Gerald Durrell - The Bafut Beagles

'You!' I roared, 'you dere for de road … catch dat beef.' The young men put down their bundles and advanced determinedly upon the squirrel, who took one look at them and then turned and fled. They set off in hot pursuit, each resolved that he should be the one to recapture the rodent. The squirrel ran well, but he was no match for the long legs of his pursuers. They drew level with him in a tight bunch, their faces grim and set. Then, to my horror, they launched themselves at my precious specimen in a body, and for the second time the squirrel disappeared under a huge pile of struggling Africans. This time, I thought, the poor beast really would be crushed, but that squirrel seemed indestructible. When the heap in the road had sorted itself out a bit, one of the young men stood up holding the chattering and panting squirrel by the scruff of its neck 'Masa!' he called, beaming up at me, 'I done catch um!' I threw down a bag for him to put the animal in, and then it was passed up the steps to me. Hastily I got the beast into a cage so that I could examine him to make sure he was not damaged in any way, but he seemed all right except that he was in an extremely bad temper. He was a Black-eared Squirrel, perhaps one of the most beautiful of the Cameroon squirrels. His upper parts were a deep olive green, while his belly was a rich yellow-orange. Along his sides were a series of white spots, set in a line from shoulder to buttocks, and there was a rim of black fur marking the edge of each ear, making him look as though he had never washed behind them. But the most beautiful part of his furry anatomy was his tail. This was long and tremendously bushy: the upper parts were a brindled greeny-brown, while the underparts were the most vivid flame-orange imaginable. Placed in a cage he flipped this dazzling tail at me once or twice, and then squatted down to the stern task of devouring a mango which I had put in there for him. I watched him fondly, thinking what a lucky escape he had had, and how pleased I was to have got him. If I had known what trouble he was going to cause in the future I might have viewed his arrival with considerably less excitement.

I turned my attention back to the various containers that littered the veranda, and picked up a large calabash at random. As usual, its neck was stuffed with a tightly packed plug of green leaves; I removed these and peered into the depths, but the calabash was so capacious and so dark that I could not see what was inside. I carried it to the head of the steps and held it up.

'Which side de man who done bring dis calabash?' I asked.

'Na me, sah, name!' shouted a man half-way down the steps.

It was always a source of astonishment to me how the Africans could distinguish their own calabashes among hundreds of others. Except for a difference in size I could never tell one from the other, but the Africans knew at a glance which was theirs and which belonged to some other hunter.

'What beef 'e dere-dere for inside?' I asked, negligently swinging the calabash by its cord.

' Snake, sah,' said the man, and I hastily replaced the plug of green leaves.

'What kind of snake, my friend?'

'Na Gera, sah.'

I consulted my list of local names and found this meant a Green-leaf Viper. These were common and beautiful snakes in Bafut, and I already had quite a number of them. They were about eighteen inches long, a startlingly bright grass green in colour, with canary-yellow bellies and broad diagonal white stripes along their sides. I carried the calabash over to empty the new arrival into the shallow, gauze-topped box in which I kept vipers. Now, emptying a snake from a calabash into a cage is one of the simplest of operations, providing you observe one or two rudimentary rules. First, make sure that any inmates of the cage are far away from the door. This I did. Secondly, make sure how many snakes you have in the calabash before starting to shake them out. This I omitted to do.

I opened the door of the cage, unplugged the mouth of the calabash and began to shake gently. Sometimes it requires quite a lot of shaking to get a snake out of a calabash, for he will coil himself round inside, and press himself against the sides, making it difficult to dislodge him. Jacob stood behind me, breathing heavily down my neck, and behind him stood a solid wall of Africans, watching open-mouthed. I shook the calabash gently, and nothing happened. I shook it a bit harder, with the same result. I had never known a viper cling with such tenacity to the interior of a receptacle. Becoming irritated, I gave the calabash a really vigorous shaking, and it promptly broke in half. An intricately tangled knot of Green-leaf Vipers, composed of about half a dozen large, vigorous, and angry snakes, fell out on to the cage with what can only be described as a sickening thud.

They were plaited together in such a large and solid ball that instead of falling through the door and into the cage, they got jammed half-way, so that I could not slam the door on them. Then, with a fluid grace which I had no time to admire, they disentangled themselves and wriggled determinedly over the edge of the door and on to the floor. Here they spread out fan-wise with an almost military precision, and came towards us. Jacob and the Africans who had been jammed behind him disappeared with the startling suddenness of a conjuring trick. I could hardly blame them, for none of them was wearing shoes. But I was not clad to gallivant with a tribe of vipers either, for I was wearing shorts and a pair of sandals. My only armament, moreover, consisted of the two halves of the broken calabash, which is not the most useful thing to have when tackling a snake. Leaving the snakes in sole charge of the veranda, I shot into my bedroom. Here I found a stick, and then went cautiously out on to the veranda again. The snakes had scattered widely, so they were quite easy to corner, pin down with the stick, and then pick up. One by one I dropped them into the cage, and then shut and locked the door with a sigh of relief. The Africans reappeared just as suddenly as they had disappeared, all chattering and laughing and clicking their fingers as they described to each other the great danger they had been in. I fixed the snake-bringer with a very cold eye.

'You!' I said, 'why you no tell me dere be plenty snake for inside dat calabash, eh?'

'Wah!' he said, looking surprised, 'I done tell Masa dere be snake for inside.'

'Snake, yes. One snake. You no tell me dere be six for inside.'

'I done tell Masa dere be snake for inside,' he said indignantly.

'I done ask you what beef you done bring,' I explained patiently, ' and you say, "snake". You no say dere be six snake. How you tink I go savvay how many snake you bring, eh? You tink sometime I get juju for my eye and I go savvay how many snake you done catch?'

'Stupid man,' said Jacob, joining in the fray. ' Sometime dis snake bite Masa, and Masa go die. Den how you go do, eh?'

I turned on Jacob.

' I noticed that you were conspicuous by your absence, my noble and heroic creature.'

'Yes, sah!' said Jacob, beaming.

It was not until quite late that evening that the last hunter had been paid, and I was left with such a weird assortment of live creatures on my hands that it took me until three o'clock the following morning to cage them. Even so, there were five large rats left over, and no box from which to make a cage. I was forced to release them in my bedroom, where they spent the entire night trying to gnaw through the leg of the table.

The next morning when I arose and cleaned out and fed my now considerable collection, I thought that probably nothing more would turn up that day. I was wrong. The Bafutians had obviously thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the task of providing me with specimens, and by ten o'clock the roadway and the seventy-five steps were black with people, and in desperation I had to bargain for the creatures. By lunch-time it was obvious that the supply of animals had far exceeded my store of wood and boxes to make cages for them, so I was forced to employ a team of small boys to tour Bafut, buying up any and every box or plank of wood they could find. The prices I had to pay for boxes were exorbitant, for to the African any sort of receptacle, be it a bottle, an old tin or a box, was worth its weight in gold.