Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

There were so many fascinating things about this diminutive beast that I spent a quiet half-hour brooding over it in the hut, while Bob went for a walk round the village, accompanied by the still-smiling headman. As I examined the anteater a circle of silent Amerindians stood round me, watching me with serious, sympathetic expressions, as though they quite understood and appreciated my interest in the little animal.

The first thing that interested me about the creature was the adaptation of its feet to arboreal life. The pink pads on the hind feet were concave, so branches could fit easily into the hollow; the four toes were almost of equal length, placed very close together and terminating in long claws. So when the hind foot gripped a branch, the concave pad, the toes and the curved claws formed almost a complete circle round it, providing a strong and firm grip. The front feet were very peculiar: the hand was bent upwards from the wrist, and the two claws curved downwards into the palm.

These two long, slender but very sharp claws could be folded or squeezed into the palm of the hand with great strength, rather on the principle of a penknife blade. As a grasping organ this left nothing to be desired, and as a weapon of defence it was extremely useful and could easily draw blood as I found out to my cost. The anteater had a short, rather slender pink muzzle and small, sleepy-looking eyes. The ears were almost invisible in the soft fur. Its movements, except when attacking, were very slow, and its method of crawling about the twigs suspended by its claws made it look more like a form of Lilliputian sloth than an anteater. Being a strictly nocturnal animal it was not, of course, at its best during the day and merely wanted to be left alone to sleep.

So, when I had finished examining it, I propped the stick up in the corner, and the anteater, clutching the branch passionately, went peacefully to sleep, making no attempt to escape.

When Bob returned he was carrying rather gingerly on the end of a long stick a battered wicker basket. He looked very pleased with himself.

"While you were wasting your time crouching over that creature," he said, "I have been obtaining this rare specimen from one of the women, who would otherwise have eaten it, if her signs meant what I think they meant."

The rare specimen turned out to be a baby electric eel, some two feet long, which was wiggling vigorously round and round the basket. I was very pleased, for it was the only electric eel that we had obtained up till then. Having praised Bob for his astute piece of collecting I gathered our strange selection of purchases together, and we made our way down to the canoe. Here we thanked the headman for his help, and also the assembled villagers, smiled lavishly at everyone in sight, climbed into the canoe and pushed off.

I had put all the animals up in the bows, and I sat next to them. Then came Bob and the two paddlers sitting behind him. The pimpla hog amused us by doing a very skilful cakewalk up and down the shaft of my paddle and then curling up between my feet and going to sleep. Clutching his twig up in the bows, the Tank 'e God stood frozen in his attitude of supplication, looking not unlike an old ship's figurehead.

Below him the electric eel still wiggled hopefully round its basket.

The setting sun gilded and polished the creek to a blinding radiance and flooded the forest with light, making the leaves seem an, unearthly green against which the orchids stood out like precious stones. Somewhere in the distance a troop of red howlers started their evening song, an immense roaring, thundering cataract of sound that was echoed and magnified by the forest depths. It was a mad, savage, bloodcurdling noise, the sort of cry I could imagine a lynch mob giving if they saw their victim escaping. We often heard the red howlers roaring in Guiana , mostly in the evening or at night. Once I was awakened at two o'clock in the morning by their cries, and at first half-asleep, I imagined it to be the sound of a giant wind tearing through the forest.

When the howlers' song had died away, quiet returned to the creek. Under the arch of trees it was already gloomy, and the water lost its amber tints, becoming as smooth and black as pitch. Lazily we paddled, light-headed with hunger and fatigue, humming a vague accompaniment to the songs of the paddlers and the steady beat of their paddles. The air was warm and drowsy, full of the scents of the forest. The regular clop and gurgle of the paddles had a soothing, almost hypnotic, effect, and we began to feel pleasantly sleepy. At that bewitching twilight hour when everything was quiet and peaceful, as we relaxed contentedly in the smoothly sliding canoe, the electric eel escaped from its basket.

My attention was suddenly drawn to this by the pimpla hog, who shinned up my leg, and would, if I had let him, have gone right up to my head. I passed him back for Bob to hold, while I investigated the bows of the canoe to see what had frightened him. Looking down, I perceived the eel wiggling along the sloping canoe bottom towards my feet. I will always maintain that, next to a snake, an electric eel approaching your feet will produce the most astonishing muscular reaction the human body is capable of. How I got out of the way I don't know, but when I landed in the canoe again the eel had wiggled past and was heading towards Bob.

"Look out!" I yelled, "the eel's escaped."

Clasping the pimpla hog to his bosom. Bob tried to stand up, failed, and fell flat on his back in the bottom of the canoe. Whether the eel had turned off its current, or whether it was too frightened to bother about electrifying my companion, I don't know, but the fact remains that it slid past his wildly thrashing body as harmlessly and swiftly as a stream of water and headed for the first paddler. Evidently he also shared our aversion to coming into close contact with electric eels, for he gave every indication of abandoning ship as the creature approached him. Our combined attempts to get as far away from the eel as possible were making the canoe rock violently. Bob, in trying to sit upright, put his hand on the porcupine, and his yell of surprise and agony convinced me that the eel was returning and had attacked him in the rear. Apparently it convinced the porcupine as well for he hastily shinned up my leg again and tried to clamber on to my shoulder. If the first paddler had jumped over the side I am sure the canoe would have turned over. As it was, the situation was saved by the second paddler, who was obviously used to frolicking about in canoes with electric eels. He leant forward and pinned the creature down under the broad blade of his paddle. Then he made wild gestures at me until I threw him the wicker basket. This was now very much the worse for wear, as I had knelt on it by mistake while avoiding its occupant. The second paddler, by some ingenious means, pushed the eel back into the basket, and everyone felt better and started smiling at everyone else in a rather forced sort of way. The paddler handed the basket to his companion, who passed it hastily on to Bob, who, in turn, reluctantly accepted it. He was just passing it to me when the bottom fell out.

Bob was holding the basket as far away as possible from himself, so when the eel fell out it landed on the side of the canoe draped like a croquet hoop. It was unfortunate that its head should have been on the outside, for it needed no second chance: a quick wiggle, a splash, and it was gone into the dark depths of the creek.

Bob looked at me.

"Well," he said, "I'd rather it went outside than in."

I regret to say I agreed with him.

It was quite dark when we reached the last stretch of water.

We paddled along a carpet of reflected stars that quivered and danced in the ripples of our wake. Crickets and frogs all around us wheezed, purred, and tinkled like a shop full of clocks. We rounded the last bend and saw before us the hut with a flood of yellow lamplight streaming from the windows. The canoe grounded in the sand with a soft, lisping sigh, as though it was glad to be back. Collecting our animals we made our way across the soft sand, ghostly in the moonlight, towards the hut. We were tired, hungry, and rather depressed, for we knew that we had just made our last voyage into the magical world of the creeks and that we were soon to leave.