Gerald Durrell (16 page)

“Yes, sah,” said
the hunter. With the aid of the spectators we carried the heavy basket into the
animal house and laid it on the floor. I emptied two buckets of water over the
snake, for I was sure it must be very thirsty. Then I cut the ropes that tied
the tail to the basket. These had been pulled so tight that they had, in
places, cut into the lovely skin. I rubbed the tail for a time to try and
restore the circulation that must have been checked by these tight bonds. Then
I shooed the villagers out of the compound and retired once more to bed.

In the morning I
examined the python, and as far as I could judge it seemed undamaged, though
very cramped by the size of the basket, which appeared to have been built round
the reptile after capture. After a long bargaining session, which lasted all
through breakfast, I at length bought it at my price, and then the question of
caging arose. I chose the largest box I could find, and the carpenter was
detailed to do a rush job converting it for the snake. By lunch time the cage
was ready and filled with a thick layer of dried banana leaves to give the
python a soft bed to lie on. Then came the question of getting him out of the
basket and into the box.

Now, ordinarily,
if you have a few trustworthy men to help you, the moving of a python of any
size is simple. Someone grabs the head, someone the tail, and the others hold
on to various bits of his body. Keep him well stretched out so that he has no
chance to coil round anything, and he is comparatively helpless. All I lacked
was the few trustworthy men. To the Africans the python is a poisonous snake,
and does not only poison you with his tongue, but with the sharp point of his
tail as well. Useless for me to protest that I would hold the head, while they
held the harmless parts of his anatomy. They would point out that they could
easily be killed by the tail. I had no particular desire to get the python out
of his basket and then have my helpers suddenly let go and leave me on my own
to subdue his great length. After a prolonged argument I got angry.

“Listen,” I
said, “if this snake is not inside that box in half an hour no one will get any
pay.”

So saying, I cut
through the side of the basket, grabbed the python firmly round the neck, and
proceeded to pull him out, yard by yard. As each length of him was pulled out
of the basket reluctant black hands took hold of it. Holding his head in one
hand I waited for his tail to come into view, and then I grabbed it. Thus the
python was now stretched in a circle: I held his head and his tail, and a ring
of frightened Africans held gingerly on to his wriggling body. Then I thrust
his tail into the box, and we gently eased his body after it, foot by foot.
When it was all inside I pushed his head in, let go quickly, and slammed the
door shut and sat on it with a sigh of relief. The staff were very excited at
their own bravery and stood around showing each other how they had held it,
what it had felt like, and what a great weight it was and so on. I sent one of
them down to the village to purchase a chicken, for I felt that the reptile
might be hungry, and when it arrived I placed it with the snake. During the
night it ate the fowl and I thought it was going to be all right. Then came one
of those twists that make collecting so difficult: the python’s tail, which had
been tied up so tightly and for so long, developed gangrene. This is the danger
of tying up any creature too tightly even in a cool climate, but in the tropics
gangrene develops and spreads with ferocious rapidity. Within ten days there
was nothing I could do for the reptile: it was feeding well, but the condition
of its tail got worse, in spite of antiseptic treatment. Very reluctantly I was
forced to put it out of its misery. Stretched out, it measured eighteen and a
half feet in length. On dissection it proved to be a female with some
half-developed eggs inside.

I never saw a
python that size alive again, and I was never brought another even approaching
that size.

The general
impression of collecting seems to be that you have only to obtain an animal,
stick it in a cage, and the job is done. As a rule it means that the job has
only just begun: to locate and capture a specimen may be hard, but it pales
into insignificance in comparison with the task of finding it a suitable
substitute food, getting it to eat that food, watching to see that it does not
develop some disease from close confinement, or sore feet through constant
contact with wooden boards. All this in addition to the daily routine of
cleaning and feeding, seeing they get neither too much sun nor too little, and
so on. There are some creatures who simply will not eat on arrival, and hours
have to be spent devising titbits to try and tempt them. Sometimes with this
sort of specimen you are lucky, and by experiment you discover something which
it likes. But in some cases they will refuse everything, and then the only
thing to do is to release the creatures back into the forest. In some cases,
which were fortunately rare, you could neither satisfy the animal’s palate, nor
could you release it: these cases were the very young specimens. The very worst
of these in my experience were the baby duikers.

The duikers are
a collection of antelope found only in Africa. They range from the size of a
fox-terrier to the size of a St Bernard, and in colour from a pale slaty blue
to a rich fox-red. It was the latter species of duiker which seemed exceedingly
common around Eshobi. During the time I was there it was apparently the
breeding season for this duiker, and the hunters out shooting were always finding
the young in the forest, or else shooting a female to find that she had been
accompanied by her baby. Then the baby was caught and brought to me. Apropos of
this I would like to point out that the protection laws for animals in the
Cameroons do not take into consideration the breeding season of any animal, so
that the hunter is within his rights to kill a female with young. To him this
is a windfall, for he not only gets the mother but the youngster as well, and
this without wasting any gunpowder on it. Judging by the number of babies that
were brought to me, the annual slaughter during the breeding season must be
considerable and, although this species of duiker seems very common at the
moment, one wonders how long they will remain so.

When the first
duiker was brought to me I purchased it, constructed a suitable cage, and felt
very elated at this beautiful addition to the collection. Very soon I realized
that these duiker were going to be more difficult than any deer or antelope I
had previously dealt with. For the first day the baby would not eat anything,
and was very nervous. The next day it realized that I was not going to hurt it
and then started to follow me around like a dog, gazing up at me trustfully out
of its great, dark, liquid eyes. But it still refused the bottle. I tried every
trick I knew to get it to drink: I bought an adult duiker skin and draped it
over a chair, and when the baby nosed round it, presented the nipple of the
bottle from under the skin. The baby would take a few half-hearted sucks, and
then wander off. I tried hot milk, warm milk, cold milk, sweet milk, sour milk,
bitter milk, all to no purpose. I put a string around its neck and took it for
walks in the adjacent forest, for it was just at the age when it could be weaned,
and I hoped that it might come across some leaf or plant that it would eat. We
walked round and round, but the only thing it did was to scratch a small hole
in the leafy floor and lick up a little earth. Day by day I watched it getting
weaker, and I tried desperate measures: it was held down and forced to drink,
but this process frightened it so much in its weakened condition that it was
doing more harm than good. In desperation I sent the cook off to the nearest
town to try and buy a milking goat. Goats are not so easy to come by in the
forest areas, and it was three days before he returned. By this time the baby
was dead. The cook had brought with him the most ugly and stupid goat it had
ever been my misfortune to come into contact with, a beast that proved to be
absolutely useless. During the three months we had her she gave, very
reluctantly, about two cupfuls of milk. At the sight of a baby duiker she would
put her head down and try to charge it. It required three people to hold her
while the baby drank. In the end she was consigned to the kitchen, where she
provided the main ingredients for a number of fine curries.

Still the baby
duikers were brought in, and still they refused to eat, wasted, and died. At
one time I had six of these beautiful little creatures wandering forlornly
around the compound, occasionally uttering a long-drawn-out, pathetic
“barrrrr”, exactly like a lamb. Each time that one arrived on the end of a
string I swore that I would not buy it, but when it nuzzled my hand with its wet
nose, and turned its great dark eyes on me, I was lost. Perhaps, I would think,
this one will be different: perhaps it will drink, and so I would buy it, only
to find it was the same as all the others. Six baby duikers wandering around
the camp bleating hungrily, and yet refusing everything that was offered, was
not the sort of thing to raise anyone’s spirits, and at length I called a halt
to the purchase of them. I realized that they would be consigned to the
cook-pot of the hunter if I did not buy them, but I felt that this was at least
a quick death in comparison to the gradual wasting away. I shall never forget
the long and depressing struggle I had with these little antelope: the hours
walking in the forest, leading them on strings, trying to tempt them to eat
various leaves and grasses, the long wet struggle with the bottle, both the
baby and myself dripping milk, but only the smallest amount going down its
throat; crawling out of bed at three in the morning to repeat this dampening
process, half asleep, the babies struggling and kicking, tearing my pyjamas
with their sharp little hooves; the gradually weakening legs, the dull coats,
their big eyes sinking into their sockets, and growing dim. It was by this
experience more than any other that I learnt that collecting is not as easy as
it appears.

It was during
the time that I was suffering the trials and tribulations of duiker rearing
that I engaged what in the Cameroons is known as a Watchnight. It was my first
introduction to this fraternity, and throughout my time in the Cameroons I
suffered much at their hands. There were two reasons for engaging a
nightwatchman: the first was that I needed someone to put the kettle on and
heat the water for the night feed of the duikers, and then to wake me up. The
second, and more important reason, was that he patrolled the edge of the
compound every two hours or so on the look out for driver-ant columns which
appeared with such speed and silence. No one, unless they have seen a
driver-ant column on the march, can conceive the numbers, the speed, or the
ferocity of these insects.

The columns are
perhaps two inches wide, and may be two or three miles in length. On the
outside walk the soldiers, creatures about half an inch long, with huge heads
and great curved jaws. In the middle travel the workers, very much smaller than
the soldiers, but still capable of giving a sharp bite. These columns wend
their way through the forest, devouring all they come across; if they reach an
area which contains a plentiful supply of food they fan out, and within a few
minutes the ground is a black, moving carpet of ants. Let one of these columns
get into a collection of animals, and within a few minutes your cages would be
full of writhing specimens being eaten alive.