The Bafut Beagles

by Gerald Durrell

  While I had been trying to revive the Idiurus, the hunters had been grouped round me in a silent and sorrowful circle; now that they saw the creature regain its faculties, they gave broad grins of delight. We hastily searched the inside of the tree to see if there were any more lying about, but we found nothing. This puzzled me considerably, for Idiurus was supposed to live in large colonies. To find a solitary one, therefore, would be unusual. I sincerely hoped that the textbooks were not wrong; to catch some specimens from a colony of animals is infinitely easier than trying to track down and capture individuals. However, I could not stop to worry about it then; I wanted to get the precious creature back to the village and out of the small travelling box he was in. We packed up the nets and set off through the twilit forest as speedily as we could. I carried the box containing Idiurus in my cupped hands as delicately as if it contained eggs, and at intervals I would fan the creature through the wire gauze top.

  When I was safely back in the village dance-hall, I prepared a larger cage for the precious beast, and then moved him into it. This was not so easy, for he had fully recovered from the smoke by now, and scuttled about with considerable speed. At last, without letting him escape, or getting myself bitten, I succeeded in manoeuvring him into the new cage, and then I placed my strongest light next to it in order to have a good look at him.

  He was about the size of a common House Mouse, and very similar to it in general shape. The first thing that caught your attention was his tail: it was very long (almost twice as long as his body), and down each side of it grew a fringe of long, wavy hairs, so the whole tail looked like a bedraggled feather. His head was large, and rather domed, with small, pixie-pointed ears. His eyes were pitch black, small, and rather prominent. His rodent teeth, a pair of great bright orange incisors, protruded from his mouth in a gentle curve, so that from the side it gave him a most extraordinarily supercilious expression. Perhaps the most curious part about him was the ‘flying’ membrane, which stretched along each side of his body. This was a long, fine flap of skin, which was attached to his ankles, and to a long, slightly curved, cartilaginous shaft that grew out from his arm, just behind the elbow. When at rest, his membrane was curled and rucked along the side of his body like a curtain pelmet; when he launched himself into the air, however, the legs were stretched out straight, and the membrane thus drawn taut, so that it acted like the wings of a glider. Later I was to discover just how skilful Idiurus could be in the air with this primitive gliding apparatus.

  When I had gone to bed that night and switched off the light, I could hear my new specimen rustling and scuttling round his cage, and I imagined what a feast he was making on the variety of foods I had put in there for him. But when dawn came and I crawled sleepily out of bed to have a look, I discovered that he had not eaten anything. I was not unduly worried by this, for some creatures when newly caught refuse to eat until they have settled down in captivity. The length of time this takes varies not only with the species, but with the individual animal. I felt that some time during the day Idiurus would come down from the top of the cage, where he was clinging, and eat his fill.

  When the hunters arrived we set out through the mist-whitened forest to a fresh series of trees. Refreshed by a night’s sleep, and by our capture of an Idiurus the day before, we went about the laborious smoking process with a great deal more enthusiasm. But by midday we had investigated ten trees and found nothing. We had by this time reached a section of the forest where the trees were of enormous size, even for the West African forest. They stood well apart from each other, but even so their massive branches interlocked above. The trunks of these trees were, in most cases, at least fifteen feet in diameter. They had great buttress roots-growing out from the base of the trunks like supporting walls of a cathedral, each well over ten feet high where it joined the trunk, and with a space of a good-sized room between each flange. Some of them had wound round them massive, muscular-looking creepers as thick as my body. We made our way through the giant trunks, and came presently to a dip in the level forest floor, a small dell in which stood one of these enormous trees, more or less by itself. At the edge of the dell the hunters paused and pointed.

  ‘Na dis big stick get hole too much, sah,’ they said.

  We approached the trunk of the tree, and I saw that there was a great arched rent in the wood, between two of the flanges; this hole was about the same size and shape as a small church door. I paused at the entrance to the hole and looked up: the tree-trunk towered above me, shooting up towards the sky smooth and branchless for about two hundred feet. Not a stump, not a branch broke the smooth surface of that column of wood. I began to hope that there would be nothing inside the tree, for I could not see for the life of me how anyone was going to climb up to the top and put nets over the exit holes, if any. I walked into the hollow of the tree as I would walk into a room, and found there was plenty of space; the sunlight filtered gently in through the entrance, and gradually my eyes became accustomed to the dim light. I peered upwards, but a slight bend in the trunk prevented me seeing very far. I tested the sides of the tree and found them composed of rotten wood, soft and spongy. By kicking with my toes I found it was quite easy to make footholds, and I laboriously climbed up the inside of the trunk until I was high enough to crane round the corner. The trunk stretched up as hollow as a factory chimney, and just as big. At the very summit of the tree there was a large exit hole, and through it a shaft of sunlight poured. Then, suddenly, I nearly released my rather precarious hold with excitement, for I saw that the top part of the trunk was literally a moving carpet of Idiurus. They slid about on the rotten wood as swiftly and silently as shadows, and when they were still they disappeared completely from sight, so perfectly did they match the background. I slithered to the ground and made my way out into the open. The hunters looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Na beef for inside, Masa?’ asked one.

  ‘Yes. Na plenty beef for inside. You go look.’

  Chattering excitedly, they pushed and scrambled their way into the inside of the tree; some idea of its size may be gained from the fact that the three hunters, Peter, the tree-climber, and Jacob could all fit comfortably into its spacious interior. I could hear their ejaculations of astonishment as they saw the Idiurus, and sharp words being exchanged when someone (I suspected Jacob) trod on somebody else’s face in his excitement. I walked slowly round the tree, searching the trunk for any foot or handholds on the bark which would enable Peter to climb to the top, but the bark was as smooth as a billiard ball. As far as I could see, the tree was unclimbable, and I damped the hunters’ gaiety by pointing this out to them when they came out of the trunk. While we all sat on the ground and smoked and discussed the matter, Jacob prowled around the dell, scowling ferociously at the trees, and presently he came over to us and said that he thought he had found a way in which Peter could get to the top. We followed him across the dell to its extreme edge, and there he pointed to a tall, thin sapling whose top just reached one of the great branches of the main tree. Jacob suggested that Peter should shin up the sapling, get on to the branch, and then work his way along it until he reached the top of the hollow trunk. Peter examined the sapling suspiciously, and then said he would try. He spat on his hands, seized the trunk of the sapling, and swarmed aloft, using his almost prehensile toes to get extra grip upon the bark. When he reached the half-way mark, however, some seventy feet from the ground, his weight started to bend the sapling over like a bow, and before he had gone much further the trunk was giving ominous creakings. It was obvious that the tree was too slender to support the weight of my corpulent tree-climber, and he was forced to return to earth. Jacob, grinning with excitement, came strutting across to where I stood.

  ‘Masa, I fit climb dat stick,’ he said. ‘I no be fat man like Peter.’

  ‘Fat!’ said Peter indignantly; ‘who you de call fat, eh? I no be fat; dat stick no get power for hold man, dat’s all.’

  ‘You be fat,’ said Jacob scornfully;
‘all time you fill your belly with food, an now Masa want you to climb stick you no fit.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said hastily, ‘you go try and climb, Jacob. But take care you no go fall, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ he said, and running to the sapling he flung himself on to the trunk and swarmed up it like a caterpillar.

  Now Jacob weighed about half of what Peter weighed, so he was soon clinging to the very tip of the sapling, and the tree was still upright, though it swayed round and round in a gentle curve. Each time it passed the branch of the big tree, Jacob made a wild grab, but each time he missed. Presently he looked down.

  ‘Masa, I no fit catch urn,’ he called.

  ‘All right, come down,’ I shouted back.

  He descended rapidly to the ground, and I gave him the end of a long length of strong cord.

  ‘You go tie dis for top, eh? Den, when you ready, we go pull dis small stick so it come for dis big one. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ said Jacob gleefully, and scuttled up the sapling again.

  When he reached the top, he fastened the rope round the sapling and shouted down that he was ready. We laid hold of the rope and pulled lustily; as we backed slowly across the clearing, digging our toes into the soft leaf-mould to gain a grip, the sapling bent slowly over until its tip touched the great branch. Quickly as a squirrel, Jacob had reached out, got a grip on the branch, and hauled himself across. We still held on to the sapling until he had pulled a piece of rope from out of his loin-cloth and tied the top of it to the branch on which he was now lying. When the sapling was tied, we released our hold on the rope gently. Jacob was now standing upright on the branch, holding on to the smaller growth that sprouted from it, and he slowly groped his way along towards the main trunk, walking warily, for the branch he was using as a road was thickly overgrown with orchids, creepers, and tree-ferns, an ideal habitat for a tree-snake. When he reached the place where the branch joined the tree, he squatted astride it, and lowered a long piece of string to us; to the end of this we tied a bundle of nets and some small boxes in which to put any specimens he caught at the top. With these safely tied to his waist he moved round the tree to the hole, which was situated in the crutch where the great branches spread away from the trunk. Squatting down, he spread the net over the hole, arranged the boxes within easy reach, and then grinned down at us mischievously.

  ‘All right, Masa, your hunter man ’e ready now,’ he shouted.

  ‘Hunter man!’ muttered Peter indignantly; ‘dis cook call himself hunter man … eh … aehh!’

  We collected a mass of dry twigs and green leaves, and laid the fire in the huge chimney-like opening of the tree. We lit it and piled the green leaves on, after draping a net over the arched opening. The fire smouldered sullenly for a few minutes, and then the frail wisp of smoke grew stronger, and soon a great stream of grey smoke was pouring up the hollow shell of the tree. As the smoke rose up the trunk I became aware that there were other holes which we had not spotted, for at various points in the bark, some thirty feet above the ground, frail wisps of smoke started to appear, coiling out and fading into the air.

  Jacob, perched precariously, was peering down into the inside of the trunk when the thick column of grey smoke swept up and enveloped him. We could hear him coughing and choking, and could see him moving round gingerly in the smoke, in an effort to find a more suitable spot to sit. It seemed to me, waiting excitedly, that the Idiurus took a tremendously long time to be affected by the smoke.

  I was just wondering if perhaps they had all been knocked immediately unconscious before they could attempt to escape, when the first one broke cover. It scuttled out of the opening in the base of the tree, tried to launch itself into the air, and became immediately entangled in the nets. One of the hunters rushed forward to disentangle it, but before I could go and help him, the entire colony decided to vacate the tree in a body. Some twenty Idiurus appeared at the main opening, and leapt into the net. Up on the top of the tree, now hidden by billows of smoke, I could hear Jacob squeaking with excitement, and occasionally giving a roar of anguish as one of the Idiurus bit him. I discovered to my annoyance that there were two or three cracks in the trunk which we had overlooked, some thirty feet above the ground, and through these minute openings the Idiurus were swarming out into the open air. They scuttled about the bark, and seemed quite unperturbed by either the strong sunlight or our presence, for some of them came down to within six feet of the ground. They moved with remarkable rapidity over the surface of the wood, seeming to glide rather than run. Then an extra large and pungent cloud of smoke burst upwards and spread over them, and they decided to take to the air.

  I have seen some extraordinary sights at one time and another, but the flight of the flying mice I shall remember until my dying day. The great tree was bound round with shifting columns of grey smoke that turned to the most ethereal blue where the great bars of sunlight stabbed through it. Into this the Idiurus launched themselves. They left the trunk of the tree without any apparent effort at jumping; one minute they were clinging spread-eagled to the bark, the next they were in the air. Their tiny legs were stretched out, and the membranes along their sides were taut. They swooped and drifted through the tumbling clouds of smoke with all the assurance and skill of hawking swallows, twisting and banking with incredible skill and apparently little or no movement of the body. This was pure gliding, and what they achieved was astonishing. I saw one leave the trunk of the tree at a height of about thirty feet. He glided across the dell in a straight and steady swoop, and landed on a tree about a hundred and fifty feet away, losing little, if any, height in the process. Others left the trunk of the smoke-enveloped tree and glided round it in a series of diminishing spirals, to land on a portion of the trunk lower down. Some patrolled the tree in a series of S-shaped patterns, doubling back on their tracks with great smoothness and efficiency. Their wonderful ability in the air amazed me, for there was no breeze in the forest to set up the air currents I should have thought essential for such intricate manoeuvring.

  I noticed that although a number of them had flown off into the forest the majority stayed on the main trunk, contenting themselves with taking short flights around it when the smoke got too dense. This gave me an idea; I put out the fire, and as the smoke gradually drifted and dispersed, the Idiurus that were on the tree all scuttled back inside. We gave them a few minutes to settle down, while I examined the ones we had caught. At the base of the tree we had captured eight females and four males; Jacob lowered his catch down from the smoke-filled heavens, which consisted of two more males and one female. With them were two of the most extraordinary bats I had ever seen, with golden-brown backs and bright lemon-yellow shirt-fronts, faces like pigs and long, pig-like ears twisted down over their noses.

  When the Idiurus had all returned to the tree we re-lit the fire, and once again they all rushed out. This time, however, they had grown wiser, and the majority refused to come anywhere near the nets at the main opening. Jacob, however, had better luck at the top of the tree, and soon lowered down a bag of twenty specimens, which I thought was quite enough to be getting on with. We put out the fire, removed the nets, got Jacob down from his tree-top perch (not without some difficulty, for he was very eager to try to catch the rest of the colony), and then we set off through the forest to walk the four odd miles that separated us from the village. I carried the precious bag of squeaking and scrambling Idiurus carefully in my hands, occasionally stopping to undo the top and fan them, for I was not at all sure they were getting sufficient air through the sides of the fine linen bag.

  We reached the village, tired and dirty, just after dark. I put the Idiurus in the largest cage I had, but I found, to my annoyance, that it was far too small for such a great number. Stupidly, I had only banked on getting two or three Idiurus, if I got any at all, so had not brought a really large cage with me. I feared that if I left them in that confined space overnight the casualties in the morning would be heavy; the
re was only one thing to do, and that was to get the precious beasts back to the base camp as quickly as possible. I wrote a brief note to Smith, telling him that I had been successful and that I would be arriving some time about midnight with the animals, and would he please have a large cage ready for them. I sent this off at once, then I had a bath and some food. I reckoned that my letter would arrive at the camp about an hour before I did, which should give Smith plenty of time to improvise a cage.

  About ten o’clock my little party started off along the Eshobi road. First walked Jacob carrying the lantern. Following him came a carrier with the box of Idiurus balanced on his woolly head. I was next in the row, and behind me was another carrier with my bed on his head. The Eshobi path is bad enough in broad daylight, but by night it is a death-trap. As a source of illumination the lantern was about as much use as an anaemic glow-worm; the light it gave was just sufficient to distort everything and to shroud rocks in deep shadow. Thus our progress was necessarily slow. Normally that walk would have taken us about two hours; that night it took us five. Most of the way I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, for the carrier with the Idiurus hopped and jumped among the rocks like a mountain goat, and every minute I expected to see him slip and my precious box of specimens go hurtling into a ravine. He became more and more daring as the path got worse, until I felt that it was only a matter of time before he fell.

  ‘My friend,’ I called, ‘if you go drop my beef, we no go reach Mamfe together. I go bury you here.’