The Bafut Beagles

by Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  Although Mary treated us and the staff with great gentleness, she never forgot that she had a grudge against Africans in general, and she used to pick on any strange ones that came to camp. She would grin at them ingratiatingly and slap her chest, or turn somersaults – anything to gain their attention. By her antics she would lure them closer and closer to the cage looking the picture of cheerful good humour, while her shrewd eyes judged the distance carefully. Suddenly the long and powerful arm would shoot out through the bars, there would be a loud ripping noise, a yelp of fright from the African, and Mary would be dancing round her cage triumphantly waving a torn shirt or singlet that she had pulled off her admirer's back. Her strength was extraordinary, and it cost me a small fortune in replacements until I put her cage in such a position that she could not commit these outrages.

  The monkey collection kept up a continuous noise all through the day, but in the afternoon, at about four-thirty, this rose to a crescendo of sound that would tax the strongest nerves, for it was at this time that the monkeys had their milk. About four they would start to get impatient, leaping and jumping about their cages, turning somersaults, or sitting with their faces pressed to the bars making mournful squeaks. As soon as the one of clean pots was laid out, however, and the great kerosene tin full of warm milk, malt and cod-liver oil, sugar and calcium came in sight, a wave of excitement would sweep the cages and the uproar would be deafening. The chimps would be giving prolonged hoots through pursed lips and thumping on the sides of their cages with their fists, the Drills would be uttering their loud and penetrating 'Ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-erererer!' cries, like miniature machine-guns, the Guenons would be giving faint, bird-like whistles and trills, the Patas monkeys would be dancing up and down like mad ballerinas, shouting 'Proup … proup' plaintively, and the beautiful Colobus, with her swaying shawl of white and black hair, would be calling 'Arroup! Arroup! Arroup! ye-ye-ye-ye!° in a commanding tone of voice. As we moved along the cages, pushing the pots of milk through the doors, the noises would gradually cease, until all that could be heard was a low snorting, sucking sound, interspersed by an occasional cough as some milk went down the wrong way. Then, the pots empty, the monkeys would climb up on to their perches and sit there, their bellies bulging, uttering loud and satisfied belches at regular intervals. After a while they would all climb down again on to the floor to examine their pots and make quite sure there was no milk left in them, even picking them up and looking underneath. Then they would curl up on their perches in the evening sun and fall into a bloated stupor, while peace came to the camp.

  One of the things that I find particularly endearing about monkeys is the fact that they are completely uninhibited, and will perform any action they feel like with an entire lack of embarrassment. They will urinate copiously, or bend down and watch their own faeces appear with expressions of absorbed interest; they will mate or masturbate with great freedom, regardless of any audience. I have heard embarrassed human beings call monkeys dirty, filthy creatures when they have watched them innocently perform these actions in public, and it is an attitude of mind that I always find difficult to understand. After all, it is we, with our superior intelligence, who have decided that the perfectly natural functions of our bodies are something unclean; monkeys do not share our view.

  Similarly, one of the things I liked about the Africans was this same innocent attitude towards the functions of the body. In this respect they were extremely like the monkeys. I had a wonderful example of this one day when a couple of rather stuffy missionaries came to look round the camp.

  I showed them our various animals and birds, and they made a lot of unctuous comments about them. Then we came to the monkeys, and the missionaries were delighted with them. Presently, however, we reached a cage where a monkey was sitting on the perch in a curious hunched-up attitude.

  'Oh! What’s she doing?' cried the lady gaily, and before I could prevent her she had bent down to get a better look. She shot up again, her face a deep, rich scarlet, for the monkey had been whiling away the hours to meal time by sitting there and sucking himself.

  We hurried through the rest of the monkey collection in record time, and I was much amused by the expression of frozen disgust that had replaced the look of benevolent delight on the lady missionary's face. They might be God's creatures, her expression implied, but she wished He would do something about their habits. However, as we rounded the corner of the marquee we were greeted by another of God's creatures in the shape of a lanky African hunter. He was a man who had brought in specimens regularly each week, but for the past fortnight he had not come near us.

  ' I see ya, Samuel!' I greeted him.

  'I see ya,Masa,' he said, coming towards us.

  'Which side you done go all dis time?' I asked; 'why you never bring me beef for two weeks, eh?'

  ' Eh! Masa, I done get sickness,' he explained.

  'Sickness? Eh, sorry, my friend. Na what sickness you get?'

  'Na my ghonereah, Masa,' he explained innocently, 'my ghonereah de worry me too much.'

  The missionaries were among the people who never called twice at the camp site.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In Which we Walka Good

  The last few days before you and the collection join the ship that is to take you back to England are always the most hectic of the whole trip. There are a thousand things that have to be done: lorries to hire, cages to strengthen, vast quantities of food to be purchased and crated up, and all this on top of the normal routine work of maintaining the collection.

  One of the things that worried us most were theIdiurus. Our colony had by now diminished to four specimens, and we were determined to try to get them safely back to England. We had, after superhuman efforts, got them to eat avocado pears as well as palm-nuts, and on this diet they seemed to do quite well. I decided that if we took three dozen avocados with us, in varying stages from ripe to green, there would be enough to last the voyage and with some left over to use in England while the Idiurus were settling down. Accordingly, I called Jacob and informed him that he must procure three dozen avocados without delay. To my surprise, he looked at me as though I had taken leave of my senses.

  'Avocado pear, sah?'he asked.

  'Yes, avocado pear,' I said.

  'I no fit get 'um sah,' he said mournfully.

  'You no fit get 'um? Why not?'

  'Avocado pear done finish,' said Jacob helplessly.

  'Finish? What you mean, finish? I want you go for market and get 'um, not from kitchen.'

  'Done finish for market, sah,' said Jacob patiently.

  Suddenly it dawned on me what he was trying to explain: the season for avocado pears had finished, and he could not get me any. I would have to face the voyage with no supply of the fruit for the precious Idiurus.

  It was just like the Idiurus, I reflected bitterly, to start eating something when it was going out of season. However, avocados I had to have, so in the few days at our disposal I marshalled the staff and made them scour the countryside for the fruit. By the time we were ready to move down country we had obtained a few small, shrivelled avocados, and that was all. These almost mummified remains had to last my precious Idiurus until we reached England.

  We had to travel some two hundred miles down to the coast from our base camp, and it required three lorries and a small van to carry our collection. We travelled by night, for it was cooler for the animals, and the journey took us two days. It was one of the worst journeys I can ever remember. We had to stop the lorries every three hours, take out all the frog-boxes, and sprinkle them with cold water to prevent them drying up. Twice during each night we had to make prolonged stops to bottle-feed the young animals on warm milk which we carried ready mixed in thermos flasks. Then, when dawn came, we had to pull the lorries into the side of the road under the shade of the great trees, unload every single cage on to the grass and clean and feed every specimen. On the morning of the third day we arrived at the small rest-house on the coast which had been pu
t at our disposal; here everything had to be unpacked once again and cleaned and fed before we could crawl into the house, eat a meal, and collapse on our beds to sleep. That evening parties of people from the local banana plantations came round to see the animals and, half dead with sleep, we were forced to conduct tours, answer questions and be polite.

  'Are you travelling on this ship that's in?' inquired someone.

  'Yes,' I said, stifling a yawn; 'sailing tomorrow.'

  'Good Lord! I pity you, then,' they said cheerfully.

  'Oh. Why is that?'

  'Captain's a bloody Tartar, old boy, and he hates animals. It's a fact. Old Robinson wanted to take his pet baboon back with him on this ship when he went on leave last time. Captain chucked it off. Wouldn't have it on board. Said he didn't want his ship filled with stinking monkeys. Frightful uproar about it, so I heard.'

  Smith and I exchanged anxious looks, for of all the evils that can befall a collector, an unsympathetic captain is perhaps the worst. Later, when the last party of sightseers had gone, we discussed this disturbing bit of news. We decided that we should have to go out of our way to be polite to the Captain; and we would take extra care to make sure there were no untoward incidents among the monkeys to earn his wrath.

  Our collection was placed on the forward deck under the supervision of the Chief Officer, a most charming and helpful man. The Captain we did not see that night, and the next morning, when we arose early to clean out the cages, we could see him pacing on the bridge, a hunched and terrifying figure. We had been told that he would be down to breakfast, and we were looking forward to meeting him with some trepidation.

  'Remember,' said Smith as we cleaned out the monkeys, 'we must keep on the right side of him.' He filled a basket full of sawdust, trotted to the rail and cast it into the sea.

  'We must be careful not to do anything that will annoy him,' he went on when he had returned.

  Just at that moment a figure in spotless white uniform came running breathlessly down from the bridge.

  'Excuse me, sir,' he said, 'but the Captain's compliments, sir, and will you please make sure which way the wind's blowing before you chuck that sawdust overboard?'

  Horror-stricken, we looked up towards the bridge: the air was full of swirling fragments of sawdust, and the Captain, scowling angrily, was brushing his bespattered uniform.

  'Please apologize to the Captain for us,' I said, conquering a frightful desire to laugh. When the officer had gone, I turned to Smith.

  'Keep on the right side of him!' I said bitterly; 'don't do anything to annoy him! Only fling about three hundredweight of sawdust all over him and his precious bridge. Trust you to know the right way to a captain's heart.'

  When the gong sounded we hurried down to our cabin, washed, and took our seats in the dining-saloon. We found, to our dismay, that we were seated at the Captain's table. The Captain sat with his back to the bulkhead, in which there were three portholes, and Smith and I sat on the opposite side of the circular table. The portholes behind the Captain's chair looked out into the well-deck in which our collection was stacked. Half-way through the meal the Captain had thawed out a little and was even starting to make tolerant little jokes about sawdust.

  'As long as you don't let anything escape, I don't mind,' he said jovially, disembowelling a fried egg.

  ' Oh, we won't let that happen,' I said, and the words were hardly out of my mouth when something moved in the porthole, and, glancing up, there was Sweeti-pie, the Black-eared Squirrel, perched in the opening, examining the inside of the saloon with a kindly eye.

  The Captain, of course, could not see the squirrel sitting on a level with his shoulder and about three feet away, and he went on eating and talking unconcernedly, while behind him Sweeti-pie sat on his hind legs and cleaned his whiskers. For a few seconds I was so startled that my brain refused to function, and I could only sit there gaping at the porthole. Luckily the Captain was too intent on his breakfast to notice. Sweeti-pie finished his wash and brush-up, and began to look round the saloon again. He decided that the place would be worth investigating, and glanced around to see which was the best way to get down from his perch. He decided that the quickest method would be to jump from the porthole on to the Captain's shoulder. I could see this plan taking shape in the little brute's head, and the thought of his landing on the Captain's shoulder galvanized me into action. Muttering a hasty 'Excuse me', I pushed back my chair and walked out of the saloon; as soon as I was out of sight of the Captain I ran as fast as I could out on to the deck. To my relief, Sweeti-pie had not jumped, and his long bushy tail was still hanging outside the porthole. I flung myself across the hatch-cover and grabbed him by his tail just as he bunched himself up to spring. I bundled him, chattering indignantly, into his cage, and then returned, flushed but triumphant, to the saloon. The Captain was still talking and, if he had noticed my abrupt departure at all, must have attributed it to the pangs of nature, for he made no mention of it.

  On the third day of the voyage two of the Idiurus were dead. I was examining their corpses sorrowfully when a member of the crew appeared. He asked why the little animals had died, and I explained at great length the tragic tale of the nonexistent avocado pears.

  ' What's an avocado pear?' he inquired.

  I showed him one of the shrivelled wrecks.

  'Oh, those things,' he said. 'Do you want some?'

  I gazed at him speechlessly for a minute.

  'Have you got some?' I said at last.

  'Well,' he said, 'I haven't exactly got any, but I think I can get you some.'

  That evening he reappeared with his pockets bulging.

  'Here,' he said, stuffing some beautifully ripe avocados into my hand; 'give me three of those ones of yours, and don't say a word to anyone.'

  I gave him three of my dried-up fruits and hastily fed the Idiurus with the ripe ones he had procured, and they enjoyed them thoroughly. My spirits rose, and I began to have hopes once more of landing them in England.

  My sailor friend brought me plump, ripe avocados whenever I informed him that my stock was running low, and always he took some of my desiccated stock in exchange. It was very curious, but I felt the best thing I could do was not to inquire too deeply into the matter. However, in spite of the fresh fruit, another Idiurus died, so by the time we were rolling through the Bay of Biscay I had only one specimen left. It was now, I realized, a fight against time: if I could keep this solitary specimen alive until we reached England, I would have a tremendous variety of food to offer it, and I felt sure that I could find something it would eat. As we drew closer and closer to England I watched the little chap carefully. He seemed fit, and in the best spirits. As an additional precaution, I smuggled his cage into my cabin each night, so that he would not catch a chill. The day before we docked he was in fine fettle, and I became almost convinced that I would land him. That night, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, he died. So, after travelling four thousand miles, the last Idiurus died twenty-four hours out of Liverpool. I was bitterly disappointed, and black depression settled on me.

  Even the sight of the collection being taken ashore did not fill me with the usual mixture of relief and pride. The Hairy Frogs had come through, as had the Brow-leaf Toads; Charlie and Mary were hooting in their cages as they were swung overboard. Sweeti-pie was eating a sugar-lump and eyeing the crowd on the docks with hopeful eyes, while the Moustached Monkey peered from his cage, his whiskers gleaming, looking like a juvenile SantaClaus. But even the sight of all these creatures being landed safely after so long and so dangerous a trip did not altogether compensate me for the loss of my little Idiurus, and Smith and I were just going to leave the ship when my sailor friend appeared. He had heard the news about Idiurus, and was extremely upset to think that our combined efforts had been in vain.

  'By the way,' I said, just as I was leaving him, 'I am very curious to know where you got those avocado pears from in mid-ocean.'

  He glanced round to make sure
we were not overheard.

  'I'll tell you, mate; only keep it under your hat,' he said in a hoarse whisper. "The Captain's very partial to an avocado, see, and he has a big box of them in the fridge. He always brings home a box, see? I just got some of them for you.'

  'Do you mean to say those were the Captain's avocados?' I asked faintly.

  'Sure. But he won't miss 'em,' my friend assured me cheerfully; 'you see, every time I took some of his out I put the same number of yours back in the box.'

  The customs men could not understand why I kept shaking with laughter as I was showing them our crates, and they kept darting suspicious looks at me. But it was not, unfortunately, the sort of joke you could share.

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