The Aye-Aye and I

by Gerald Durrell

  Finally Lee controlled herself and drove the ducks off, but from that day on I always made sure that my stick was within reach when I took a shower. I have viewed the genus Anas with a certain suspicion and disfavour ever since. It is a sad and humbling thought, but I don’t think they would have dared to do what they did if I had been Sir Peter Scott.

  I have mentioned the ducky-wuckies’ attempts to eat a sardine tin. These were gathered in the camp because we washed and carefully kept every tin or box we used: in a poverty-ridden country like Madagascar, these items are of inestimable value. Bottles are treated as if they are the flasks that Shakespeare had drunk from; cardboard boxes are as reverently cared for as if they had been tea-caddies of sandalwood and amber inlaid with gold; and a sardine tin – or, better still, a corned beef tin – were worth more than any Ming vase ever created. We had decided that the distribution of this largesse should fall to our two lovely, shy maids, Véronique and Armandine, and they guarded the ever-growing pile with covetous eyes.

  Veronique, we discovered, was soon to have her twentieth birthday and on one of our trips to market we searched desperately for a present for her but, alas, the town was lacking in things that gladden a maiden’s heart, such as earrings or necklaces that look as if they are solid gold but would not support you in a financial crisis. At length, to our surprise, we managed to run to earth a bottle of scent, the colour and virulence of which would have immediately turned Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde if applied, let alone drunk. Veronique was enchanted with it, but I felt somewhat guilty as I was sure that its application would reduce her matrimonial prospects by at least half, unless her suitor had lost possession of his olfactory senses.

  The end of the television team’s time in Madagascar was drawing near and we still had no luck. Of course, everyone was full of tales of vast hordes of aye-aye just down the road and, when we investigated, it would turn out to be a very ancient habitation of doubtful ownership and whoever it belonged to was never at home. Now, however, our main worry was Mickey. He had – to use a north of England phrase – been feeling poorly for some time. Yet, he had conscientiously continued working and, day by day, he was beginning to look less and less like the Mick we knew and loved. We called the local doctor down and he gave Mick some injections (using our needles and syringe) but they did not bring about the rejuvenation we had hoped for. He had religiously been taking all the necessary pills and potions advised by the medical profession for those who travel in Madagascar, so his illness was a mystery. His temperature attained astronomical proportions and we were deeply worried. Mananara had (with luck) three planes a week and it was decided that Mick must be flown back to Tana, where they at least had proper nursing facilities. It is difficult to give adequate nursing attention to a large man in a tent seven feet long by three feet high. As we made the decision, the heavens opened with glee. I think my diary entry sums up the feelings of us all:

  Heavy rain and the downpour flooded the tent. Mick worse. My hips awful because of damp, my sinuses as well. I can hardly move. Think the best thing I could do to add to the expedition is to die.

  Mick’s temperature held way up in the hundreds and he became semi-delirious. It was obvious that he could not travel alone. With two of the team gone, it would put an end to any more filming, so in the end they all went. As we saw them off poor Tiana was so overcome with emotion at the thought of leaving us that he burst into floods of tears and we all had to comfort him.

  The campsite seemed empty and cheerless when the team had gone. They had been wonderful people to work with and we only wished that the trip had been a greater success. Still, Roland Pas de Problème had saved our bacon by capturing Verity, otherwise the whole trip, financially speaking, would have been a total failure. We had a depressing meal that night, made all the more sombre by the candles in their bowls of sand, fluttering their way to extinction in a little graveyard of cigarette butts.

  Seven egrets, who nested near the camp and had been miles away at the sea fishing, flew upstream to their roosting tree. They were breathtakingly white and quite silent as they flapped along, shining like stars against the darkening river and trees.

  Chapter Nine

  The Arrival of the Aye-aye

  After lunch on the following day, Q had gone off to inspect some nests, which he gloomily predicted would turn out to be those of rats. John was shopping in town and Lee was doing something in the animal house. I wrote a bit of my diary, which had lapsed in the past couple of days, and then decided on a siesta. I chased out my friend the cockerel and his hens, who were making an insect sweep over my bed, lay down and tried to think beautiful thoughts – which was difficult, as the cockerel, annoyed by his expulsion, decided to give me a lesson in crowing. Eventually, after the third stick I had thrown had met its mark, he took the hint and wandered off up the hill.

  I was just sliding off into dreams when I heard Lee calling me. I peered out of the tent from my recumbent position and saw her hurrying down the hill towards the tent, carrying in her arms what appeared to be an old sack and some chicken wire, which was in fact what it proved to be, for the chicken wire had been made into a rough cage and stuffed into the sack as a safety precaution.

  ‘Look what they’ve brought. Look what they’ve brought,’ she cried, her face lit up with joy and excitement, like a child who had been given the most splendiferous and unexpected present on Christmas Day. I looked and saw the reason for her delight.

  Inside the chicken-wire cage sat an adult female aye-aye and next to her sat her baby, one just old enough to be weaned. Obviously, the mother was scared, but the baby seemed to regard the whole experience as part of life’s rich tapestry and was gazing around with huge, interested eyes and with no suggestion of fear. So, twenty-four hours after the film team had left, we obtained our first aye-aye and not one but two of these magnificent beasts.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, struggling up from my recumbent position with some difficulty. ‘Lets get them into a decent cage with a nest box.’

  ‘Isn’t the baby the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen?’ asked Lee.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘but we can croon over it when it’s properly bedded down.’

  We went up the hill to the animal house, where the two beaming farmers who had caught the aye-aye were waiting. They were delighted, of course, because not only were they ridding their farmland of a pest, but were to receive a handsome reward as well. When the cage was ready and we had, with some difficulty, persuaded the aye-aye to leave their temporary confinement for more spacious quarters, I could see, to my intense relief, that both of them were uninjured. To my astonishment, the mother did not dive for the nest box (an important safety area for any newly caught wild creature) but lay beside it, looking almost as if hypnotized. The baby, on the other hand, wanted to explore but never moved more than a very short way from his mother.

  ‘Do you think she’s hurt?’ asked Lee, anxiously.

  ‘No, I think she recognises the potential danger of the situation and, because she can’t know we aren’t going to harm her, she’s gone into a trance. The idiot baby just thinks the whole thing is an enjoyable romp but he’s been taught not to move too far from mum. You can never tell how an animal is going to behave. I’ve had one creature feed from my hand ten minutes after capture, and another that didn’t eat for three days and I thought I would have to let it go. Then it started to eat and ate me out of house and home.’

  ‘Don’t they want some food?’ Lee asked.

  ‘No, mum won’t eat at this stage. She’s got water and idiot child’s got mum to feed off. Peace and quiet is the best.’

  So we covered the cage and left them.

  Down in our living quarters we sat the two aye-aye capturers down, gave them cigarettes and then paid them their bounty. They explained to us in great detail seven or eight times how they had captured the aye-aye, each time with suitable embellishments and displaying a wealth of acting ability. Then they told us several times of our reaction on r
eceiving the animals, as if we had taken no part in the scenario. It was very amusing. People have done this to me when they have read one of my books. They will recount to me at great length and with great attention to detail the entire plot and, when they are telling me about any jokes I may have made, they will recount them several times to make sure I get the point. At times, the impulse to say, ‘Gosh! that book sounds fun. I must go out and buy a copy,’ is almost irresistible.

  When John and Q returned there was much jubilation. After all the frustration and hard work, it was as though a cloud had passed over and the sun shone again. Nobody even complained about having corned beef and sardines for the second night running. Our feelings were effervescent and, so benign did we all feel, we even allowed John to sing a verse of ‘Ilkley Moor’ – but sotto voce, for fear of upsetting our new guests.

  Lee prepared their food and we went up to visit our charges. The mother had moved around a little, but she still regarded us with that expression I have seen on the faces of hospital patients when visiting hour comes round and they view with loathing the arrival of their family carrying grapes, paperbacks, boxes of chocolates and bad news from home. The baby, however, regarded our visit as the high spot of the evening and watched with interest when Lee put in sugar cane, a coconut, honey balls, a dish of mixed fruits and another of writhing beetle grubs. He even reached out and experimented by eating a piece of banana. Meanwhile, Verity, in the next villa along the street, was making a pig of himself, but setting a good example.

  The first stage had been achieved. All we had to do now, we congratulated ourselves, was to catch four more aye-aye of the right sexes. There was nothing further we could do that night, so we went to bed and slept happily.

  I awoke at dawn after a peaceful night. Our egrets, exactly on time, flapped gently down the river towards the sea and, through the mist on the river, a kingfisher flashed momentarily like an opal. The coucals were starting their liquid waterfall of calls. Then, from across the river came the ‘chunk, chunk, chunk’ of an axe, like the sound of nails being driven into a coffin, followed by the dying sob of a tree felled. It brought home to me how important our mission was, for each flashing axe or coup-coup blade was not only biting into the ecology of man but the shrinking kingdom of the aye-aye as well.

  We went up the hill to see what the new aye-aye had eaten. This is always a traumatic moment, for if the animal feeds at once you heave a sigh of relief. If it has not eaten you have to rack your brains to try to think of a way to make it eat. In this case, we hoped that the proximity of Verity eating like a pig (if I may again mix my species) would stimulate the new female’s appetite. However, to our disappointment, this was not the case. Only a piece of sugar cane had been nibbled in a somewhat desultory way, and the female still regarded us with the suspicion that a spinster of long standing would greet the presence of a hippie with a guitar under her bed. Her baby took a more lenient view and was delighted that the circus had come to town once again. A certain amount of banana had been fiddled with and we suspected him rather than his mother.

  It is difficult, when you have two animals in a cage, to judge the food intake of each one unless you mount a round-the-clock watch. However, in this case, we knew the baby was all right as he was still using his mother as a milk bar. All we could do was to watch the female carefully and hope that she would respond to our lavish diet soon or we would be faced with the heartbreaking task (for us) of taking them both back to where they were caught and releasing them. We said a few harsh words to Verity and told him that he was not setting a sufficiently stimulating example. There was nothing we could do but wait. The mother was in good condition and, in spite of feeding her inquisitive baby, would come to no harm if she did not eat for forty-eight hours.

  That night, as we watched Verity making steady inroads on honey balls and grubs and keeping a close eye the while on coconut and sugar cane, we thought we sensed a certain interest emanating from the abode next door, but decided that it was wishful thinking. The next morning proved us wrong. The female had eaten three grubs and parts of the honey balls. She looked much more relaxed but she had still made no attempt to enter her nest box. We had christened this new female Mina, after a Malagasy friend of ours, but we were still having arguments as to what we should call the son. That night, Mina added sugar cane to her intake, a very good sign.

  Q, John and Julian had set off as usual at dusk. They were in good heart, for the arrival of Mina and her son had lifted all our spirits. They returned in triumph at about midnight, Julian beaming and giggling, Q and John trying to look as though it was every day of the week they captured an aye-aye. She was a fine young female, glossy and beautiful. After I had examined her from every possible angle and remarked on her charms, we got her into a holding cage with little trouble.

  ‘Was she difficult to catch?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Q. ‘It was quite an easy tree to climb, really, compared to some. And she stayed in the nest until Julian grabbed her. It was annoying about the baby, though.’

  ‘What baby?’ I asked, startled.

  ‘Well, she had a baby with her but during the capture the baby ran away.’

  ‘And you left it there?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we had to. I mean, we looked everywhere for it but I was anxious about the mother. I wanted to get her back and into a decent cage as soon as possible. Anyway, Julian says the baby will hang around the nest, so we’ll go back and catch him first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Well, I hope Julian’s right,’ I said. ‘I don’t like to think of a baby running around on its own. It may not even be weaned.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll get it,’ said John soothingly. ‘Julian is convinced.’

  I grunted rather sourly, for I was worried.

  ‘Well, if he’s wrong you’ll have to take this female back and release it in the same spot, so that it can find its offspring.’

  ‘Will do, will do,’ said Q, placatingly.

  I was very concerned about the baby, and not even the news that all our aye-aye had fed well cured my unease. I kept visualizing the baby alone; untutored and stupid, wandering about, being pursued relentlessly by hordes of indignant Malagasy with sharp, glittering coup-coups, determined to catch the infant and hang, draw and quarter him. I imagined him coming face to face with a smooth, puma-like fosa of whose existence he was ignorant and who would slap him down with a velvety paw and engulf him in one great, pink gulp. Or, horror of horrors, he might meet with the cat-like beast with seven livers, who was suffering from dyspepsia and had heard that a baby aye-aye, taken without water, was a sure cure. Or the baby may simply be sitting, sobbing in a tree, heartbroken at the way his mother had so basely deserted him. In other words, I was working myself up into that thoroughly anthropomorphic and sentimental state which I so sternly disapprove of in others when dealing with animals.

  In the morning, Q, John and Julian prepared to go out again.

  ‘Remember,’ I said, probably for the tenth time. ‘You must search and search that area until you find it.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Q, impatiently. ‘We will.’

  ‘And if you don’t find it, you’re to come straight here and get the mother and take her back there.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I understand. I’m just as worried about the baby as you are,’ said Q, aggrievedly.

  I looked at him, stolid as Gibraltar. He could not possibly have my imagination, I decided.

  ‘Well, do your best,’ I said.

  ‘I do wish you’d stop fussing,’ said Lee. ‘Q’s just as anxious as you are about the baby. You’re carrying on like a mother.’

  ‘I am not,’ I said austerely; ‘I just don’t like young aye-aye of either sex wandering about the forest at night unchaperoned. You have only to peep into that intellectual newspaper the Sun, to see the kind of thing that can happen.’

  ‘Come to breakfast,’ said Lee.

  The early morning tea seemed to take an inordinately long time to prepare
and drink. Breakfast was several centuries in reaching the table. Even a group of children bearing a plastic dish which heaved with fat, grey-white maggots did not lighten my gloom as it should have done. Then, suddenly, a shout and Q, John, Julian and his helpers came down from the road, Q bearing tenderly in his hands one of our big white soft collecting bags.

  ‘We got it, we got it!’ Q shouted, triumphantly. ‘We got the baby – it was there just as Julian said it would be.’

  I struggled up to the animal house, scarcely believing our luck.

  ‘Uninjured?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, and easy to catch,’ said John. I undid the door of the cage in which the mother resided, and Q carefully untied the bag and held the mouth of it in the doorway. I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not what happened. The baby’s head appeared in the mouth of the bag, huge ears turning for every sound, eyes calm and interested. He paused a moment, surveying us regally, and then stepped gracefully out of the bag and into the cage as haughtily as a princeling taking possession of his rightful kingdom. It was such a perfectly stage-managed entrance and the baby was so aristocratic and so incredibly beautiful that I stupidly burst into tears of relief.

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased,’ said Q, embarrassed on my behalf, ‘not cry all over the place.’

  ‘I am pleased,’ I said, blowing my nose, ‘and I’m not crying. It’s just that aye-aye give me hay fever, especially the baby ones.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Q. ‘Very annoying.’

  We watched as the baby made its way over to its mother. They both treated their reunification with no sign of emotion. You would have thought that they had never been apart. The baby, after a brief inspection of the cage, settled down to the stern business of quenching his thirst, which must have been considerable, judging by the time he took over it. We had a jubilant second breakfast and decided to call the new female Juliet after Julian who had captured her.