Gerald Durrell - The Overloaded Ark

As we left, the shadows were lengthening and I turned for one last look at the cave. It lay like a dark mouth in the cliff face, and as I watched I saw the vanguard of the colony flutter out and soar off high above the trees. Another and another, until a steady stream of bats was pouring forth, like a wisp of smoke at that distance. As we stumbled through the forest in the gloom we could hear them high above us, honking loudly and clearly as they flew off to feed.

THE results of our days spent hunting in the forest, and the prodigious efforts of the villagers for miles around, soon filled my cages to overflowing, and then I found my whole day taken up with looking after the animals. The only time I had for hunting was after the day’s work was done, and so it was that we took to hunting at night with the aid of torches. I had brought four great torches out from England with me, and these threw a very strong beam of light, I supplemented our lighting with four more torches purchased on arrival in the Cameroons. Armed with this battery of lights we would scour the forest from midnight to three o’clock in the morning, and by this method we obtained a number of nocturnal beasts which we would otherwise never have seen.

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 ”