Gerald Durrell - Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

Before we set out, Wahab, with a great flourish, produced a bag of straw hats he had chosen for everyone. The majority were broad- brimmed and these he reserved for us, as guests. In consequence, the only one he could find for himself was a cloche hat belonging to his wife, in elegant magenta and white straw, with a pink ribbon to tie under the chin. This, he donned with perfect seriousness, and was somewhat surprised at our laughter.

‘But the sun is very hot,’ he explained, ‘and one needs a hat.’ And very beautiful you look, Wahab,’ said Ann. ‘Don’t take any notice of them. They’re only jealous because they don’t look so handsome.’

Thus placated, Wahab gave us his searchlight grin and insisted on wearing his ridiculous headgear for the rest of the day.

We had landed some three-quarters of the way down the eastern side of the island, and we now made our way along the slopes towards the northern tip, moving among the scattered Round Island palms and the thickets of pandanus which grew in patches on the barren hillside. As well as being moulded into smooth longitudinal folds and ridges, the soft tuff had been gouged out in places by winter rains and the last cyclone (delicately, and inappropriately, called ‘Gervaise’) into long, deep gashes in the hillside, running from the steep upper slopes down to the sea, down which were carried avalanches of what top-soil remained and rocks of considerable size. Some of these ravines were, in places, ten to fifteen feet in depth, and forty to fifty feet across. I thought bitterly, as I panted my way moistly across the scorching rocks, that this moonscape had been created by the interference of man.

We had hardly travelled a hundred yards, spread out, and peering hopefully at every palm frond, when Wahab sang out that he had found a guntheri. We scrambled and panted our way across the hot rocks, tripping over the small weed, not unlike a convolvulus, which in places formed mats covered with pale lavender and pink flowers and was, in spite of the rabbits, making a valiant but forlorn attempt to keep the soil in position against the onslaught of rain and wind. When we reached Wahab, he pointed up at the main stem of a pandanus frond. Having wiped the sweat from my eyes, I peered up, and eventually saw the guntheri, spread-eagled and flattened, with its mottled-grey and chocolate skin, lichen-grey flecked, making it look like a discolouration on the bark. It was large for a gecko, being some eight inches long, with great, golden eyes and plate-like protuberances on its toes, which contain the suction pads which enable it to hang on to the smooth surface with a fly-like ability. It clung there, secure in the feeling that it was well enough camouflaged, regarding us calmly from great, golden brown-flecked eyes with vertical pupils, which gave it a strange cat-like appearance.

‘Will you look at that?’ panted Dave. ‘Isn’t that the largest God-damned gecko you’ve ever seen? What a magnificent specimen!’

After some argument, we decided that the honour of the first capture belonged to Dave. He prepared himself on a safe foothold, and then edged the bamboo pole forward, the

nylon noose dangling from the end, flittering like a fish scale in the sunlight. I prayed that this sparkle would not panic the lizard, but he hung there without movement, regarding us benevolently. We all held our breath, while Dave moved the noose forward inch by inch. Now he had it dangling just in front of the gecko’s nose. This was the crucial moment, for he had to ease the noose over the animal’s head and then snap it tight round its fat neck, all without alarming it. Slowly, by infinitesimal stages, he stroked the nylon down the palm rib. Just when it was almost touching the gecko’s nose, the animal raised its head and looked with interest at the noose. We all froze. Several seconds passed, and then, as gently as though he were stroking a spider’s web, Dave eased the noose, millimetre by microscopic millimetre, over the creature’s head. Then he took a deep breath and jerked the noose tight round the gecko’s neck. The gecko tightened his grip on the branch, so that it appeared to be glued to it and, without losing its tenacious hold, wagged its head from side to side to rid itself of the nylon. The problem was now to grab the gecko before it struggled too much and the nylon thread cut into the delicate skin of the neck. This was where John’s six-foot-two came in useful. Swiftly, he grabbed the base of the frond and bent it down, with the other hand engulfing the gecko, as it came within reach. ‘Got it!’ he squeaked, in tremulous triumph.

Carefully, the noose was disentangled from the lizard’s velvety soft neck and he was placed in a cloth bag. We continued on our way, and found the guntheri was much more common than we had been led to believe, though this side of the island, with its comparatively well-wooded slopes, was obviously a favourite resort for them, providing shade and food — or as much shade and food as the spartan surroundings of Round Island allowed. For an hour, we picked our way carefully over ravines and along the tortured slopes, where an incautious foot would send rocks bounding and crashing down the precipitous slopes, carrying avalanches of dry tuff with them. Frequently, multicoloured rabbits scurried out from under our feet, and we came upon numerous signs of their profligate tenancy: the convolvulus-type creeper cropped; low, baby palms with their tops amputated; slopes burrowed into so as to cause the maximum erosion.

We had walked about a quarter of the circumference of the island. The sun, which when we had started had been hidden behind the bulk of the island, now rose above it. It was like standing in front of a suddenly open oven door. The air seemed thick to breathe, almost like a soup of moisture, heavily larded with salt. The Martian landscape shimmered in the heat haze as though it was under water.

It was interesting to watch my companions. Ann had wandered off somewhere by herself, and so we were an all-male group.

Wahab, wearing his ridiculous poke-bonnet, was peering up into the palms earnestly, humming to himself and periodically producing from his pocket a paper bag, full of sticky sweets, and offering them round. John, tall and lanky, glasses always on the point of misting over completely, was quivering with eagerness, determined not to waste a single instant of this time in the herpetological paradise that he had dreamt and talked of for so long. Then there was Dave, with his trumpet voice, anxious and enthusiastic, as full of snap, crackle and pop as any breakfast cereal, spilling superlatives out like a Hollywood film advertisement, interspersed with more animal noises than are necessary for the successful rendering of ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’. Then Tony, dressed in his faded green shirt and khaki trousers, merging into the landscape like a chameleon, answering any query with a staccato flood of information, by far the most un-fussed and organised of us all. From a minute basket, he seemed able to produce at any given moment anything from hot tea to marmalade sandwiches, from cold curry and rice to orange squash. So impressed was I by this conjurer’s ability that I felt, if asked, Tony could have produced a dining-table, candelabra, napery, dinner jackets, so that we could have sat down on the bleak slopes of Round Island, and partaken of a meal in the traditional way that, mythology assures us, Englishmen observe in the tropics.

Within a couple of hours, we had caught all the guntheri that we were permitted to catch, and so, we sat and roasted in a minute carpet of shade provided by a group of palmettos. John managed to find sixteen new joints in his body and to curl up in an area that would have been cramped for a chihuahua. Wahab wound himself round the palm tree and distributed glutinous sweets of thirst-provoking quality. Tony squatted on his haunches against a convolvulus-covered rock and vanished completely against the background, to reappear unnervingly at intervals, like the Cheshire Cat, to offer us orangeade or a marmalade sandwich. Dave sprawled between three patches of leaf shade the size of soup plates, and carried on a long and acrimonious exchange with the tropic birds that, with their long, needle-like tails and pointed wings and beaks, wheeled and dived above us like some constellation of mad shooting stars, uttering their shrill, whining cries. Wahab showed us that, by waving something white, a handkerchief, a snake bag or a shirt, you could get them to dive low at you. This excitement, combined with the endless cacophony of repartee that Dave indulged in, soon had some twenty or thirty birds around us, wheeling, diving and calling, white as sea foam against blue sky.