Gerald Durrell - The Overloaded Ark

We worked all night before we left, packing up the animals, tying the cages into suitable head loads. At five o’clock the entire village turned out: half were to act as carriers for my large collection, and the other half had come to see me off. The cook had been sent on ahead to prepare breakfast at Mamfe, where we were to be picked up by the lorry. Slowly the camp site disintegrated. Loads were carefully tested, all the more valuable specimens being given to the most trustworthy carriers. The women carried the palm mats, the collecting equipment, the kitchen things, and other items of little value, and they were sent on ahead. Then the carriers with the animals picked up their loads and followed. I disposed of a pile of empty tins and bottles to various hunters and others in the village who had come to say good-bye, as these things were most valuable in their eyes. Then, accompanied by a dense crowd of villagers all rushing to shake my hand and say good-bye, I walked to the banks of the small stream outside the village, where the forest path began. More handshaking, white teeth gleaming, cries of good-bye, and I crossed the stream and started in pursuit of the carriers, whose voices I could hear echoing in the depths of the forest ahead.

By the time my long line of carriers had emerged from the forest into the grass fields dawn had broken. The sky was azure blue, and the rising sun was gilding the tops of the forest trees. Ahead of us, across the grass field and the line of carriers, three hornbills flew, honking wildly and soulfully as hornbills will. Elias turned to me, his face gleaming with sweat, a great cage of fruit bats balanced on his head.

“Dis bird sorry too much, sah, that you leave Eshobi,” he said.

I, also, was sorry too much that I was leaving Eshobi.

AT Bakebe I found that John had obtained permission to live in a huge native hut that had once done duty as a Public Works Department store. It was a three-sided structure, light and airy, perched on top of a hill above the village. This vantage-point gave us a magnificent view over an endless, undulating sea of forest, to the French Cameroon borders and beyond. Every conceivable shade of green seemed to have been used in the composition of this picture, with here and there a bombax tree glowing like a great bonfire, its branches full of scarlet flowers and sunbirds. There were feathery, delicate trees in pale green; thick-set oak-like trees with deep olive leaves; tall, spreading, aristocratic trees, whose pale silver trunks stretched up elegantly several hundred feet from the ground, and whose slender branches negligently supported a mass of shimmering yellow- green leaves, as well as the deep green, untidy bundles of orchids and tree ferns that clung to its bark. Curious hills rose from the forest on all sides, hills shaped as perfect isosceles triangles, as square as bricks, or ridged and humped as the back of an old crocodile, and each one covered to its summit with the shaggy cloak of forest. In the early morning, looking out from under our hilltop, the forest would be invisible under the blanket of white mist; as the sun rose this dispersed, twisting and coiling in great columns up to the blue sky, so that it seemed as though the whole forest was on fire. Soon the mist would only cling round the curiously shaped hills, so that they looked like islands in a sea of milk.

Bakebe, I soon found, was a good place for reptiles. Half a mile away was a deep broad river, and every so often a small boy would appear with a baby Broad-fronted Crocodile dangling from a noose of grass. On arrival I had had a pool constructed for the crocodiles, and I found very soon that I was forced to enlarge it. Every week I had a count of the inmates of the pool, as I had a shrewd suspicion that unless I did this I might be buying the same reptiles over and over again. These counts were exciting affairs which generally ended in the animal staff having bandaged fingers. It is astonishing how hard even a six-inch crocodile can bite when it puts its mind to it. Needless to say the staff did not look upon this duty with any enthusiasm: they considered it a most dangerous occupation, and always tried to shirk it if they could.

One day the staff had been more dilatory than usual over their duties and so, more as a punishment than anything, I told them to go and count the crocodiles. Presently I heard a loud wail, followed by a crashing sound and a splash. Hurrying out I found chaos reigning at the pool: Daniel, in climbing the fence, had slipped and fallen against it, and the entire side, not having been designed to withstand this sort of treatment, had given way. Daniel had then completed the destruction by rolling into the pool, and thus scaring some forty baby saurians out of the water, up on to the bank, and so out of the broken fence. When I arrived the ground was covered with crocodiles. They scuttled in all directions with great speed and agility, their mouths open threateningly. The Africans, who were unshod, were also moving with speed and agility. I yelled for reinforcements, and the household staff rushed from the kitchen to join in the chase, and they were followed by the bird staff from the house. In times of crisis such as this, everyone, no matter what his station or job, was called upon to lend a hand. Well in the rear, upholding the Englishman’s traditional reputation for calmness, came John, in his normal slow and unhurried manner. By the time he arrived on the scene most of the reptiles had taken cover in the surrounding undergrowth. Peering round he could only see one or two crocodiles in sight, and so naturally wanted to know what all the shouting and fuss was for.

“I thought all the crocs had escaped,” he said aggrievedly. “That’s why I came down.”

As if in answer, five crocodiles appeared out of the grass and converged about his feet. John looked at them broodingly for a minute, unaffected by the cries of alarm from the bird staff, and then he bent down and, picking one carefully up by the tail, he waved it at me.

“Here’s one, old boy,” he called.

“Don’t hold it like that, John,” I called, “it will turn . . ”

Acting as if under instructions the tiny reptile curved itself up and fastened its jaws on John’s finger. To his credit let it be said that not a sound escaped him; he shook the reptile free, not without some effort, and backed away from the battle area.

“I don’t think I will join in after all, if you don’t mind,” he said, sucking his fingers, “ I am supposed to be a bird man.” He retired to the hut and fastened an enormous bandage round his finger, while the rest of us spent a hot and painful hour rounding up the remaining crocodiles, and mending the fence.

This incident was the beginning of a whole row of irritating episodes in John’s life, all of which involved reptiles. He insisted that all these episodes took place at my instigation: before my return from Eshobi, he said, he had led a happy and reptile-free existence. As soon as I appeared on the scene the reptile world, so to speak, converged on him. John was not afraid of snakes, but he treated them with caution and respect and, while able to appreciate their beauty from afar, he did not want them on too intimate a footing with him. And so the fact that, for a short time, reptiles in general and snakes in particular seemed to find him irresistible, was a source of considerable annoyance to him. Not long after the escape of the crocodiles John’s finger was healing nicely, and the second episode occurred.

I was just leaving the hut one day to go and examine some traps I had set, when a man arrived with a wicker fish-trap full of water-snakes. Now these snakes, I was fairly sure, were non-poisonous. Even if venomous they would only be mildly so. As I was in a hurry I purchased the creatures and pushed them into an empty kerosene tin and placed a plank on top, meaning to attend to them on my return. When I got back that evening I found that the carpenter had removed the plank to convert it into a cage, and all the water-snakes had disappeared. As this had happened in the open I presumed that the reptiles had dashed back to the forest, so, beyond lecturing the carpenter on carelessness, I did nothing. Half an hour later John was doing some moving in the bird section, and on lifting up a large and heavy cage was startled to find five fat water-snakes coiled up beneath it. Unfortunately, in his surprise, he let fall one end of the cage, which landed on his instep. There followed a hectic chase, during which John had to move most of his bird-cages as the reptiles slid from one to the other with great rapidity. John was not amused, and his short soliloquy on the reptile kingdom (in which he included me) was a joy to listen to.