Indeed, I immersed myself ever more joyfully into my jungle life. And life, in every form there, was abundant. It seemed that every single day I would see something different, be it a shimmering bird, the way the light danced around a puddle, a new path, a different vista, an unfamiliar call or song.
One of my most favourite of all the small creatures was a tiny pinky-beige lizard that, bizarrely, had a transparent belly. I could actually see the colours of the food in its stomach, which enthralled me. But I had to be patient to earn my pleasure. It was a shy little thing and would only come out if I sat and waited patiently for a very long time. Other lizards, in contrast, had no need to hide. They could lie and doze on a branch and just make themselves invisible by looking exactly like their surroundings.
The ants were real workers, as everyone knows – always busy, always rushing, and forming long trains of cargo, carrying leaves that were so much bigger than they were into the holes that led down to their colonies. They would never stop – not for a second – and if you planted a finger in their way, they just swerved around it. I recall spending many happy times just sitting in the dappled shade, playing traffic controller to those poor ants, sending them on all sorts of obstacle-avoiding detours.
I had also become less fearful around most of the birds there, many of whom seemed wonderfully wise and beautiful to me now. I was still wary around parrots, but other birds made me happy. There was a nosy toucan that would often sit a couple of branches above me and keep an eye on every single move I made. He had a dreadful call – the most annoying, rasping croak of a bird call – but he was so friendly I forgave him for his lack of musicality. His friendship was much more important.
My favourite singing bird was one I’ve later identified through pictures – the Mirla bird, a kind of everyday-looking blackbird with orange legs, who more than made up for his lack of fine plumage by having the most amazing song – one I often used to imitate, having discovered I had quite a pretty voice of my own.
Perhaps because I was older and more understanding of the jungle rhythms, the days now had a greater sense of order. The early mornings, when the sun began peeping shyly through the canopy, were mostly spent in what felt like a shared endeavour. It seemed every creature would rise and join in the universal chase to find food. But as the sun’s heat increased with every inch it slid towards its zenith, so the middle of the day saw a common search for rest with a jungle-wide siesta. All the birds would quieten down, the general activity levels would slow, and, for those that could, there was a general move upwards into the canopy, in pursuit of cool air and an escape from the intense heat. In those quiet times I would often hear far-away sounds – including the distant roar of a waterfall that I hankered after finding but never did. I wonder if it still roars there today.
I had also developed a new interest in plants and flowers, and doing craft with them, for want of a better word. I would pick juicy green leaves and smash them with a rock, adding a little pond water too. The leaves were generous and would very soon reward my efforts by releasing a coloured liquid I could then use as paint. Trial and error soon taught me which leaves made the best colour, and, successful in this, I conducted further experiments. I could make orange using the seeds of a pomegranate-like fruit, the interior of which was the brightest shade of orange I ever saw. I could soon make a whole rainbow of pretty paint colours to play with, mixing the juices of seeds, nuts and flowers. I would then use the resulting liquids to decorate not only my skin but also bark, rocks and branches, not to mention any monkey who interfered with my art class.
And, like any other little girl, I made jewellery. My time watching the children in the human camp had opened my eyes to new diversions and one of my favourites was collecting orchids, other flowers and long stems to make chains I would drape on anything I fancied. I would hang them around my neck, as the Indians did, but also around the jungle, for no other reason than to make the place look even prettier, which I think must be an instinctive female need. My favourite form of necklace was made from a string of what I now know were vanilla pods, and the sweet scent would linger on me all day.
But for all the distractions, the best thing in my life was my beloved monkey family, who I knew so well by this time that I could distinguish every single one. I knew when one was born and I knew when another died. I knew which child belonged to which mother and what strengths, skills and traits each individual monkey had. I suppose at first glance they might have seemed like just a big group of similar animals, but to me they were as different from one another as would be any human family member.
In their company, I felt safe, and the jungle had become my home. But I was soon to have it spelled out to me, horribly and brutally, that danger was never far away.
*
It was an ordinary day in the jungle. Most were. It might have been as much as a year after I had left thoughts of the camp behind me: it’s impossible to say. But given that I had once again lost interest in humans, I imagine that quite a lot of time must have passed.
Dawn arrived with its usual mad bustle of activity. The noise of the jungle traffic was never less than deafening as all the day creatures limbered up with the sunshine. But the regular cacophony was soon pierced by an immediate-danger call from one of the monkeys, which sent almost every jungle animal to seek shelter.
It was like a well-rehearsed fire drill. The birds were suddenly fewer, and those that remained airborne were now flying anxiously, high above us. The monkeys had disguised themselves as bulges of benign tree bark, and an eerie silence hovered over the suddenly stricken land.
Automatically, I followed the other animals in the dash to find a place of safety – in my case, this meant the hollow tree that had been my home for so long. Assuming I was close enough to get to it, it was always my chosen bolthole, and as I crouched there now, hidden from sight by some hastily grabbed fallen branches, I wondered what monstrous thing could saturate our land with so much fear.
I didn’t have to wait long for the answer. I could just about see out, but it was the noise that came first. A loud and unsettling sound that was strangely methodical. Even rhythmical. It sounded as if the undergrowth nearby was being chopped down, viciously and violently ripped up and cut away.
My hearing didn’t deceive me. That was exactly what was happening. First the noise grew. Thwack! Rip! Slash!, and Thwack! again. It was then accompanied, as the bushes terrifyingly close to me parted, by the sight of two white human men, both dressed in green clothing and carrying, as well as their fearsome glinting machetes, a variety of sacks, guns and nets. Had I not spent so long observing the Indian camp humans, these two creatures would have looked alien to me – a species of animal I might not have recognised immediately but one I’d instinctively have known to flee from. But knowing they were human gave me no reason to revise my opinion. They were monsters – everything about them looked monstrous – and the hair on my skin stood to horrified attention while my heart pumped a pulse through my head.
I held my breath as I watched them slash their way through the undergrowth, pushing my body as far back into the tree trunk as I could. I had no idea what they wanted or why they seemed so intent on destruction, but that question was soon answered. The nets, I realised as I watched them both, were for catching and stealing whatever creatures they fancied: first, a bright, unwary butterfly was scooped up in an instant, the net secured and slung over a shoulder.
Then their attention turned to birds. Again I watched mutely as they fired a different sort of net, this time to trap a parrot: a beautiful bird I had already seen that morning and which they tethered by the legs, causing it to flap in a panic, its elegant feathers drifting to the forest floor.
I tried to still my breathing. Would I be the next prey they captured? It seemed they had the means to catch anything they wanted, from birdlife to insects, lizards and snakes. No wonder that monkey had been so insistent in his warning. We were clearly all in very great danger.
Though
I was spared, that day marked the beginning of the end of my innocence and the start of a long period pockmarked by fear. I don’t know if it was new – had our jungle land just been discovered? – or something that had been going on for many years, but from that day on I became used to the sound of a machete swishing through the nearby undergrowth and the feeling of terror it evoked.
And I was right to be frightened. One time, when I was quaking in fear in my tree hollow, one of the hunters came right up to my tree trunk. He stood so close to me that I could clearly see his black boots and the khaki of his trousers, and hear the click of his rifle trigger. In the silence he’d created, it was the worst sound imaginable, and it’s one that has remained with me to this day. Then he lifted his rifle and BANG! I was almost deafened. I had no idea what he had aimed at, much less if he had shot it; all I could hear now was the wild thumping of my heart, while my hands began to shake uncontrollably.
I have been frightened many, many times in my life, but the fear I felt that day, being so small and helpless, was of a kind all its own. It’s something I will never forget.
Sometimes the hunters came by day and sometimes by night. Other times they’d pounce just as dusk had begun falling, shining their torches into the eyes of tired, sleepy creatures whose shrieks of terror when caught or injured, or when dying, would rip through the darkness and wake us all. Worse than that, though, was that they sometimes came for monkeys.
In theory, the monkeys should have been too clever for them. With their early-warning calls and their strong sense of community, they had a system that should have kept them safe. But the hunters were too clever. They would pick off the youngsters. They knew there was a chance the young ones would be too distracted by their games to see and react to them until it was too late. They were still an easy target even when they’d heard their mothers’ calls, a tranquilliser dart being too fast for them. They would simply be shot out of the trees like sitting ducks and then imprisoned in black sticky nets.
I don’t think I can fully explain how much pain those hunters caused me, or how murderous my feelings were, and still are, towards them. But the image of a baby monkey taken from its screaming mother is one I shall remember for the rest of my life. The mothers with babies would often hide in hollow tree trunks, as I did, and to see a tiny infant snatched from the grip of its desperate mother feels as appalling to me as if it had been any human mother and child.
Worse still was to watch the mothers suffering in the weeks afterwards. Their pain and sense of loss were unbearable to witness, especially when nothing could be done to ease it. More than once I saw bereft monkey mothers simply lie down and die from the pain. The hunters took mothers too: shot them out of the trees and stuffed them into sacks. And, of course, their babies would then die as well, from starvation.
*
The spree of hunting ended as dramatically as it had arrived. Nature had obviously seen enough of the activities of these evil humans and decided to wash them away. I was used to rain by now, of course. Heavy, intense, hammering rain. The rain fell regularly, too: perhaps once a month, maybe twice. And once it had rained, the intense heat set about removing all trace of any downpour. The jungle floor almost never felt soggy or boggy; my overwhelming memory is of it being dry. But from time to time came a storm of such power and magnitude it was a very great event, one which impacted on every creature in the jungle.
This storm was one such, and it came without warning. Well, almost without warning. The monkeys seemed to know exactly what was coming. The day before had been particularly scorching. Was that a sign they’d already noticed? I didn’t know. What I remember most clearly was that almost as soon as I woke I saw one of the adult monkeys performing an unusual dance. I assumed at first that it was just part of an early play session, but the reaction of the monkeys nearby suggested it had some meaning.
I knew then that something was about to break the normal routine, and as soon as I got a taste of the wind and saw the strange hue of the sky, I realised that this might have been some sort of rain dance. I had seen torrential rain before, but only once, perhaps twice. And I’d loved it. It had been a little terrifying at first, yes. But once the rain had started dancing on the forest floor, I realised how wonderful it was to suddenly feel so cool. I had danced, feeling the ground beneath my feet turn to mud, loving the way it squidged between my toes. Yes, my home in the tree had become a little boggy, but it was a small price to pay for the glory of mud on my scabby, itchy skin. I remember I had even rolled in it.
And here came another storm, I remember thinking with anticipation. I was half scared, half excited by the impending sense of danger. And it wasn’t just me who felt the thrumming, swollen air. It wasn’t long before all sense of normality had left the jungle. One by one all the animals, birds and insects slunk away, hiding in whichever places were best suited to their protection, while the leaves began to rustle as the wind started to whip through them. The whole jungle, it seemed, became one heaving, moaning mass, as if bracing itself for the coming ordeal.
Or adventure! Sudden whistles of wind seemed to fork and dance through whatever gaps were available, causing fruit, leaves and small branches to spear down to the ground. And then – in what seemed like a drum roll that began rising to a crescendo – Mother Nature unleashed her deluge upon us.
Strangely, I recall little of the period of the storm itself. I just waited it out, enjoying the maelstrom outside, from the comfy cocoon of my precious tree. I watched the needles of water drive their way into the undergrowth and the earth all around turn to a big slushy muddle. I remember the feeling of excitement about when the storm had passed and I could clamber out to investigate this sodden new world.
But perhaps the main reason the storm itself is a blur in my memory is because what happened as a consequence was of so much more importance: the hunters, unable to cope with such conditions, seemed to have disappeared as surely as the peace they’d destroyed. And, for a while at least, we gratefully grabbed it back.
13
Though I can’t be sure of anything in terms of dates and times and details (my own age included), I remember that period after the hunters had moved on as being one of the happiest of my childhood. I had given up my yearnings to be part of the human village, and perhaps it was a good thing that we were stalked by the hunters, because this reminded me how cold and cruel my own species could be.
For a period, at least, I ceased to even see humans as my own species, because the older I got, the more I felt the love of my monkey family and learned to cherish them all as individuals. And, like anyone, I also had my favourites.
Of the younger monkeys – the ones I would naturally spend the most time with – my favourites were Rudy and Romeo and Mia. I didn’t give them names then, as the concept of names was long lost to me, but whenever I think of them these days, it is with names attached to them, because long after I left them I would remember them so fondly and gave them names which reminded me of their characters – based on the personalities of people I encountered in my next life.
Rudy was distinctive because he had so much energy. He was always chasing other monkeys and invariably catching them, at which point he would pull their ears. This was his second-favourite pastime, his first, without question, being peek-a-boo.
He loved it if I hid behind a tree trunk, waited for his plaintive ‘where have you gone?’ call, then sprang out again and made him jump. He loved it so much he soon learned to do his own version, waiting in all sorts of places – high on branches, in deep cover – before leaping out and terrifying whichever dazed monkey was the target of his mischief on that occasion.
Rudy was always full of mischief. He was always the monkey making an awful lot of noise just for the sake of it, sounding the warning cry for no apparent reason and generally irritating the older monkeys in the troop. He could also be a bit of a drama queen; if he got cross, every other monkey had to know about it. He was affectionate, however, and I was always happy to l
et him groom me, even if, due to his ineptitude, it wasn’t very useful – my hair always ended up knottier than it started.
Romeo, in contrast, was a very gentle animal and liked nothing better than to be physically attached. I don’t know how he wangled it but, even though he had long since been too big for it, he could invariably be seen hitching a cheeky ride on someone’s back. He was a peacemaker and a sweetheart, always wrapping his arms around your shoulders, and would chatter so beautifully that you were never in any doubt that he was delivering a sonnet that declared his undying love for the entire monkey community.
Perhaps my favourite – aside from Grandpa – was Mia. She is probably the character I missed – and still miss – the most. Like Romeo, she was affectionate, but unlike him she was also shy, and it took her a while to gain the courage to be near me. I first won her round – even though that wasn’t particularly my intention – when I got cross and indignant about the way she was sometimes bullied and would use my size and strength to stop some of the more aggressive young monkeys from poking and shoving her and pushing her around. As she never stood up for herself, I felt I had to do it for her, and so began the closest of my friendships.
Mia liked to climb on my shoulders and was often with me as I went about doing whatever I was doing, both her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. Unusually for the monkeys, she also liked to lick me. And a lick on the cheek felt like a sure sign of her love.
But all the monkeys had their own endearing ways. Several would enjoy poking a finger up my nose or making a thorough inspection inside my ears. One in particular – a teenage male – just loved digging around in ears generally, and why not? After all, an ear was as likely a place as any other in which to find a nice juicy grub.
Again, I didn’t mind. It was really quite relaxing – and it also made me shiver! Neither did I mind any of them rooting behind my ears – if it was somewhere dirt collected, there were always rich pickings to be had.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys Page 9