A Zoo in My Luggage

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Dis bird, ’e get picken for inside ’e house?’ I asked Elias.

  ‘Sometime ’e get, sah,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I never look for inside de house. I fear sometime de bird go run.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, turning to Jacquie, ‘there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to go to Eshobi and have a look. You and Sophie hang on here and look after the collection; I’ll take Bob and spend a couple of days there after Picathartes. Even if they haven’t got any young I would like to see the thing in its wild state.’

  ‘All right. When will you go?’ asked Jacquie.

  ‘Tomorrow, if I can arrange carriers. Give Bob a shout and tell him we’re really going into the forest at last. Tell him to sort out his snake-catching equipment.’

  Early the next morning, when the air was still comparatively cool, eight Africans appeared outside John Henderson’s house, and, after the usual bickering as to who should carry what, they loaded our bundles of equipment on to their woolly heads and we set off for Eshobi. Having crossed the river, our little cavalcade made its way across the grassfield, where our abortive python hunt occurred, and on the opposite side we plunged into the mysterious forest. The Eshobi path lay twisting and turning through the trees in a series of intricate convolutions that would have horrified a Roman road-builder. Sometimes it doubled back on itself to avoid a huge rock, or a fallen tree, and at other times it ran as straight as a rod through all such obstacles, so that our carriers were forced to stop and form a human chain to lift the loads over a tree trunk, or lower them down a small cliff.

  I had warned Bob that we would see little, if any, wild life on the way, but this did not prevent him from attacking every rotten tree trunk we passed, in the hopes of unearthing some rare beast from inside it. I am so tired of hearing and reading about the dangerous and evil tropical forest, teeming with wild beasts. In the first place it is about as dangerous as the New Forest in midsummer, and in the second place it does not teem with wild life; every bush is not aquiver with some savage creature waiting to pounce. The animals are there, of course, but they very sensibly keep out of your way. I defy anyone to walk through the forest to Eshobi, and, at the end of it, be able to count on the fingers of both hands the ‘wild beasts’ he has seen. How I wish these descriptions were true. How I wish that every bush did contain some ‘savage denizen of the forest’ lurking in ambush. A collector’s job would be so much easier.

  The only wild creatures at all common along the Eshobi path were butterflies, and these, obviously not having read the right books, showed a strong disinclination to attack us. Whenever the path dipped into a small valley, a tiny stream would lie at the bottom, and on the damp, shady banks alongside the clear waters the butterflies would be sitting in groups, their wings opening and closing slowly, so that from a distance areas of the stream banks took on an opalescent quality, changing from flame red to white, from sky blue to mauve and purple, as the insects – in a sort of trance – seemed to be applauding the cool shade with their wings. The brown, muscular legs of the carriers would tramp through them unseeingly, and suddenly we would be waist-high in a swirling merry-go-round of colour as the butterflies dipped and wheeled around us and then, when we had passed, settled again on the dark soil which was as rich and moist as a fruit cake, and just as fragrant.

  One vast and ancient tree marked the half-way point on the Eshobi road, a tree so tangled in a web of lianas as to be almost invisible. This was a resting place, and the carriers, grunting and exhaling their breath sharply through their front teeth in a sort of exhausted whistle, lowered their loads to the ground and squatted beside them, the sweat glistening on their bodies. I handed round cigarettes and we sat and enjoyed them quietly: in the dim, cathedral-like gloom of the forest there was no breeze, and the smoke rose in straight, swaying blue columns into the air. The only sounds were the incessant, circular-saw songs of the great green cicadas clinging to every tree, and, in the distance, the drunken honking of a flock of hornbills.

  As we smoked we watched some of the little brown forest skinks hunting among the roots of the trees around us. These little lizards always looked neat and shining, as though they had been cast in chocolate and had just that second stepped out of the mould, gleaming and immaculate. They moved slowly and deliberately, as if they were afraid of getting their beautiful skins dirty. They peered from side to side with bright eyes as they slid through their world of brown, dead leaves, forests of tiny toadstools and lawns of moss that padded the stones like a carpet. Their prey was the immense population of tiny creatures that inhabited the forest floor, the small black beetles hurrying along like undertakers late for a funeral, the slow, smooth-sliding slugs, weaving a silver filigree of slime over the leaves, and the small, nut-brown crickets who squatted in the shadows waving their immensely long antennae to and fro, like amateur fishermen on the banks of a stream.

  Among the dark, damp hollows between the buttress roots of the great tree under which we sat there were small clusters of an insect which had never failed to fascinate me. They looked like a small daddy-longlegs in repose, but with opaque, misty-white wings. They sat there in groups of about ten, trembling their wings gently, and moving their fragile legs up and down like restive horses. When disturbed they all took to the air and started a combined operation which was quite extraordinary to watch. They rose about eight inches above the ground, formed a circle in an area that could be covered by a saucer and then began to fly round and round very rapidly, some going up and over, as it were, while the others swept round and round like a wheel. The effect from a distance was rather weird, for they resembled a whirling ball of shimmering misty white, changing its shape slightly at intervals, but always maintaining exactly the same position in the air. They flew so fast, and their bodies were so slender, that all you could see was this shimmer of frosty wings. I am afraid that this aerial display intrigued me so much that I used to go out of my way, when walking in the forest, to find groups of these insects and disturb them so that they would dance for me.

  Eventually we reached Eshobi at mid-day, and I found it had changed little from the days when I had been there eight years before. There was still the same straggle of dusty thatched huts in two uneven rows, with a wide area of dusty path lying between them that served as the village high street, a playground for children and dogs and a scratching ground for the scrawny fowls. Elias came waddling down this path to greet us, picking his way carefully through the sprawling mass of babies and livestock, followed by a small boy carrying two large green coconuts on his head.

  ‘Welcome, Masa, you done come?’ he called huskily.

  ‘Iseeya, Elias,’ I replied.

  He grinned at us delightedly, as the carriers, still grunting and whistling, deposited our equipment all over the village street.

  ‘Masa go drink dis coconut?’ Elias asked hopefully, waving his machete about.

  ‘Yes, we like um too much,’ I said, regarding the huge nuts thirstily.

  Elias bustled into activity. From the nearest hut were brought two dilapidated chairs, and Bob and I were seated in a small patch of shade in the centre of the village street, surrounded by a crowd of politely silent but deeply fascinated Eshobites. With quick, accurate strokes of his machete Elias stripped away the thick husk from the coconut. When the tips of the nuts were exposed he gave each of them a swift slice with the end of his machete-blade, and then handed them to us, each neatly trepanned so that we could drink the cool, sweet juice inside. In each nut there was about two and a half glassfuls of this thirst-quenching, hygienically sealed nectar, and we savoured every mouthful.

  After the rest, our next job was to get the camp in order. Two hundred yards from the village there was a small stream, and on its banks we chose an area that would not be too difficult to clear. A group of men armed with machetes set to work to cut down all the small bushes and saplings, while another group followed behind with short-handled, broad-bladed hoes, in an effort to level the red earth. At length, after the
usual African uproar of insults, accusations of stupidity, sit-down strikes and minor brawls, the area had been worked over so that it resembled a badly ploughed field, and we could get the tents up. While a meal was being prepared we went down to the stream and washed the dirt and sweat from our bodies in the icy waters, watching the pink-and-brown crabs waving their pincers to us from among the rocks, and feeling the tiny, brilliant blue-and-red fish nibbling gently at our feet. We wended our way back to camp, feeling refreshed, and found some sort of organization reigning. When we had eaten, Elias came and squatted in the shade of our lean-to tent, and we discussed hunting plans.

  ‘What time we go look dis bird, Elias?’

  ‘Eh, Masa savvay now ’e be hot too much. For dis time dis bird ’e go look for chop for bush. For evening time when it get cold ’e go for dis ’e house for work, and den we go see um.’

  ‘All right, then you go come back for four o’clock time, you hear? Then we go look dis bird, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ said Elias, rising to his feet.

  ‘And if you no speak true, if we never see dis bird, if you’ve been funning me I go shoot you, bushman, you hear?’

  ‘Eh!’ he exclaimed, chuckling, ‘I never fun with Masa, for true, sah.’

  ‘All right, we go see you, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ he said, as he twisted his sarong round his ample hips and padded off towards the village.

  At four o’clock the sun had dipped behind the tallest of the forest trees, and the air had the warm, drowsy stillness of evening. Elias returned, wearing, in place of his gaudy sarong, a scrap of dirty cloth twisted round his loins. He waved his machete nonchalantly.

  ‘I done come, Masa,’ he proclaimed. ‘Masa ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, shouldering my field-glasses and collecting bag. ‘Let’s go, hunter man.’

  Elias led us down the dusty main street of the village, and then branched off abruptly down a narrow alley-way between the huts. This led us into a small patch of farmland, full of feathery cassava bushes and dusty banana plants. Presently, the path dipped across a small stream and then wound its way into the forest. Before we had left the village street Elias had pointed out a hill to me which he said was the home of Picathartes, and although it had looked near enough to the village, I knew better than to believe it. The Cameroon forest is like the Looking-glass Garden. Your objective seems to loom over you, but as you walk towards it, it appears to shift position. At times, like Alice, you are forced to walk in the opposite direction in order to get there.

  And so it was with this hill. The path, instead of making straight for it, seemed to weave to and fro through the forest in the most haphazard fashion, until I began to feel I must have been looking at the wrong hill when Elias had pointed it out to me. At that moment, however, the path started to climb in a determined manner, and it was obvious that we had reached the base of the hill. Elias left the path and plunged into the undergrowth on one side, hacking his way through the overhanging lianas and thorn bushes with his machete, hissing softly through his teeth, his feet spreading out in the soft leaf mould without a sound. In a very short time we were plodding up a slope so steep that, on occasions, Elias’ feet were on a level with my eyes.

  Most hills and mountains in the Cameroons are of a curious and exhausting construction. Created by ancient volcanic eruption, they had been pushed skywards viciously by the massive underground forces, and this has formed them in a peculiar way. They are curiously geometrical, some perfect isosceles triangles, some acute angles, some cones and some box-shaped. They rear up in such a bewildering variety of shapes that it would have been no surprise to see a cluster of them demonstrating one of the more spiky and incomprehensible of Euclid’s theorems.

  The hill whose sides we were now assaulting reared up in an almost perfect cone. After you had been climbing for a bit you began to gain the impression that it was much steeper than it had first appeared, and within a quarter of an hour you were convinced that the surface sloped at the rate of one in one. Elias went up it as though it were a level macadam road, ducking and weaving skilfully between the branches and overhanging undergrowth, while Bob and I, sweating and panting, struggled along behind, sometimes on all fours, in an effort to keep pace with him. Then, to our relief, just below the crest of the hill, the ground flattened out into a wide ledge, and through the tangle of trees we could see, ahead of us, a fifty-foot cliff of granite, patched with ferns and begonias, with a tumbled mass of giant, water-smoothed boulders at its base.

  ‘Dis na de place, Masa,’ said Elias, stopping and lowering his fat bottom on to a rock.

  ‘Good,’ said Bob and I in unison, and sat down to regain our breath.

  When we had rested, Elias led us along through the maze of boulders to a place where the cliff face sloped outwards, overhanging the rocks below. We moved some little way along under this overhang, and then Elias stopped suddenly.

  ‘Dere de house, Masa,’ he said, his fine teeth gleaming in a grin of pride. He was pointing up at the rock face, and I saw, ten feet above us, the nest of a Picathartes.

  At first glance it resembled a huge swallow’s nest, made out of reddish-brown mud and tiny rootlets. At the base of the nest longer roots and grass stalks had been woven into the earth so that they hung down in a sort of beard; whether this was just untidy workmanship on the part of the bird, or whether it was done for reasons of camouflage, was difficult to judge. Certainly the trailing beard of roots and grass did disguise the nest, for, at first sight, it resembled nothing more than a tussock of grass and mud that had become attached to the gnarled, water-ribbed surface of the cliff. The whole nest was about the size of a football and this position under the overhang of the cliff nicely protected it from any rain.

  Our first task was to discover if the nest contained anything. Luckily a tall, slender sapling was growing opposite, so we shinned up this in turn and peered into the inside of the nest. To our annoyance it was empty, though ready to receive eggs, for it had been lined with fine roots woven into a springy mat. We moved a little way along the cliff and soon came upon two more nests, one complete like the first one, and one half finished. But there was no sign of young or eggs.

  ‘If we go hide, small time dat bird go come, sah,’ said Elias.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, sah, for true, sah.’

  ‘All right, we’ll wait small time.’

  Elias took us to a place where a cave had been scooped out of the cliff, its mouth almost blocked by an enormous boulder, and we crouched down behind this natural screen. We had a clear view of the cliff face where the nests hung, while we ourselves were in shadow and almost hidden by the wall of stone in front of us. We settled down to wait.

  The forest was getting gloomy now, for the sun was well down. The sky through the tangle of leaves and lianas above our heads was green flecked with gold, like the flanks of an enormous dragon seen between the trees. Now the very special evening noises had started. In the distance we could hear the rhythmic crash of a troupe of mona monkeys on their way to bed, leaping from tree to tree, with a sound like great surf on a rocky shore, punctuated by occasional cries of ‘Oink … Oink …’ from some member of the troupe. They passed somewhere below us along the base of the hill, but the undergrowth was too thick for us to see them. Following them came the usual retinue of hornbills, their wings making fantastically loud whooping noises as they flew from tree to tree. Two of them crashed into the branches above us and sat there silhouetted against the green sky, carrying on a long and complicated conversation, ducking and swaying their heads, great beaks gaping, whining and honking hysterically at each other. Their fantastic heads, with the great beaks and sausage-shaped casques lying on top, bobbing and mowing against the sky, looked like some weird devil-masks from a Ceylonese dance.

  The perpetual insect orchestra had increased a thousandfold with the approach of darkness, and the valley below us seemed to vibrate with their song. Somewhere a tree-
frog started up, a long, trilling note, followed by a pause, as though he were boring a hole through a tree with a miniature pneumatic drill, and had to pause now and then to let it cool. Suddenly I heard a new noise. It was a sound I had never heard before and I glanced inquiringly at Elias. He had stiffened, and was peering into the gloomy net of lianas and leaves around us.

  ‘Na whatee dat?’ I whispered.

  ‘Na de bird, sah.’

  The first cry had been quite far down the hill, but now came another cry, much closer. It was a curious noise which can only be described, rather inadequately, as similar to the sudden sharp yap of a pekinese, but much more flute-like and plaintive. Again it came, and again, but we still could not see the bird, though we strained our eyes in the gloom.

  ‘D’you think it’s Picathartes?’ whispered Bob.

  ‘I don’t know … It’s a noise I haven’t heard before.’

  There was a pause, and then suddenly the cry was repeated, very near now, and we lay motionless behind our rock. Not far in front of our position grew a thirty-foot sapling, bent under the weight of a liana as thick as a bell-rope that hung in loops around it, its main stem hidden in the foliage of some near-by tree. While the rest of the area we could see was gloomy and ill-defined, this sapling, lovingly entwined by its killer liana, was lit by the last rays of the setting sun, so that the whole setting was rather like a meticulous backcloth. And, as though a curtain had gone up on this miniature stage, a real live Picathartes suddenly appeared before us.

  I say suddenly and I mean it. Animals and birds in a tropical forest generally approach so quietly that they appear before you suddenly, unexpectedly, as if dropped there by magic. The thick liana fell in a huge loop from the top of the sapling, and on this loop the bird materialized, swaying gently on its perch, its head cocked on one side as if listening. Seeing any wild animal in its natural surroundings is a thrill, but to watch something that you know is a great rarity, something that you know has only been seen by a handful of people before you, gives the whole thing an added excitement and spice. So Bob and I lay there staring at the bird with the ardent, avid expressions of a couple of philatelists who have just discovered a penny black in a child’s stamp album.