The Bafut Beagles

by Gerald Durrell

  Having thus produced silence, I pointed at the bloodstained hunter.

  ‘Now, how you done get dis wound, ma friend?’

  ‘Masa, beef done chop me.’

  ‘Beef? What kind of beef?’

  ‘Eh! Masa, I no savvay. ’E de bite too much, sah.’

  I examined his hand and found that a chunk the size of a shilling had been neatly removed from the palm. I rendered primitive first-aid, and then went into the matter of the animal that had bitten him.

  ‘Which side dis beef?’

  ‘’E dere dere for dat hole, sah,’ said the wounded one, pointing at a cleft in the base of a large rock.

  ‘You no savvay what kind of beef?’

  ‘No, sah,’ he said aggrievedly, ‘I no see um. I go come for dis place an’ I see dat hole. I tink sometime dere go be beef for inside, so I done put ma hand for dere. Den dis beef ’e done chop me.’

  ‘Whah! Dis man no get fear,’ I said, turning to the other hunters, ‘he no go look de hole first. He done put his hand for inside and beef done chop him.’

  The other hunters giggled. I turned to the wounded man again.

  ‘Ma friend, you done put your hand for dis hole, eh? Now, sometimes you go find snake for dis kind of place, no be so? If snake done chop you what you go do?’

  ‘I no savvay, Masa,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘I no want dead hunter man, ma friend, so you no go do dis sort of foolish thing again, you hear?’

  ‘I hear, sah.’

  ‘All right. Now we go look dis beef that done chop you.’

  Taking a torch from the collecting bag I crouched down by the hole and peered up it. In the torch beam a pair of small eyes glowed ruby red, and then a little, pointed, ginger-coloured face appeared round them, uttered a shrill, snarling screech, and disappeared into the gloom at the back of the hole.

  ‘Ah!’ said one of the hunters who had heard the noise, ‘dis na bush dog. Dis beef ’e fierce too much, sah.’

  Unfortunately, the pidgin English term ‘bush dog’ is used indiscriminately to describe a great variety of small mammals, few of which are even remotely related to dogs, so the hunter’s remark left me none the wiser as to what sort of an animal it was. After some argument, we decided that the best way to get the beast to show itself was to light a fire outside the hole, and then blow smoke into it by fanning with a bunch of leaves. This we proceeded to do, having first hung a small net over the mouth of the hole. The first whiff of smoke had hardly drifted in amongst the rocks when the beast shot out of the hole and into the net with such force that it was torn from its moorings, and the animal rolled down the slope into the long grass, carrying the net with him. The dogs scrambled after him, barking uproariously with excitement, and we followed close on their heels, yelling threats as to what punishment they would receive if they harmed the quarry. However, the beast hardly needed our help, for he was perfectly capable of looking after himself, as we soon found out.

  He shook himself free of the folds of netting, and stood up on his hind legs, revealing himself as a slim ginger mongoose, about the size of a stoat. He stood there, swaying slightly from side to side, his mouth wide open, uttering the shrillest and most ear-piercing shrieks I have ever heard from an animal of that size. The dogs pulled up short and surveyed him in consternation as he swayed and shrieked before them; one, slightly braver than the rest, moved forward gingerly and sniffed at this strange creature. This was obviously what the mongoose had been waiting for; he dropped flat in the grass and slid forward like a snake, disappearing among the long grass stalks, and then suddenly reappearing in between the feet of our noble pack, where he proceeded to whirl round like a top, biting at every paw and leg in sight, and keeping up an incessant yarring scream as he did so. The dogs did their best to avoid his jaws, but they were at a disadvantage, for the long grass hid his approach, and all they could do was leap wildly in the air. Then, suddenly, their courage failed them, and they all turned tail and fled up the hill again, leaving the mongoose standing on his hind legs in the field of battle, panting slightly, but still able to screech taunts at their retreating tails.

  The pack having thus been vanquished, it was left to us to try to capture this fierce, if diminutive, adversary. This we accomplished more easily than I had thought possible: I attracted his attention, and then got him to attack a canvas collecting bag, and while he was busily engaged in biting this, one of the hunters crept round behind him and threw a net over him. During the time we were disentangling the mongoose from the net and getting him into a bag, he nearly deafened us with his screams of rage, and he kept up this ghastly noise all the way home, though mercifully it was slightly muffled by the thick canvas. He did not stop until, on reaching Bafut, I tipped him into a large cage and threw in a gory chicken’s head. He settled down to eat this in a very philosophical manner, and soon finished it. After that he remained silent, except when he caught sight of anyone, and then he would rush to the bars and start to scream abuse at them. It became so nerve-racking in the end that I was forced to cover the front of his cage with a bit of sacking until he had become more used to human company. Three days later I heard those familiar screeches echoing down the road, and long before the native hunter appeared in sight I knew that another Dwarf Mongoose was being brought in. I was pleased to find that this second one was a young female, so I put her in with the one we had already captured. This was rather unwise of me, for they took to screaming in chorus, each trying to outdo the other, until the noise was as soothing as a knife drawn sideways across a plate, magnified several thousand times.

  On arrival back at Bafut after my first day out with the Beagles, I received a note from the Fon asking me to go over to his house for a drink and to give him any hunting news there might be, so when I had eaten and changed I set off across the great courtyard and presently came to the Fon’s little villa. He was seated on the veranda, holding a bottle of gin up to the light to see what the contents were.

  ‘Ah, ma friend!’ he said, ‘you done come? You done have good hunting for bush?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, taking the chair he offered, ‘hunter man for Bafut savvay catch fine beef. We done catch three beef.’

  ‘Foine, foine,’ said the Fon, pouring out five fingers of gin into a glass and handing it to me. ‘You go stay here small time you go get plenty beef. I go tell all ma peoples.’

  ‘Na so. I think Bafut people savvay catch beef pass all people for Cameroons.’

  ‘Na true, na true,’ said the Fon delightedly; ‘you speak true, ma friend.’

  We raised our glasses, chinked them together, beamed at one another, and then drank deeply. The Fon filled up the glasses again, and then sent one of his numerous retinue in search of a fresh bottle. By the time we had worked our way through most of this bottle we had mellowed considerably, and the Fon turned to me:

  ‘You like musica?’ he inquired.

  ‘Yes, too much,’ I said, truthfully, for I had heard that the Fon possessed a band of more than usual skill.

  ‘Good! We go have some musica,’ he said, and issued a terse command to one of his servants.

  Presently the band filed into the compound below the veranda, and to my surprise it consisted of about twenty of the Fon’s wives, all naked except for meagre loin-cloths. They were armed with a tremendous variety of drums, ranging from one the size of a small saucepan to the great deep-bellied specimens that required two people to carry them; there were also wooden and bamboo flutes that had a curious sweetness of tone, and large bamboo boxes filled with dried maize that gave forth a wonderful rustling rattle when shaken. But the most curious instrument in the band was a wooden pipe about four feet long. This was held upright, one end resting on the ground, and blown into in a special way, producing a deep, vibrating noise that was quite astonishing, for it was the sort of sound you would expect to come only from a lavatory with exceptional acoustics.

  The band began to play, and soon various members of the Fon’s household started
to dance in the compound. The dance consisted of a sort of cross between folk dancing and ballroom dancing. The couples, clasping each other, would gyrate slowly round and round, their feet performing tiny and complicated steps, while their bodies wiggled and swayed in a way that no Palais de Danse would have allowed. Occasionally, a couple would break apart and each twirl off on their own for a time, doing their own swaying steps to the music, completely absorbed. The flutes twittered and squeaked, the drums galloped and shuddered, the rattles crashed and rustled with the monotonous regularity of waves on a shingle beach, and steadily, behind this frenzy of sound, you could hear the tuba-like instruments’ cry, a gigantic catharsis every few seconds with the constancy of a heartbeat.

  ‘You like my musica?’ shouted the Fon.

  ‘Yes, na very fine,’ I roared back.

  ‘You get dis kind of musica for your country?’

  ‘No,’ I said with genuine regret, ‘we no get um.’

  The Fon filled my glass again.

  ‘Soon, when my people bring grass, we go have plenty musica, plenty dancing, eh? We go have happy time, we go be happy too much, no be so?’

  ‘Yes, na so. We go have happy time.’

  Outside in the compound the band played on, and the steady roll and thud of the drums seemed to drift up into the dark sky and make even the stars shiver and dance to their rhythm.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Squirrel That Booms

  There were two species of the grassland fauna that I was very anxious to obtain during my stay in Bafut; one was the Rock Hyrax, and the other was Stanger’s Squirrel. To get them I had to undertake two hunts in very different types of country, and they remain in my mind more vividly than almost all the other hunting experiences I had in the grasslands.

  The first of these hunts was after the squirrel, and it was chiefly remarkable because for once I was able to plan a campaign in advance and carry it through successfully without any last-minute, unforeseen hitches. Stanger’s squirrel is a reasonably common animal in the Cameroons, but previously I had hunted for it in the deep forest in the Mamfe basin. In this sort of country it spent its time in the top branches of the higher trees (feeding on the rich banquet of fruit growing in those sunny heights) and rarely coming down to ground level. This made its capture almost impossible. However, I had since learnt that in the grassland the squirrel frequented the small patches of forest on river-banks, and spent quite a large part of its time on the ground, foraging in the grass for food. This, I felt, would give one a better chance of capturing it. When I had shown a picture of the squirrel to the Bafut Beagles, they identified it immediately, and vociferously maintained that they knew where it was to be found. Questioning them, I discovered that they knew the habits of the creature quite well, for they had hunted it often.

  Apparently the squirrels lived in a small patch of mountain forest, but in the very early morning or in the evening they came down from the trees and ventured into the grassland to feed. Then, said the Bafut Beagles, was the time to catch them. What, I asked, did this beef do during the night?

  ‘Ah! Masa, you no fit catch um for night time,’ came the reply; ‘dis beef ’e de sleep for up dat big stick where no man fit pass. But for evening time, or early-early morning time we fit catch um.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘we go catch um for early-early morning time.’

  We left Bafut at one o’clock in the morning, and after a long and tedious walk over hills, through valleys and grassfields, we reached our destination an hour before dawn. It was a small plateau that lay half-way up a steep mountain-side. The area was comparatively flat, and across it tinkled a wide and shallow stream, along the sides of which grew a thick but narrow strip of forest. Crouching in the lee of a big rock, peering into the gloom and wiping the dew from our faces, we spied out the land and made our plans. The idea was to erect two or three strips of net in the long grass about five hundred yards away from the edge of the trees. This we had to do immediately, before it got so light that the squirrels could see us.

  Erecting nets in long grass up to your waist, when it is sodden with dew, is not a soothing pastime, and we were glad when the last one had been tied in place. Then we cautiously approached the forest, and crawled into hiding beneath a large bush. Here we squatted, trying to keep our teeth from chattering, not able to smoke or talk or move, watching the eastern sky grow paler as the darkness of the night was drained out of it. Slowly it turned to a pale opalescent grey, then it flushed to pink, and then, as the sun rose above the horizon, it turned suddenly and blindingly to a brilliant kingfisher blue. This pure and delicate light showed the mountains around us covered in low-lying mist; as the sun rose higher, the mist started to move and slide on the ridges and pour down the hillsides to fill the valleys. For one brief instant we had seen the grasslands quiet and asleep under the blanket of mist; now it seemed as though the mountains were awakening, yawning and stretching under the white coverlet, pushing it aside in some places, gathering it more tightly in others, hoisting itself, dew-misted and sleepy, from the depths of its white bedclothes. On many occasions later I watched this awakening of the mountains, and I never wearied of the sight. Considering that the same thing has been happening each morning since the ancient mountains came into being, it is astonishing how fresh and new the sight appears each time you witness it. Never does it become dull and mechanical; it is always different: sometimes the mist in rising shaped itself into strange animal shapes – dragons, phoenix, wyvern, and milk-white unicorns – sometimes it would form itself into strange, drifting strands of seaweed, trees, or great tumbling bushes of white flowers; occasionally, if there was a breeze to help it, it would startle you by assuming the most severe and complicated geometrical shapes, while all the time, underneath it, in tantalizing glimpses as it shifted, you could see the mountains gleaming in a range of soft colours so delicate and ethereal that it was impossible to put a name to them.

  I decided as I squatted there, peering between the branches of the bush we sheltered under, watching the mountains waken, that it was worth feeling tired, cold, and hungry, worth being drenched with dew and suffering cramps, in order to see such a sight. My meditations were interrupted by a loud and aggressive ‘Chuck … chuck!’ from the trees above us, and one of the hunters gripped my arm and looked at me with glowing eyes. He leant forward slowly and whispered in my ear:

  ‘Masa, dis na de beef Masa want. We go sit softly softly ’e go come down for ground small time.’

  I wiped the dew from my face and peered out at the grassfield where we had set the nets. Presently we heard other chucking noises from deeper in the forest as more of the squirrels awoke and glanced at the day with suspicious eyes. We waited for what seemed a long time, and then I suddenly saw something moving in the grassfield between us and the nets: a curious object that at first sight looked like an elongated black-and-white-striped balloon, appearing now and then above the long grass. In that mist-blurred morning haze I could not make out what this strange object could be, so I attracted the hunters’ attention and pointed to it silently.

  ‘Dis na de beef, Masa,’ said one.

  ‘’E done go for ground, ’e done go for ground,’ said the other gleefully.

  ‘Na whatee dat ting?’ I whispered, for I could not reconcile that strange balloon-like object with any part of a squirrel’s anatomy.

  ‘Dis ting na ’e tail, sah,’ explained a hunter, and, so that I should be left in no doubt, ‘dat ting ’e get for ’e larse.’

  Like all tricks, once it had been explained, it became obvious. I could see quite clearly that the black-and-white-striped object was a squirrel’s tail, and I wondered why on earth I had thought that it resembled a balloon. Presently the one tail was joined by others, and as the mist lifted and cleared we could see the squirrels themselves.

  There were eight of them hopping out into the grassfield. They were large and rather bulky animals, with heavy heads, but the largest and most flamboyant parts of their anatom
ies were their tails. They hopped cautiously from tussock to tussock, pausing to sit up on their hind legs and sniff carefully in the direction they were travelling. Then they would get down and hop forward a few more feet, flipping their tails as they moved. Sometimes they would crouch perfectly still for a few seconds, their tails laid carefully over their backs, the bushy ends hanging down and almost obscuring their faces. The ones in the grassfield were silent, but in the trees behind us we could still hear an occasional suspicious ‘chuck’ from those that had not yet plucked up the courage to descend. I decided that eight would be quite enough for us to try to catch, so I signalled the hunters and we rose from our hide-out. We spread out in a line through the trees, and then the hunters paused and waited for the signal to advance.

  The squirrels were now about a hundred and fifty yards from the forest’s edge, and I decided that this was far enough for our purposes. I waved my hand, and then we walked out from the shelter of the trees into the long grass. The squirrels in the forest gave loud chucks of alarm, and the squirrels in the grassfield sat up on their hind legs to see what was the matter. They saw us and all froze instantly; then, as we moved slowly forward, they hopped off into the grass, farther and farther from the trees. I do not think they could quite make out what we were, for we advanced very slowly and with the minimum of movement. They felt we were something hostile, but they were not certain; they would run a few yards and then stop and sit up to survey us, sniffing vigorously. This was really the most tricky part of the whole proceeding, for the animals were not yet within the half-circle of the nets, and by breaking away to left or right they could easily escape into the grassfields. We drifted towards them cautiously, the only sounds being the swish of our feet in the grass and faint and frantic chucks from the forest behind us.

  Quite suddenly one squirrel more quick-witted than the rest realized what was happening. He could not see the nets ahead, for they were hidden in the long grass and well camouflaged, but he saw that as we advanced we were driving him farther and farther away from the forest and the safety of the tall trees. He gave a loud chuck of alarm and dashed off through the grass, his long tail streaming out behind him, and then suddenly twisted to the left and galloped through the grass away from the nets. His one ambition was to get round us and back to the trees. The rest of the squirrels sat up and watched him nervously, and I realized that unless something was done they would all pluck up courage and follow his example. I had planned to wait until they were well within the circle of nets before charging down on them and causing a panic that would send them scuttling into the mesh, but it now became obvious that we should have to take a chance and stampede them. I raised my hand, and the hunters and I surged forward, yelling and hooting, waving our arms and trying to appear as fearsome as possible. For a split second the squirrels watched us without movement; then they fled.