Golden Bats & Pink Pigeons

by Gerald Durrell

  We set off across the blue, gently undulating sea, leaving Round Island behind us ablaze in the setting sun. It looked more bleak and barren than ever, but now we knew the patches of palms and steep-sided ravines that gave blissful shade, the banks of tuff that provided wind-eroded homes for the Red-tailed tropic birds, the fronds of the palms decorated with geckos, and the bald, hot dome of the island alive with the quick, glittering shapes of the little skinks. We knew that under the picnic tree a host of eager, elegant Telfair skinks formed a welcoming committee, anxiously awaiting the next visiting humans. To us, the island was no longer just a chunk of barren volcanic debris, sun-drenched, sea-washed and wind-sculpted, but a living thing as important, as busy, as full of interest as a human village, peopled by charming and defenceless creatures eager to welcome one to their hot and inhospitable home.

  The sea was calm and the sky without a shred or wisp of cloud, so that the sunset lay along the horizon like a glowing ingot of gold, fading gradually to green as the sun disappeared. Most of the party slept. Wahab, having consumed a pineapple, a cucumber and some cold curry, was promptly sick, went a peculiar shade of grey, curled up like a cat and went to sleep.

  We drove back the long and bumpy ride to Black River, and there we laid the bags with our precious cargo on the cool floor of Dave’s spare room and went tiredly to bed. The next morning we unpacked our catch and found, to our relief, that none of our captives was any the worse for their incarceration. The guntheri, velvety and glowering in a Churchillian manner, strolled nonchalantly into their cages. The little skinks skittered eagerly into their new environment, brisk, alert, each looking like the Salesman of the Year. The Telfairs were equally curious about their new home – a lavishly decorated aviary. We eased them out of their bags and they investigated every nook and cranny. Then, within five minutes, they were satisfied with their new quarters. They converged on us and, as if they had been born in captivity, climbed into our laps and accepted fat, black cockroaches and juicy lumps of banana from our fingers, in a most confiding and flattering way.

  4. The Frugivorous Flight

  Wahab had stopped the car at a tiny shop where the owner and his entire family, from grandmother to youngest child, were absorbed in manufacturing chapatties and rolling them up with a filling of spiced lentils inside, by the light of glittering, yellow oil lamps. We purchased a goodly supply of these delicacies and then drove to the cool, moon-drenched hillside outside the town beneath a sky heavy with stars, where we sat and ate our chapatties and discussed our forthcoming bat-catching expedition to the neighbouring island of Rodrigues.

  ‘You will have to take fruit with you, of course,’ said Wahab wiping his fingers fastidiously on his handkerchief.

  ‘Take fruit? What on earth for?’ I asked, my mouth full of delicious chapatti. To take fruit to a tropical island seemed to me to be the Mascarene equivalent of taking coals to Newcastle.

  ‘Well you see,’ said Wahab, ‘there is very little fruit grown in Rodrigues and, anyway, now it’s the end of the fruit season.’

  ‘It would be,’ I said, ruefully.

  ‘Isn’t it going to be a bit of a problem?’ asked John. ‘I mean transporting fruit in a small plane.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Wahab, ‘you just pack it up as if it’s excess baggage, no trouble at all.’

  ‘We’d better take some ripe, some medium, and some green,’ I said, ‘like you do on board ship to feed animals.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wahab, ‘and I will try and find you a Jak fruit.’

  ‘What’s a Jak fruit?’ asked Ann.

  ‘It’s a large fruit that the bats are very, very fond of,’ said Wahab. ‘It has a strong smell, you see, and the bats can smell it from a distance.’

  ‘Is it good eating?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Wahab, adding cautiously, ‘if you like that sort of thing.’

  By the time our trip to Rodrigues was over, I had come to look upon Jak fruit as one of the tropical delicacies least likely to succeed in any culinary contest but at that moment, I only had a mental image of a host of bats flying straight into our arms at the merest whiff of its delectable odour.

  The next couple of days we spent checking our nets and other equipment, reading up on Rodrigues and, whenever possible, snorkelling on the reef, reviewing the multi-coloured ever-changing pageant of sea life that lived on or around it. News drifted to us that Wahab was having difficulty in getting Jak fruit and that Rodrigues was experiencing its first rainfall in eight years. Neither piece of gossip seemed of vital importance and yet, had we known it, both things were to affect our plans. Two days before we were due to fly to Rodrigues, Wahab phoned. He had, he said, tracked down positively the last Jak fruit on the island of Mauritius and had commandeered it for us. He was sending it round by special messenger.

  ‘It’s rather ripe, Gerry,’ he explained, ‘so you should keep it wrapped up so that it doesn’t lose its scent, and keep it out of a high temperature.’

  ‘How do you suggest I do that?’ I enquired sarcastically, mopping the sweat from my brow. ‘I can’t even keep myself out of a high temperature.’

  ‘Your hotel room is air conditioned, isn’t it?’ asked Wahab. ‘Keep it there.’

  ‘My hotel room already contains twenty-four hands of bananas, two dozen avocado pears, two dozen pineapples, two water melons and four dozen mangoes, purchased for this damned bat catching. It looks more like a market than the Port Louis market does; still, I suppose the addition of one Jak fruit won’t make all that difference?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Wahab, ‘and, by the way, this sudden rain Rodrigues is having. It may affect your flight.’

  ‘How?’ I asked, suddenly filled with anxiety, for any delay would cut into the time we had allotted for the bat catching.

  ‘Well, you know the airfield in Rodrigues is only an earth one.’ explained Wahab. ‘All this rain has made it very slippery. The plane yesterday had to turn back. Still, you may be all right.’

  ‘Well, I hope to heaven we are,’ I said, feeling depressed. ‘If there’s too much of a delay, we’ll have to cancel our whole trip there.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you won’t have to do that,’ said Wahab merrily. ‘Let me know if there is anything else you want. The Jak fruit should be arriving later on in the morning. Goodbye.’

  Telephone conversations with Wahab tended to begin and end abruptly.

  The Jak fruit, wrapped up in swaddling clothes of polythene and sacking, arrived in the arms of a smartly uniformed forest guard at about midday. Judging by the size of the parcel, a Jak fruit was considerably bigger than I had imagined. I had visualised it as being about the size of a coconut, but this fruit was obviously as big as a large marrow. The parcel had, during its travels, got very hot and I took it into the bedroom and reverently unwrapped it so as to let the cool air get at its contents. What was revealed, when the swaddling clothes were stripped away, was an obscene green fruit covered with knobs and looking rather like the corpse of a Martian baby. To help the illusion, there arose from it a thick, sweetish, very pungent smell, vaguely reminiscent of a putrefying body.

  I was to learn, as time progressed, that this sickly cloying scent permeated everything and insinuated itself everywhere, rather as paraffin does when left in untutored hands. Within an astonishingly short space of time, the whole room smelt like a gigantic Jak fruit, or a morgue where the freezing unit has developed a fault. Our clothes smelt of Jak fruit, as did our shoes; the books, cameras, binoculars; the suitcases and the bat-catching nets. You escaped from the room in order to snatch a breath of fresh air, only to find you had taken the smell with you. The whole landscape was redolent of Jak fruit. In an effort to elude this all-pervading scent, we went snorkelling on the reef and it smelt as though we had Jak fruits imprisoned in our masks. Our lunch tasted entirely of Jak fruit, as did dinner. Breakfast, heavily impregnated with Jak fruit, made me glad that we were flying to Rodrigues that day, where we could leave this diabolical fruit in
the forest and perhaps escape its effluvium.

  We arrived at the airport and within minutes, the departure lounge smelt so strongly of Jak fruit that all the other passengers started to cough and glance about them uneasily. We were a motley enough looking crew to arouse thoughts of hi-jacking, with our incomprehensible bundles of nets and baskets bulging with a weird assortment of fruit, in the midst of which the Jak fruit lay and simmered in its baby clothes of sacking and polythene.

  Presently, it was time to check in, and we discovered how the first rainfall for eight years in Rodrigues – desirable though it might be for the island – was detrimental to our cause. Apparently, as well as a shortage of rain, Rodrigues had a dearth of money and so it was imperative that our plane should carry a large supply of this much-needed commodity. Unfortunately money, as well as being useful, weighs a lot. Owing to the fact that the rainfall had turned the airfield into a quagmire, it was important that we were not overweight lest the plane get out of control on landing. As usual, money being the most important thing in the world, even at the end of the world like Rodrigues, the passengers had to cut down on their baggage. Frantically, we discarded all the heavy items of clothing and equipment we could manage without. It made an interesting pile. If there had been any doubts about our sanity before this they were soon dispelled, for what sane person would discard shirt, socks, shoes and other vital items of wearing apparel in favour of bananas, mangoes and a Jak fruit that one was conscious of at fifty paces?

  There was a pause while a heavily guarded jeep was driven out on to the airfield and boxes of money were lifted out and weighed. Then there was a mass mathematical orgy, followed by much arm waving and argument. The news was finally broken to us that, in spite of our sacrifice we were still overweight. To the evident satisfaction of the man in charge of Weights and Measures, we sat down and ate half our fruit, It was lunch time anyway. Just as we were feeling we never wanted to eat another banana, it was announced that the flight was cancelled owing to the state of the runway in Rodrigues. Would we all kindly report at the same time tomorrow?

  Taking our, by now almost lethal, Jak fruit, we drove back to the hotel. They were not overjoyed to see us since they had only just succeeded in getting the smell of the Jak fruit out of the bedrooms. The following day, having replaced our now rotting fruit with fresh, we reported once more to the airport. For some strange reason, we had to be weighed in again, as did the money. They found we were overweight. It was at this point that I began to have serious doubts about the mathematical abilities of the Mauritians but, as anyone knows who has tried it, it is useless arguing with an airport official. We sat down, having discarded virtually everything but the clothes we stood up in and our nets, and ate some more of our precious fruit. The fact that we were now carrying the extra weight within us, rather than in hands of bananas, did not appear to perturb the airport officials at all. The temptation to discard the Jak fruit was immense but even I realised its pungency might prove useful in luring the bats into our nets, provided it did not asphyxiate us or them first. We had just consumed another glut of bananas when they told us that the flight was cancelled again.

  ‘If this is an example of how the Rodrigues trip is going to go, I shall have a very upset stomach,’ I said, as we arrived back at the hotel, where they viewed our reappearance with a long-suffering air. I was genuinely worried, for if there was one more delay, we would have to cancel the whole Rodrigues venture. It was getting close to our departure date for Europe. The following day, having replaced all the bananas and mangoes which had become over-ripe and, for the hundredth time, wished we had an airtight box for the Jak fruit, we went to the airport once more. Again we and the money were laboriously weighed but this time, to our astonishment, we were not forced to eat half of our luggage. Soon we found ourselves on board the tiny plane with a motley assortment of passengers, who viewed the arrival of the Jak fruit in that confined space with a certain alarm and despondency The soldiers who had been guarding the plane now dispersed, and we taxied down the runway and took off, flying low over the vivid green patchwork of sugar cane and rising higher and higher into the hyacinth-blue sky, as we flew across the reef and out over the deep, sparkling blue of the Indian Ocean.

  Rodrigues lies a little over 350 miles east of Mauritius, well out into the Indian Ocean; an island eleven miles long and five-and-a-quarter miles wide at its widest point. It has had an interesting history and a still more interesting fauna. One of these was that strange bird, the Solitaire, which had evolved on the island. This bird became extinct shortly after the Dodo and the reason for its demise appears to have been the destruction of its habitat, as well as ruthless hunting. Together with the Solitaire, the island was shared by a species of giant tortoise, of which there were a prodigious number. In his fascinating book on Rodrigues, Alfred North-Coombes goes into the exploitation of these tortoises:

  Giant tortoises take thirty to forty years to reach maturity and may live for as long as two to three hundred years. It was only the isolated position of these islands, the absence of man and natural enemies, which favoured this development to an almost fabulous extent. Indeed, Leguat says that they were so numerous Rodrigues ‘that sometimes you see two or three thousand of them in a flock; so that you may go above a hundred paces on their backs … without setting foot to ground.’

  Thus, by the time Mahé de Labourdonnais arrived at Isle de France, thousands of tortoises had already been removed from Rodrigues for Bourbon, Isle de France and the Company’s ships. The latter plundered indiscriminately, often far beyond the essential requirements of their crews and passengers. Some captains sold he surplus at Bourbon where apparently the demand was greater and the price good, refusing even to let Isle de France have some for the sick of other vessels. Labourdonnais exclaims: ‘Would you believe it, Sir, there are captains who come from Rodrigues with seven to eight hundred tortoises, who refuse to land them here for the sick of other ships, preferring to sell them at Bourbon or exchange them there for chickens!’

  Labourdonnais did not keep an exact account of the number of tortoises removed from Rodrigues during his governorship. It could hardly have been less than 10,000 annually. One of his successors, Desforges-Bourcher, the same who was formerly governor of Bourbon and had attempted to establish a colony at Rodrigues in 1725, was more precise. Four little ships were engaged during his governorship in transporting the tortoises to Isle de France. They were La Mignonne, L’Oiseau, Le Volant and Le Pénelope. Thousands of tortoises were brought back each time, as the following extract from one of his reports to the Company shows:

  14 December 1759

  – L’Oiseau arrives from Rodrigues with 1035 tortoises and 47 turtles. She had loaded 5000, but took eight days to reach Isle de France and lost most of the cargo.

  15 May 1760

  – L’Oiseau brings 6000 tortoises

  29 September 1760

  – L’Oiseau arrives with 1600 tortoises and 171 turtles

  12 May 1761

  – Le Volant docks with a cargo of 4000 tortoises

  6 December 1761

  – L’Oiseau brings 3800 tortoises alive out of a shipment of 5000.

  The Royal Navy helped itself too, when in Rodrigues waters. Thus on 26 July 1761 two ships loaded 3000 tortoises.

  Presently, after two-and-a-half hours’ flying, we saw ahead of us the meandering, ever-moving scarf of ivory-white foam that marked the reef around Rodrigues. This great bastion of coral ringed the island and, indeed, formed a great shelf in the deep ocean on which the island stood. The reef in some places was twenty miles from the island’s shore and the great piece of placid, emerald green water it guarded was dotted with smaller islands, some mere sand dunes, others substantial enough to have given refuge to giant tortoises and a giant species of lizard, also now extinct. We banked and came in low to land on the tiny, red earth airfield. From the air, the island looked biscuit-brown and pretty barren, though there were patches of green in the valleys and a scatterin
g of dusty green vegetation elsewhere. From the moment we left the plane, we were enveloped in the magic charms one only feels on small, remote, sun-illuminated islands. We made our way over the red laterite airstrip and into the minute airport building, on the facade of which was the heartwarming sign saying ‘Welcome to Rodrigues’. Inside, I saw, to my astonishment, a desk set in an open window on which there was a sign saying ‘Immigration’.

  ‘Immigration?’ I said to John. ‘What can they mean? They’ve only one plane a week from Reunion and three from Mauritius.’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, ‘perhaps it’s not for us.’

  ‘Please to have passports ready for Immigration,’ said a jovial policeman in smart green uniform, thus dispelling any doubt.

  It was fortunate we had by chance brought our passports with us, since it had not occurred to us that we would need them, Rodrigues being a dependency of Mauritius. At that moment, the Immigration Officer himself arrived; a large, chocolate-coloured Rodriguan in a handsome, khaki uniform. He was sweating profusely and carried a big bundle of unruly files. He had an earnest, nervous, wrinkled face like a bloodhound recovering from a nervous breakdown. He seated himself at the desk, knocked over the sign saying ‘Immigration Officer’ with his files, and smiled at us nervously as he righted it. We lined up in front of him, dutifully brandishing our passports. He gave us a little bow, cleared his throat and then, with a flourish, opened a file which contained immigration forms of the sort that ask you every imaginably fatuous question, from your date of birth to whether your grandmother had ingrowing toenails. His stern demeanour as an upholder of the law was slightly undermined when a gust of warm air from the window blew his forms all over what, for want of a better term, one must call the airport lounge. We all scrabbled around collecting them for him and he was pathetically grateful.