Three Singles to Adventure

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘It’s a tadpole all right, but what of?’

  We stood and watched while the giant tadpole swam merrily round and round the glass jar we had confined him in. I racked my brains, for I knew that somewhere or other I had read about these monstrous tadpoles. After a few minutes of hard thinking it suddenly came back to me.

  ‘I know what it is,’ I said, ‘it’s a paradoxical frog.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A paradoxical frog. I remember reading about them somewhere. It’s called that because instead of the tadpole being small and growing larger as it develops, it’s the other way round.’

  ‘Other way round?’ echoed Bob, completely bewildered. ‘Yes, it starts off as a very large tadpole and as it develops it shrinks and eventually turns into a medium-sized frog.’ ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Bob again, ‘it should be the other way round.’

  ‘I know. That’s why it’s called a paradoxical frog.’ Bob thought about it for a bit.

  ‘I give up,’ he said at length. ‘What’s the frog look like?’

  ‘You remember those small greenish frogs we caught at Adventure? Those ones about the size of an English frog? Well, I think those are the ones, although I never thought of it at the time.’

  ‘It seems impossible,’ said Bob musing and staring at the gigantic tadpole, ‘but I’ll take your word for it.’

  We set to work with the net once more, and by the time the canoe had returned we had captured two more of these huge tadpoles and were feeling very pleased with ourselves. Later, when we had returned to our hut, we placed the jar that contained them under a strong light and examined them carefully. Except for their colossal proportions they were exactly like any tadpole you can find in an English pond in the spring. They were, however, a sort of mottled greenish-grey instead of black. The transparent edges of the tail were like frosted glass, and they had ridiculous pursed-up mouths with protruding lips that made them look as though they were blowing kisses at us through the glass. Watching them wiggling tirelessly round the jar gave one an uncanny feeling. You would feel the same sense of shock if you were walking through the wood one day and you came face to face with an ant the size of a terrier, or a bumblebee as big as a blackbird. They were so very ordinary but, magnified to those fantastic proportions, they took you by surprise and made you wonder if you were dreaming.

  Enthusiastic over our paradoxical frogs we returned the following night to the same creek, armed with nets, jars, and other impedimenta. In the first half-hour we caught two more Even’s tree frogs and, after much dredging, one more giant tadpole. Then for three hours we caught nothing except bits of twig and a quite remarkable quantity of revolting slush from the creek bed. Eventually I moved further down the bank from the spot where Bob was still hopefully dredging, and I found a narrow, shallow tributary leading into the main creek, little more than a drain and thickly choked with leaves. It meandered away in the distance under a group of stunted trees. Thinking that it might be a more profitable hunting ground, I called Bob over, and we worked our way up the small waterway. But, if anything, it seemed to be more devoid of life than the main creek. Presently I sat down for a smoke, while Bob continued doggedly onwards with his net. I saw him haul his net out, as usual full of sodden leaves, and watched him tip them out on to the bank. He was just going to plunge his net into the water again when he stopped and peered down at the pile of leaves he had just dredged up. Then he dropped the net and clutched at the pile of leaves with a delighted squawk.

  ‘What have you got?’ I asked.

  Bob was dancing about in glee, clasping something in his hands.

  ‘I’ve got one!’ he yelped. ‘I’ve got one!’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘A pipa toad.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said incredulously.

  ‘Come and have a look, then,’ said Bob, bursting with pride.

  He opened his hands for my inspection and disclosed a strange and ugly creature. It looked, to be quite frank, like a brown toad that had been run over by a very heavy steamroller. Its short, rather thin arms and legs stuck out stiffly, one at each corner of its squarish body, and made it look as though rigor mortis had already set in.

  Its snout was pointed, its eyes minute, and the whole thing was as flat as a pancake. It was, as Bob said, a large male pipa toad, perhaps one of the most curious amphibians in the world. Bob’s excitement and pride were understand-able, for ever since we had arrived in Guiana we had been trying to get specimens of this creature, without success. And now, in a most unlikely-looking spot, when we were not even thinking about pipa toads, we had captured one. So the misshapen object in Bob’s hands sent us into an orgy of delight and self-congratulation, whereas most people would have been rather revolted by their catch and thrown it hurriedly back. When our excitement had died down a little we set to work and grimly dredged every inch of that small stream, producing a mountain of rotting leaves which we picked over as carefully as a couple of monkeys searching each other’s fur. Our perseverance was rewarded, for at the end of an hour we had captured four more of these weird toads. Moreover one of them was a female with eggs, a prize that was worth anything in our eyes, for the breeding habits of the pipa toad are the most extraordinary thing about it.

  During the breeding season, in the case of most species of frog and toad, the sexes can be found together some time before the eggs are actually laid. The male in a frenzy of love clasps the female round the body just below her front legs and remains on her back for quite a long time, clutching her in this nuptial embrace. Eventually the female lays her eggs, and as she does so the male fertilises them. In the pipa toad, however, the process is slightly different. The male climbs on to the female’s back and clasps her round the chest in the usual manner. But when the eggs are ready to be laid the female protrudes from her anus a long, pipe-like ovipositor, which is curved up on to her back and under the male’s belly. ‘When this is in place the male starts to wiggle about, moving and pressing the pipe so that the eggs are squeezed out and deposited in uneven rows across the female’s skin, where they stick like glue. At the beginning of the breeding season the skin of the female’s back becomes soft and spongy, and so when the eggs have been placed and fertilised they sink into the skin, forming cup-like depressions. The glutinous part of the eggs, which protrude above the skin surface, then hardens and forms little convex covers. So the female pipa has all her eggs in a multitude of little pockets on her back. In these pockets her young spend the whole of their early life, turning from eggs to tadpoles and from tadpoles to toads. When they are fully developed they push up the little lid on top of the pocket and make their way out into the dangerous world.

  The female we captured could only just have had her eggs installed, for their lids were still soft. As the weeks passed the skin on her back became more spongy, swollen, and leprous looking and the bulging pockets more pronounced. When the young were old enough to leave their mother’s back they chose a moment when I was on board ship, approximately in the middle of the Atlantic. The toads were housed in kerosene tins and placed, with the rest of the collection, down in the hold of the ship. The first indication I had that there was a happy event imminent among the amphibians was when I went to change their water one morning. The big female was lying, heavy and bloated, spreadeagled on the surface of the water in her usual attitude, looking – as all pipa toads look in repose – as though she had been dead for some weeks and was already partially decomposed. As I looked at her carefully, which I always did to make sure she was not really dead – I noticed something moving on her back. Close inspection proved this to be a tiny arm, sticking out of her back and waving about in a feeble manner, and I realised that the great moment had at last arrived. I moved the apparently indifferent mother to a special tin of her own and put this in a convenient position so that I could keep an eye on it during my work, for I was greatly excited and
determined not to miss a minute of such a unique birth.

  During the morning, whenever I peeped into the tin, there appeared to be much activity going on in the pockets: minute arms and legs stuck out at strange angles, waved vaguely, and were pulled hastily back. Once I found one baby with his head and arms stuck out of his pocket, looking like someone appearing from a manhole. As I tipped the tin to get a better look at him he became shy and struggled frantically back inside his pocket again. The female pipa seemed completely oblivious to the wiggling and kicking and pushing that was going on all over her ample back. She just lay in the water and pretended she was dead.

  It was not until the following night that the babies were ready to leave the mother, and I would have missed this extraordinary exodus if I had not glanced casually into the tin at about midnight. I had just finished the last job of the night, which was to give the armadillos their hot-water bottle. The weather had been getting colder, and these little animals seemed to feel it more than the others. Before switching off the arc-lights and retiring to my cabin I looked into the pipa toad’s maternity ward, and I was surprised to see a minute replica of the mother floating on the surface of the water at her side. Obviously the moment for the great hatching had arrived. I had for the last two hours been yearning for my comfortable bunk, but the sight of this queer, misshapen little amphibian made me suddenly feel very wide awake. I carried an arc-light across the hold and hung it over the tin; then I squatted down to watch.

  Now I have witnessed, at one time or another, a great variety of different births. I have watched amoebae splitting into two as casually as quicksilver; hens going through the apparently effortless performance of egg-laying; the messy and prolonged labour of a cow, and the quick, dainty birth of a fawn; the nonchalant, careless spawning of fish, and the pathetic and incredibly human birth of a baby monkey. All these have moved and fascinated me. There are many other phenomena in nature, some quite common, which I can never watch without a feeling of awe: the turning of tadpoles into half-frogs, and then complete frogs; the fantastic way a spider will step out of its own skin and walk away, leaving a transparent, microscopically exact replica of itself, fragile as wood ash, lying there to be destroyed by the wind; the way a blunt and ugly pupa will split and tear, releasing from inside a wonderfully coloured butterfly or moth, a transformation more extraordinary than anything to be found in a fairy tale. But I have rarely been so absorbed or so astounded, as I was that night by the arrival of the baby pipa toads in mid-Atlantic.

  At first there was little activity apart from the usual arm and leg waving. I thought that the fierce glare of the arc-light might be disturbing them, so I shaded it slightly, and very soon things began to happen. In one of the pockets I could see the tiny occupant twitching and struggling frantically, turning round and round, so that first his legs and then his head would appear in the opening. Then he remained quiet for some time. Having rested he proceeded to thrust his head and shoulders through the opening. Then he paused again to rest, for it seemed to cost him a considerable effort to prise himself loose from the encircling rim of his mother’s thick, elastic skin. Presently he started to wiggle like a fish, throwing his head from side to side, and slowly his body started to ease itself out of the pocket, like a reluctant cork out of a bottle. Soon he was lying exhausted across his mother’s back, with only his hind feet still hidden inside the pock-mark that had been his nursery for so long. Then he dragged himself across his mother’s cratered and eroded skin, slid into the water and floated immobile, another scrap of life entering the universe. He and his brother who floated beside him would have fitted comfortably on to the surface of a sixpence and left plenty of room to spare, yet they were perfect little pipa toads, and from the moment they entered the water they could swim and dive with great speed and strength.

  I had watched four pipa toads enter the world, when I was joined by two members of the ship’s crew. Coming off duty they had seen the light in the hold and had come down to find out if there was anything wrong. They were interested to find out why I was crouching over a kerosene tin at two o’clock in the morning. Briefly I explained what pipa toads were, how they mated and laid their eggs, and how I was now watching the last act in the drama being unfolded in the depths of the kerosene tin. The men stared into the tin just as another toad started his struggle to get out, and they stayed to watch. Presently three other members of the crew arrived to see what was keeping their companions, and were immediately shushed to silence. In whispers the mystery of the toads was explained, and three new members joined the circle of watchers.

  My attention was now divided between the toads and the men, for I found them both equally interesting. In the tin the small, flat flakes of amphibian life struggled through the portholes in their mother’s skin, oblivious of everything except their own microscopic fight for life; round this tin squatted the group of ordinary seamen, reasonably hard-living and, one would have thought, unemotional men whose every word was prefaced by a procreative expletive and whose only interests in life (if you judged by their conversation) were drink, gambling, and women. Yet those hardened and unsentimental examples of the human race crouched round that kerosene tin at two o’clock in the morning, cold and uncomfortable, watching with incredulous wonder the beginnings of life for the baby toads, talking occasionally in hushed whispers as though they were in church. Half an hour previously they had not known that such things as pipa toads existed, yet now they were as interested and as anxious for the welfare of the little amphibians as they would have been over their own off-spring. With worried expressions they watched the babies twirling in their pockets before struggling to freedom. Then they became tense and anxious as the young wiggled and twisted their way out, pausing to recuperate now and then. When one, weaker than the rest, took a tremendously long time to work free, the men became quite restive, and one of them asked me plaintively if we could not help it with a matchstick. I pointed out that the baby toad’s arms and legs were as thin as cotton, and his body as fragile as a soap bubble, so any attempting to help him might maim him terribly. When, eventually, the laggard hauled himself free there came a general sigh of relief, and the man who had suggested helping the toad turned to me.

  ‘Game little sod, isn’t he, sir?’ he said proudly.

  The time seemed to fly past, and before we realised it dawn was coming up over the grey sea, while we still sat in a circle round the toads. We arose, stiff and aching, and made our way down to the galley for an early-morning cup of tea. The news of the wonderful toads soon spread through the ship, and for the next two days I had an endless stream of visitors coming down into the hold to see them. At one point the crowd round the tin got so dense that I feared they might accidentally kick it over, so I enlisted the aid of the five men who had been with me on the night the babies hatched. They took it in turn, when off duty, to come down into the hold and guard the toads from harm. As I went about my endless task of feeding and cleaning I could hear these protectors keeping the crowd in order.

  ‘Shut up, can’t you? What d’you want to stamp about like that for? D’you want to scare ‘em to death?’

  ‘Yes, all out of the old one’s back . . . there, see them ’oles? In there they was, all curled up neat. ‘Ere! No pushing, now. You want me to upset the ruddy can?’

  I really think those men were sorry to lose the toads when I disembarked at Liverpool.

  All this came about, as I say, because of Bob’s determined efforts at dredging in one of the smallest and most uninteresting streams in the whole of the creek lands. When we had assured ourselves that no more toads lurked in the leaf choked channel we moved to another equally unattractive stream and worked up its length. But the Gods of collecting had smiled on us once that night and they were not going to overdo things, so we caught no more pipa toads. At length, muddy and tired, carrying our precious captures most carefully,we made our way back to the main creek. Here we found that we were about an
hour overdue, and a worried Ivan was searching the bank for us, thinking that we must have been eaten by jaguars. We proudly exhibited our treasures to him, climbed into the canoe and set off for the village.

  Collecting is a curious occupation. Most of the time you have so many failures and meet with so many disappointments that you wonder why you bother to go collecting at all. But then suddenly your luck changes; you go out, as we had done that night, and capture a specimen that you have been dreaming and talking about for months. Immediately you are suffrised in a rosy glow, the world is a wonderful place once again, and all your failures and disappointments are forgotten. You decide, quite suddenly, that there is no job that gives you the same pleasure and satisfaction as collecting, and you think of all the human beings doing other jobs, and a faint, pitying sneer comes over your face. In a state of intoxicated happiness you feel that you would not only forgive your friends the wrongs they have done you, but even your relatives.

  So we paddled back along the silent creeks, the black waters reflecting the star-shimmering sky with such faithfulness that we felt the canoe was floating through space among the planets. Cayman grunted among the reeds, strange fish rose and gulped at the myriads of pale moths that drifted across the water. In the bottom of the canoe, spreadeagled in a tin, lay the amphibians that had made our evening so perfect. Every few minutes we would glance down at them and smirk with satisfaction. The capturing of an incredibly ugly toad: of such simple pleasures is a collector’s life made up.

  9. Pimpla Hog and Tank ’e God

  It was not long before our small hut was overflowing with animals. Tied to posts and stakes outside were capuchin and squirrel monkeys, marmosets, and pacas. Inside in a variety of makeshift cages were agoutis, pattering urgently back and forth on deer-like feet, armadillos, grunting like pigs, iguanas, cayman, anacondas, a pair of margays (small and beautifully spotted forest cats), a box marked ‘DANGER’ which contained three fer-de-lance, probably the most poisonous snake in South America. Hung from the walls of the hut were rows of thin cloth bags containing frogs, toads, and the smaller lizards and snakes. There were hummingbirds, glinting and purring tremulously round their feeding pots, macaws clad in riotous carnival-coloured feathers, talking to themselves in deep voices, smaller parrots chuckling and squeaking, sun-bitterns, in their autumn-tinted feathers, spreading their wings to display the startling, eye-like markings. All these creatures took a lot of looking after; in fact, we had almost reached that saturation point where the quantity of specimens you have assembled at camp prevents you from going out in search of more. When this point is reached you are forced to pack up your catch and take them back to base camp. Neither Bob nor I was anxious that our stay in the creek lands should end; for we realised that this was the last trip we should have time for before we left Guiana. But, as I say, the arrival of each new specimen brought the final day of our stay nearer. Our kindly schoolmaster, who had worked untiringly to increase our collection, told us that there was a small Arnerindian village some distance away which he was sure would yield some specimens if we went there. So Bob and I decided to visit it as a last treat; when we had been there we would really pack up and return to Georgetown.