Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

I groped around and to my astonishment found another rat under his chest. As I pulled it out it gave a loud despairing cry and then relapsed into silence, lying limp in my hand as the first one had done. Bob got to his feet and brushed leaf mould off his clothes.

"What's so special about these creatures?" he asked."Are they particularly rare or something?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so. I'm just interested in them, that's all. I've never seen a live one before," I replied, still gazing at the rat in my hands.

Bob looked at me indignantly.

"D'you mean to say that I've risked getting tetanus to capture a rat that's not even rare, just because you're interested in it?"

"Well, of course, it's a very nice thing to have. Besides," I pointed out, "look at the method of capture: not many people can boast that they've caught two rats by lying on them, can they?"

"That's small comfort," said Bob coldly.

"I thought I was capturing something that had never been Brought Back Alive before."

"No, nothing like that. But they are interesting. Come and look."

Bob came over rather reluctantly and stared at the rat sitting in the palm of my hand. It was a fat creature with long, coarse fur which was a brindled mixture of ginger and chocolate hair. It had the usual thick, naked rat's tail, small ears, large, dreamy black eyes, and a mass of white whiskers.

"Well," said Bob, "I don't see anything very interesting about it. It looks like any other rat to me."

"Look at this," I said.

I stroked the rat's fur up the wrong way with my forefinger, and as it fell back into place you could see that it was mixed with numerous long, dark spines. Looking at them closely you could see that they were flattened, pliable to touch and not particularly sharp; they somewhat resembled the spines of a porcupine. The exact use of these spines is doubtful: it seems unlikely that they have been developed for defence, since they are not sharp enough to do any damage, and they bend too easily. Later on I experimented with these rats, and I found that under no circumstances would they use these spines for defence or attack. They may possibly have some control over the spines, that is to say they may be able to erect them as a porcupine does, but I never saw them do so. They seemed the most philosophical of rodents, accepting captivity without any fuss. They never ran wildly around their cage when you cleaned it out, as other freshly caught rats do; they simply sat in a corner and stared at you with complete lack of interest. If you had to move them over, so that you could clean under them, they would take their time about shifting and stroll across the cage uttering their curious complaining wail. They developed a passion for eating anolis, and I thought it rather strange that they should have a taste for these lizards. Most of the forest rats will eat live grasshoppers and beetles, but I have never seen a species that will tackle anything as large as a lizard. This taste must have been a product of captivity, for I can't see how such a heavy, slow-moving creature as a soldier rat can shin up and down the bushes that anolis frequent and catch these nimble lizards.

With the rats safely ensconced in a cloth bag we continued on our way. We crossed another sand reef, but it was quite a small one and not so exhausting as the first. On the other side we plunged into thick forest and almost immediately found ourselves in a large clearing among the trees. From its square shape we could see that the clearing had been made by man. It was obviously a native farm that had been abandoned, and now a riot of lush, low growth spread across it, thickly encrusted with flowers, and the still, hot air was full of butterflies. The last remnants of cultivation were a few stunted banana trees bearing bunches of small, undernourished fruit; they were almost hidden under a cloak of climbing plants which had used their thick trunks as a ladder in their climb towards the sun. Behind them, window deep in undergrowth, was the tattered wreck of a palm-leaf hut, with three small saplings growing up through its gaping and sagging roof. This had been the Amerindian settlement, but, Cordai explained, they had now moved over to the far side of the lake. We crossed the derelict farm clearing waist-high in the thick moist tangle of plants and made our way into the forest on the opposite side, following a narrow, muddy path that got progressively wetter, until we rounded a corner and saw the lake stretched out before us.

I have never seen such a large expanse of water so still and lifeless: the trees and undergrowth round its shores were reflected in the water as clearly and exactly as in a mirror. No wind wrinkled the brown water, nor were there any dark rings caused by rising fish. The reed-beds that fringed the shore, the trees, even two little islands in the middle of the lake, all seemed devoid of life. The silence was so complete that it seemed unnatural. There was not even the usual faint undercurrent of insect noises, Cordai explained that we should have to shout to the Amerindians to come over and fetch us in canoes, so while Bob, Ivan, and I sat down to have a smoke he rolled up his trousers, displaying his thin and bandy legs, and waded out into the shallows. He cleared his throat several times, struck an attitude vaguely reminiscent of an operatic tenor and then let forth a shrill and hair-raising shriek. Even the usually imperturbable Ivan dropped his cigarette with shock as this frightful cry rolled out across the lake and echoed a thousand times among the reeds and the green blanket of forest, until it began to sound like a herd of pigs being slaughtered at the bottom of a well. I scanned the opposite shore with my field-glasses, but there was no sign of life. Cordai hitched up his trousers, took a deep breath and let forth another banshee wail, with the same result. As the fourth wail echoed round the lake and died away Bob began to groan.

"I really can't sit here and listen to that man yelling his lungs out," he protested.

"Can't we move further away where we won't hear him, and then he can come and tell us when he's finished?"

I thought this a good idea, so we went back through the trees until the intervening foliage dimmed Cordai's voice, and there we sat down. For an hour he stood in the water, letting off a scream every five minutes, and at the end of that time his voice was hoarse and thin and our nerves were in shreds.

"Even if there are any Amerindians," said Bob, his fingers in his ears, "I don't believe they'd come in response to a voice like that."

"Let's go and help him," I suggested.

"Why?" asked Bob. "Don't you think he's making enough noise?"

"Well, if four of us yell it'll make more noise than one."

"It sounds a rather doubtful advantage, but we can try, I suppose. Although if the Amerindians haven't heard Cordai's top notes they must be a tribe that's deaf from birth."

We walked back through the trees and joined Cordai in the hike-warm lake water. After our first combined effort we discovered the reason for Cordai's shrill falsetto yelps; some strange acoustic property of the lake made ordinary shouting out of the question, for the sound was deadened.

Only a shrill yodel could achieve the required echoing result. So we set up a chorus of screams that could quite easily have risen from the depths of Dante's Inferno. All went well, and the lake was vibrating with echoes when I suddenly caught sight of Bob's face as he was in the middle of a prolonged and carefully executed yodel, and I had to sit down on the bank to recover from my laughter. Bob joined me, and we sat and stared at the flat, shining expanse of water.

"What about swimming across?" suggested Bob.

I measured the distance suspiciously with my eyes.

"It's about half a mile, I should say. I don't see why we shouldn't, if we take it easy."