Gerald Durrell - The Bafut Beagles

'Good,' he said with satisfaction; then he clasped my hand firmly in his and wrung it. " My friend always I go get you for my eye. I no go forget dis happy time we done get. By God power you go reach your own country safe. Walka good, my friend, walka good.'

As the lorry started off down the road the clapping got faster and faster, until it sounded like rain on a tin roof. We jolted our way slowly along until we reached the corner; looking back I saw the road lined with naked black humanity, their hands fluttering as they clapped, and at the end of this avenue of moving hands and flashing teeth stood a tall figure in dazzling white. It raised a long arm, and a huge hand waved a last farewell as the lorry rounded the corner and started up the red earth road that wound over the golden, glittering hills.

One of the most frustrating things for the collector is that he can rarely get to know any of his animals until towards the end of a trip. During the first four months or so they are just specimens to him, for he has not the time to observe them closely enough for them to assume characters of their own. He sees that they are adequately housed, feeds and cleans them; but beyond that he cannot go, for all his spare time is spent in trying to add to his menagerie. Towards the end of a trip, however, his collection has grown to such proportions that he cannot wander far afield, for he has too much to do. Then is the time when he has to rely entirely on the native hunters to bring in new specimens, and he, being confined to camp all day, has the opportunity of getting to know the creatures he has already assembled. Our collection had reached such a point when I returned from Bafut. Not only had we the grassland animals, but during my stay in the mountains Smith had been steadily increasing the collection with the local forest fauna. Under the great canvas roof of our marquee we had a large and varied enough collection of creatures to start a small zoo.

So, on my return to our hot and humid base camp on the banks of the Cross River, I began to appreciate some of my grassland captures for the first time. For example, take the case of the hyrax. Until I got them down to base camp I had considered them to be rather dull creatures, whose only claim to fame was their relatives. At first glance one would be pardoned for mistaking a hyrax for an ordinary member of the great group of rodents, and as you watched them nibbling away at leaves or gnawing at some juicy bark, you would, probably hazard a guess that they were related to the rabbits. In this you would be quite wrong, for a hyrax is an ungulate, an order which includes cattle, deer, swine, and horses; and the nearest relative to the hyrax is not the rabbit but the elephant, of all unlikely things. In the bone formation of the feet, and in other anatomical details, the hyrax is classified as coming closer to the elephant and the rhino than anything else. This is the sort of information that makes people wonder whether zoologists are quite sane, for a hyrax resembles an. elephant about as closely as an elephant does a humming-bird. However, the relationship is clearer if one goes into the more complicated details of anatomy and dentition. This, frankly, was all the information I had about the hyrax.

When I reached base camp, the old female hyrax, which had savaged the Beagle's foot, and her two fat babies were transferred from the small cage they had been confined in to a much bigger affair that gave them plenty of space to move about in and had a private bedroom to which to retire if they felt in any way anti-social. In this cage I noticed several things about them which I had not observed before. To begin with, they had what are called 'lavatory habits'; that is to say, they always deposited their dirt in one spot in the cage. Until then I had not realized what a godsend an animal with these habits could be to a hard-working collector. As soon as I had grasped the meaning of the neat little pile of dung I found in the corner of the cage each morning, I set about making the cleaning of the hyrax cage a much simpler operation. I simply provided them with a round, shallow tin as a latrine. To my annoyance, the next morning I found that they had spurned my offer; they had simply pushed the tin out of the way and deposited their dirt in the usual place in the normal fashion. So that night I put the tin in again, but this time I placed a few of their droppings in the bottom. The following day, to my delight, the tin was piled high with dirt, and the floor of the cage was spotless. After that the cleaning of the cage took approximately five minutes: you simply emptied the tin, washed and replaced it in the corner. It became a real pleasure to clean out the hyrax.

As a contrast in habits there were the Pouched Rats: these rodents, each as large as a small kitten, lived in the cage next door to the hyrax family. These belonged to that irritating group of beasts that won't – or can't – evacuate their bowels unless it is done into water, and preferably running water. In the wild state they would probably use a stream for this purpose, and the current would carry the dirt away to fertilize some plant farther downstream. In a cage, however, I could not provide the Pouched Rats with a stream, so they used the next best thing, which was their water-pot. There is nothing quite so frustrating as putting a nice clean water-pot, brimming with clear liquid, into a cage, and, on looking at it five minutes later, finding that it resembles a pot full of liquid manure. It was very worrying, for in the heat the animals needed a on-stant supply of fresh drinking-water, and yet here were the rats dirtying their water before drinking it. After many futile attempts to get them to abandon this habit, I used to supply them with a large pot of water as a lavatory, and plenty of juicy fruit to eat, in the hope that this would quench their thirst.

But to return to the hyrax: in Bafut I had decided that they were dull, unfriendly animals who spent their whole lives sitting on their haunches chewing leaves with a glazed look in their eyes. At base camp I discovered that I was quite mistaken, for a hyrax can be as lively as a lamb when it puts its mind to it. In the evening, when their cage was flooded with sunlight, the old female would lie there looking as imposing as a Trafalgar Square lion, munching methodically at a bunch of tender spinach, or a cluster of cassava leaves, while her babies played with each other. These were wild and exhilarating romps they used to have: they would chase one another round and round the cage, sometimes astonishing me by running straight up the smooth wooden back of the cage until they reached the roof before dropping off on to the floor. When they tired of these Wall-of-Death stunts they would use their mother's portly and recumbent body as a castle. One would climb up on to her back, while the other would attack and try to knock him off.

Occasionally they would both be on their mother's back together, locked in mortal combat, while their parent lay there unmoved, chewing steadily, a trance-like look on her face. These games were delightful to watch, but there was one annoying thing about them, and this was that the babies would sometimes carry on far into the night, especially if there was a moon. It is extremely difficult to get to sleep when a pair of baby hyrax are dashing about their cage, producing a noise like a couple of stallions fighting in a loose-box. Sitting up in bed and shouting 'shut up' in fearsome tones had the effect of stopping them for about half an hour; if you had not drifted into sleep by then, you would be brought back to life once again by the thumping of wood, twanging of wire, and the melodious crash of food-pots being kicked over. The hyrax were certainly anything but dull.