Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

It was not until the following night that the babies were ready to leave the mother, and I would have missed this extraordinary exodus if I had not glanced casually into the tin at about midnight. I had just finished the last job of the night, which was to give the armadillos their hot-water bottle. The weather had been getting colder, and these little animals seemed to feel it more than the others.

Before switching off the arc-lights and retiring to my cabin I looked into the pipa toad's maternity ward, and I was surprised to see a minute replica of the mother floating on the surface of the water at her side. Obviously the moment for the great hatching had arrived. I had for the last two hours been yearning for my comfortable bunk, but the sight of this queer, misshapen little amphibian made me suddenly feel very wide awake. I carried an arc-light across the hold and hung it over the tin; then I squatted down to watch.

Now I have witnessed, at one time or another, a great variety of different births. I have watched amoebae splitting into two as casually as quicksilver; hens going through the apparently effortless performance of egg-laying; the messy and prolonged labour of a cow, and the quick, dainty birth of a fawn; the nonchalant, careless spawning of fish, and the pathetic and incredibly human birth of a baby monkey. All these have moved and fascinated me. There are many other phenomena in nature, some quite common, which I can never watch without a feeling of awe: the turning of tadpoles into half-frogs, and then complete frogs; the fantastic way a spider will step out of its own skin and walk away, leaving a transparent, microscopically exact replica of itself, fragile as wood ash, lying there to be destroyed by the wind; the way a blunt and ugly pupa will split and tear, releasing from inside a wonderfully coloured butterfly or moth, a transformation more extraordinary than anything to be found in a fairy tale. But I have rarely been so absorbed or so astounded as I was that night by the arrival of the baby pipa toads in mid-Atlantic.

At first there was little activity apart from the usual arm and leg waving. I thought that the fierce glare of the arc-light might be disturbing them, so I shaded it slightly, and very soon things began to happen. In one of the pockets I could see the tiny occupant twitching and struggling frantically, turning round and round, so that first his legs and then his | head would appear in the opening. Then he remained quiet for some time. Having rested he proceeded to thrust his head and shoulders through the opening. Then he paused again to rest, for it seemed to cost him a considerable effort to prise himself loose from the encircling rim of his mother's thick, elastic skin. Presently he started to wiggle like a fish, throwing its head from side to side, and slowly his body started to ease itself out of the pocket, like a reluctant cork out of a bottle. Soon he was lying exhausted across his mother's back, with his hind feet still hidden inside the pock-mark that had seen his nursery for so long. Then he dragged himself across his mother's cratered and eroded skin, slid into the water and loafed immobile, another scrap of life entering the universe. He and his brother who floated beside him would have fitted comfortably on to the surface of a sixpence and left plenty of room to spare, yet they were perfect little pipa toads, and from the moment they entered the water they could swim and dive with great speed and strength.

I had watched four pipa toads enter the world, when I was joined by two members of the ship's crew. Coming off duty hey had seen the light in the hold and had come down to find out if there was anything wrong. They were interested to find out why I was crouching over a kerosene tin at two o'clock in the morning. Briefly I explained what pipa toads were, how hey mated and laid their eggs, and how I was now watching he last act in the drama being unfolded in the depths of the kerosene tin. The men stared into the tin just as another toad started his struggle to get out, and they stayed to watch. Presently three other members of the crew arrived to see what was keeping their companions, and were immediately shushed to silence. In whispers the mystery of the toads was explained, and three new members joined the circle of watchers.

My attention was now divided between the toads and the sailors, for I found them both equally interesting. In the tin the small, flat flakes of amphibian life struggled through the portholes in their mother's skin, oblivious of everything except their own microscopic fight for life; found this tin squatted the group of ordinary seamen, reasonably hard-living and, one would have thought, unemotional men whose every word was prefaced by a procreative expletive and whose only interests in life (if you judged by their conversation) were drink, gambling, and women. Yet those hardened and unsentimental examples of the human race crouched round that kerosene tin at two o'clock in the morning, cold and uncomfortable, watching with incredulous wonder the beginnings of life for the baby toads, talking occasionally in hushed whispers as though they were in church. Half an hour previously they had not known that such things as pipa toads existed, yet now they were as interested and as anxious for the welfare of the little amphibians as they would have been over their own offspring. With worried expressions they watched the babies twirling in their pockets before struggling to freedom. Then they became tense and anxious as the young wiggled and twisted their way out, pausing to recuperate now and then. When one, weaker than the rest, took a tremendously long time to work free, the men became quite restive, and one of them asked me plaintively if we could not help it with a matchstick. I pointed out that the baby toad's arms and legs were as thin as cotton, and his body as fragile as a soap bubble, so any attempting to help him might maim him terribly. When, eventually, the laggard hauled himself free there came a general sigh of relief, and the man who had suggested helping the toad turned to me.

"Game little sod, isn't he, sir?" he said proudly. The time seemed to fly past, and before we realized it dawn was coming up over the grey sea, while we still sat in a circle round the toads. We arose, stiff and aching, and made our way down to the galley for an early-morning cup of tea. The news of the wonderful toads soon spread through the ship, and for the next two days I had an endless stream of visitors coming down into the hold to see them. At one point the crowd round the tin got so dense that I feared they might accidentally kick it over, so I enlisted the aid of the five men who had been with me on the night the babies hatched. They took it in turn, when off duty, to come down into the hold and guard the toads from harm. As I went about my endless task of feeding and cleaning I could hear these protectors keeping the crowd in order.

"Shut up, can't you? What d'you want to stamp about like that for? D'you want to scare 'em to death?"

"Yes, all out of the old one's back … there, see them 'oles? In there they was, all curled up neat.

"Ere! No pushing, now. You want me to upset the ruddy can?"

I really think those men were sorry to lose the toads when I disembarked at Liverpool .

All this came about, as I say, because of Bob's determined efforts at dredging in one of the smallest and most uninteresting streams in the whole of the creek lands. When we had assured ourselves that no more toads lurked in the leaf choked channel we moved to another equally unattractive stream and worked up its length. But the Gods of collecting had smiled on us once that night and they were not going to overdo things, so we caught no more pipa toads. At length, muddy and tired, carrying our precious captures most carefully, we made our way back to the main creek. Here we found that we were about an hour overdue, and a worried Ivan was searching the bank for us, thinking that we must have been eaten by jaguars. We proudly exhibited our treasures to him, climbed into the canoe and set off for the village.