am,

Yrs sincerely,

Thomas Tambic, Hunter

I had decided that, on the way up country to Bafut, we would make a ten-day stop at a town called Mamfe. This was at the highest navigable point of the Cross River, on the edge of an enormous tract of uninhabited country; and on the two previous occasions when I had been to the Cameroons I had found it a good collecting centre. We set off from Victoria in an impressive convoy of three lorries, Jacquie and myself in the first, our young assistant Bob in the second, and Sophie, my long-suffering secretary, in the third. The trip was hot and dusty, and we arrived at Mamfe in the brief green twilight of the third day, hungry, thirsty and covered from head to foot with a fine film of red dust. We had been told to contact the United Africa Company’s manager on arrival, and so our lorries roared up the drive and screeched to a halt outside a very impressive house, ablaze with lights.

The house stood in what was certainly the best position in Mamfe. It was perched on top of a conical hill, one side of which formed part of the gorge through which the Cross River ran. From the edge of the garden, fringed with a hedge of the inevitable hibiscus bushes, you could look straight down four hundred feet into the gorge, to where a tangle of low growth and taller trees perched precariously on thirty-foot cliffs of pleated granite, thickly overgrown with wild begonias, moss and ferns. At the foot of these cliffs, round gleaming white sandbanks and strange, ribbed slabs of rock, the river wound its way like a brown, sinuous muscle. On the opposite bank there were small patches of farmland along the edge of the river, and beyond that the forest reared up in a multitude of colours and textures, spreading endlessly back until it was turned into a dim, quivering frothy green sea by distance and heat haze.

I was, however, in no mood to admire views as I uncoiled myself from the red-hot interior of the lorry and jumped to the ground. What I wanted most in the world at that moment was a drink, a bath and a meal, in that order. Almost as urgently I wanted a wooden box to house the first animal we had acquired. This was an extremely rare creature, a baby black-footed mongoose, which I had purchased from a native in a village twenty-five miles back when we had stopped there to buy some fruit. I had been delighted that we had started the collection with such a rarity, but after struggling with her for two hours in the front seat of the lorry, my enthusiasm had begun to wane. She had wanted to investigate every nook and cranny in the cab, and fearing that she might go and get tangled up in the gears and perhaps break a leg I had imprisoned her inside my shirt. For the first half-hour she had stalked round and round my body, sniffing loudly. For the next half-hour she had made several determined attempts to dig a hole in my stomach with her exceedingly sharp claws, and on being persuaded to desist from this occupation, she had seized a large portion of my abdomen in her mouth and sucked it vigorously and hopefully, while irrigating me with an apparently unending stream of warm and pungent urine. This in no way improved my already dusty and sweaty appearance, and as I marched up the steps of the U.A.C. manager’s house, with a mongoose tail dangling out of my tightly buttoned, urine-stained shirt, I looked, to say the least, slightly eccentric. Taking a deep breath and trying to seem nonchalant, I walked into the brilliantly lit living-room, and found three people seated round a card table. They looked at me with a faint air of inquiry. ‘Good evening,’ I said, feeling rather at a loss. ‘My name’s Durrell.’

It was not, I reflected, the most telling remark made in Africa since Stanley and Livingstone met. However, a small, dark man rose from the table and came towards me, smiling charmingly, his long black hair flopping down over his forehead. He held out his hand and clasped mine, and then, ignoring my sudden appearance and my unconventional condition, he peered earnestly into my face.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Do you by any chance play Canasta?’

‘No,’ I said, rather taken aback, ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

He sighed, as if his worst fears had been realized. ‘A pity … a great pity,’ he said; then he cocked his head on one side and peered at me closely.

‘ What did you say your name was?’ he asked.

‘Durrell … Gerald Durrell.’

‘Good heavens,’ he exclaimed, realization dawning, ‘are you that animal maniac head office warned me about?’

‘I expect so.’

‘But my dear chap, I expected you two days ago. Where have you been?’

‘We would have been here two days ago if our lorry hadn’t broken down with such monotonous regularity.’

‘These local lorries are bloody unreliable,’ he said, as if letting me into a secret. ‘Have a drink?’

‘I should love one,’ I said fervently. ‘May I bring the others in? They’re all waiting in the lorries.’

‘Yes, yes, bring ’em all in. Of course. Drinks all round.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ I said, and turned towards the door.

My host seized me by the arm and drew me back. ‘Tell me, dear boy,’ he said in a hoarse whisper, ‘I don’t want to be personal, but is it the gin I’ve drunk or does your stomach always wriggle like that?’

‘No,’ I said gravely. ‘It’s not my stomach. I’ve got a mongoose in my shirt.’

He gazed at me unblinkingly for a moment.

‘Very reasonable explanation,’ he said at last.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and true.’

He sighed. ‘Well, as long as it’s not the gin I don’t mind what you keep in your shirt,’ he said seriously. ‘Bring the others in and we’ll kill a noggin or two before you eat.’