Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

The canoe plunged once more into the creek, and after half a mile or so we heard to our joy, voices and laughter echoing through the trees. We slid along in the shadow of the bank and then turned into a tiny bay where a group of Amerindian women were washing in the warm creek water, splashing, laughing, and chattering as cheerfully as a group of birds.

They surrounded us as we landed, a naked, grinning wall of brown humanity, and led us up to the village, talking and laughing excitedly. The village lay behind a belt of trees and consisted of seven or eight large huts. These were just sloping palm-leaf roofs supported on four poles. The floors were raised two or three feet from the ground to allow for any flood water that might inundate the village. They were simply furnished with a few cotton hammocks strung about and one or two iron cooking pots.

The elderly, wrinkled headman came to greet us, shook hands fervently and led us into one of the huts, where we all sat down and smiled at each other in silence for about five minutes. When a group of people has no common language it cuts down small-talk to the minimum. The headman, still smiling at us delightedly, issued a curt order, and a youth shinned up a nearby palm tree and cut down two coconuts. The ends were lopped off, and they were ceremoniously handed to us so that we could quench our thirst with the sweet milk they contained. I tilted my head back to drain the last drops from the shell, when I saw a creature sitting above me on a beam, and the sight –of it so surprised me that I started to laugh. This is not the wisest thing to do when drinking out of a coconut. Between gasps and coughs I gestured helplessly at the roof; luckily, the headman understood me, and, climbing into a hammock, he reached up and seized the animal by its tail and pulled it off the beam. It uttered a series of pathetic grunts as it dangled by its tail, revolving slowly.

"Good God!" said Bob, catching sight of its face as it spun round.

"What on earth's that?"

Bob's surprise was natural, for the headman was holding one of the most ridiculous-looking creatures imaginable.

"That," I said, still coughing, "is a real, live pimpla hog."

Now the pimpla hog was an animal that had kept cropping up in conversation with hunters wherever we had been in Guiana .

Sooner or later the inhabitants of the place we were in would ask me if I wanted a pimpla hog. I always replied that I did, whereupon they would promise to get me one. That would be the end of the matter. They would go away and never mention the animal again, and no specimen would be forthcoming. Pimpla hogs are tree porcupines, and porcupines are generally common enough and fairly simple to catch, so when none turned up I began to wonder what the reason was.

Beyond raising the market price of the beast a trifle, I did nothing constructive. I imagined that one porcupine would be much like another, and I was not greatly enamoured of the family. If I had only known from the beginning what charming and lovable beasts pimpla hogs were I would have made desperate efforts to get some. In fact, I would have gone on buying them if they had arrived by the sackful, for once I got to know them I found them quite irresistible.

The headman set the beast on the floor, where it immediately sat up on its hind legs and gazed soulfully at us, presenting such a ludicrous appearance that both Bob and I were convulsed with laughter. It was about the size of a Scotch terrier, clad completely in long, sharp black and white spines. It had fat little paws and a long, hairy, and prehensile tail. But it was the face that was so ridiculous, for peering out of this mass of spines was a visage so like that of the late W.C.Fields that it took your breath away.

There was the great swollen nose whiffling to and fro and on each side a small, cunning, and yet somehow sad little eye brimming with unshed. Regarding us with all the shrewd malignancy of the great comedian, the porcupine bunched its little front paws into fists and started to sway back and forth, looking like a pugilist who had received the knock-out blow and was just about to go down for the count. Then, suddenly, it forgot it was being a bloodthirsty boxer, sat down on fat haunches and started to scratch itself thoroughly; a blissful expression spread over its face, while its nose twitched and snuffled.

I had only to look once at that ridiculous face to realize that I had become a pimpla hog fan for life, so I paid the headman's price without a murmur.

The tree porcupine is, in my opinion, the only real comedian in the animal world. Monkeys can be comic, but only because they present a slightly disconcerting caricature of ourselves; ducks can be funny, but not surely by any effort on their part they are simply made like that; other animal's can amuse us in different ways. But I have yet to meet an animal, other than the tree porcupine, that has all the trappings of a clown and uses them with such consummate skill. To watch a pimpla hog you would swear that the creature knew it was being funny and, moreover, knew how to play for laughs. The bulbous, wobbling nose almost hiding the small, rheumy eyes with their faintly bewildered expression, the flat, shuffling hind feet and the trailing tail, all these were the make-up of the clown, and the creature seemed to extract the last ounce of humour out of them. It will do something incredibly stupid, but with such a puzzled, benign expression on its face, that you laugh and feel sorry for it in the same moment, this poor, stumbling, well-meaning creature with the balloon nose. This is the essence of the comic art, Chaplinesque genius that can make you laugh at the creature and yet at the same moment be touched by its pathos.

I have watched two pimpla hogs having a boxing-match. It was fast and furious, and yet not once did one touch the other, nor did their expressions change from that of a kindly and slightly bewildered interest in one another. It –was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Again, I have watched one juggling with a mango seed, fumbling clumsily, almost dropping it but never quite doing so. I have seen a clown in a circus doing this with far less skill and success I would strongly advise any professional comedian to keep a tree porcupine as a pet he would learn more about his art in ten minutes by watching it than he could learn in ten years by any other means.

When we had bought the porcupine we made the headman understand by various signs that we should like to see any other animals there were in the village, and in a very short time we had bought four parrots, an agouti, and a young boa constrictor. Then a boy of about fourteen arrived carrying on the end of a stick a furry object which at first glance I thought was some giant moth cocoon. But a second look informed me that it was something much more interesting and valuable than that, and was, moreover, a creature that I had been longing to obtain.

"What is it?" asked Bob, who could tell by the expression on my face that something special had turned up.

"One of Amos's relatives," I answered gleefully.

"What?"

"A two-toed anteater. You know, the pygmy kind I wanted."

The animal was about six inches long, tubby as a kitten, clad in thick, silky reddish fur, soft as moleskin. It clung to the branch with its curiously shaped claws and its long tail which was wound round and round the stick. As I touched its back it performed a strange action with incredible speed: it let go of the branch with its front claws and sat up quite straight, supported on the tripod of its feet and tail; it held its arms straight up in the air, as though it was preparing for a high dive. It remained in this position as though frozen. As I touched it again, however, it suddenly came to life; still holding itself stiffly, it let itself fall forward and brought its front legs down with a chopping motion at the same time. If my hand had been in the way the two main claws on its front feet, as large and as sharp as a tiger's claws, would have landed on the back of my wrist. Having gone through this action, the anteater then stood up again, rigid as a guardsman, and awaited the next round. With its little arms raised to heaven it looked as though it was beseeching the Almighty's aid in its defence, and I thought how apt the local name of Tank ‘e God was for the creature.