Gerald Durrell - The Bafut Beagles

He shook himself free of the folds of netting, and stood up on his hind legs, revealing himself as a slim ginger mongoose, about the size of a stoat. He stood there, swaying slightly from side to side, his mouth wide open, uttering the shrillest and most ear-piercing shrieks I have ever heard from an animal of that size. The dogs pulled up short and surveyed him in consternation as he swayed and shrieked before them; one, slightly braver than the rest, moved forward gingerly and sniffed at this strange creature. This was obviously what the mongoose had been waiting for; he dropped flat in the grass and slid forward like a snake, disappearing among the long grass stalks, and then suddenly reappearing in between the feet of our noble pack, where he proceeded to whirl round like a top, biting at every paw and leg in sight, and keeping up an incessant yarring scream as he did so. The dogs did their best to avoid his jaws, but they were at a disadvantage, for the long grass hid his approach, and all they could do was leap wildly in the air. Then, suddenly, their courage failed them, and they all turned tail and fled up the hill again, leaving the mongoose standing on his hind legs in the field of battle, panting slightly, but still able to screech taunts at their retreating tails.

The pack having thus been vanquished, it was left to us to try to capture this fierce, if diminutive, adversary. This we accomplished more easily than I had thought possible: I attracted his attention, and then got him to attack a canvas collecting bag, and while he was busily engaged in biting this, one of the hunters crept round behind him and threw a net over him. During the time we were disentangling the mongoose from the net and getting him into a bag, he nearly deafened us with his screams of rage, and he kept up this ghastly noise all the way home, though mercifully it was slightly muffled by the thick canvas. He did not stop until, on reaching Bafut, I tipped him into a large cage and threw in a gory chicken's head. He settled down to eat this in a very philosophical manner, and soon finished it. After that he remained silent, except when he caught sight of anyone, and then he would rush to the bars and start to scream abuse at them. It became so nerve-racking in the end that I was forced to cover the front of his cage with a bit of sacking until he had become more used to human company. Three days later I heard those familiar screeches echoing down the road, and long before the native hunter appeared hi sight I knew that another Dwarf Mongoose was being brought in. I was pleased to find that this second one was a young female, so I put her in with the one we had already captured. This was rather unwise of me, for they took to screaming in chorus, each trying to outdo the other, until the noise was as soothing as a knife drawn sideways across a plate, magnified several thousand times.

On arrival back at Bafut after my first day out with the Beagles, I received a note from the Fon asking me to go over to his house for a drink and to give him any hunting news there might be, so when I had eaten and changed I set off across the great courtyard and presently came to the Fon's little villa. He was seated on the veranda, holding a bottle of gin up to the light to see what the contents were.

'Ah, ma friend!’ he said, 'you done come? You done have good hunting for bush?'

'Yes,' I said, taking the chair he offered, 'hunter man for Bafut savvay catch fine beef. We done catch three beef

'Foine, foine,' said the Fon, pouring out five fingers of gin into a glass and handing it to me. You go stay here small time you go get plenty beef. I go tell all ma peoples.'

'Na so. I think Bafut people savvay catch beef pass all people for Cameroons.'

'Na true, na true,' said the Fon delightedly; 'you speak true, ma friend.'

We raised our glasses, chinked them together, beamed at one another, and then drank deeply. The Fon filled up the glasses again, and then sent one of his numerous retinue in search of a fresh bottle. By the time we had worked our way through most of this bottle we had mellowed considerably, and the Fon turned to me:

'You like musica?' he inquired.

'Yes, too much,' I said, truthfully, for I had heard that the Fon possessed a band of more than usual skill.

'Good! We go have some musica,' he said, and issued a terse command to one of his servants.

Presently the band filed into the compound below the veranda, and to my surprise it consisted of about twenty of the Fon's wives, all naked except for meagre loin-cloths. They were armed with a tremendous variety of drums, ranging from one the size of a small saucepan to the great deep-bellied specimens that required two people to carry them; there were also wooden and bamboo flutes that had a curious sweetness of tone, and large bamboo boxes filled with dried maize that gave forth a wonderful rustling rattle when shaken. But the most curious instrument in the band was a wooden pipe about four feet long. This was held upright, one end resting on the ground, and blown into in a special way, producing a deep, vibrating noise that was quite astonishing, for it was the sort of sound you would expect to come only from a lavatory with exceptional acoustics.

The band began to play, and soon various members of the Fon's household started to dance in the compound. The dance consisted of a sort of cross between folk dancing and ballroom dancing. The couples, clasping each other, would gyrate slowly round and round, their feet performing tiny and complicated steps, while their bodies wiggled and swayed in a way that no Palais de Danse would have allowed. Occasionally, a couple would break apart and each twirl off on their own for a time, doing their own swaying steps to the music, completely absorbed. The flutes twittered and squeaked, the drums galloped and shuddered, the rattles crashed and rustled with the monotonous regularity of waves on a shingle beach, and steadily, behind this frenzy of sound, you could hear the tuba-like instruments' cry, a gigantic catharsis every few seconds with the constancy of a heartbeat.

'You like my musica?' shouted the Fon.

'Yes, na very fine,' I roared back.

'You get dis kind of musica for your country?'

'No,' I said with genuine regret, 'we no get um.'

The Fon filled my glass again.

'Soon, when my people bring grass, we go have plenty musica, plenty dancing, eh? We go have happy time, we go be happy too much, no be so?'

'Yes, na so. We go have happy time.'

Outside in the compound the band played on, and the steady roll and thud of the drums seemed to drift up into the dark sky and make even the stars shiver and dance to their rhythm.

The rewere two species of the grassland fauna that I was very anxious to obtain during my stay in Bafut; one was the Rock Hyrax, and the other was Stanger's Squirrel. To get them I had to undertake two hunts in very different types of country, and they remain in my mind more vividly than almost all the other hunting experiences I had in the grasslands.

The first of these hunts was after the squirrel, and it was chiefly remarkable because for once I was able to plan a campaign in advance and carry it through successfully without any last-minute, unforeseen hitches. Stanger's squirrel is a reasonably common animal in the Cameroons, but previously I had hunted for it in the deep forest in the Mamfe basin. In this sort of country it spent its time in the top branches of the higher trees (feeding on the rich banquet of fruit growing in those sunny heights) and rarely coming down to ground level. This made its capture almost impossible. However, I had since learnt that in the grassland the squirrel frequented the small patches of forest on river-banks, and spent quite a large part of its time on the ground, foraging in the grass for food. This, I felt, would give one a better chance of