The Drunken Forest

by Gerald Durrell

Jacquie inserted a finger through the wire and waggled it at the nearest cuckoo. Without hesitation he sidled up to the bars and lowered his head to be scratched. His brother, enthusiasm gleaming in his eyes, immediately climbed on his brother’s back to receive his share of the treat. Quite unconcernedly they sat like that, one perched precariously on the other, both swaying to and fro on the perch, while Jacquie scratched their necks. Gradually, soothed by the massage, their crests came up, their heads tilted until their beaks pointed heavenwards, their eyes closed in ecstasy, and the feathers on the neck stood out straight, while the neck itself was stretched upwards and outwards until they looked more like feathered giraffes than birds.

  ‘Quite definitely mental,’ I repeated, as the top cuckoo stretched his neck too far, overbalanced, and fell to the bottom of the cage, where he sat blinking and chuckling testily to himself.

  Later we got more of these fatuous birds, and they all proved equally simple. One pair was caught later on, in Paraguay, by our companion in the most amazing fashion. Walking along a path, he passed within a yard of a pair of guiras feeding in the grass. Thinking it strange that they had not flown away at his approach, he retraced his steps and again passed them. They just sat and stared at him foolishly. The third time he jumped at them and returned triumphantly to camp, carrying one in each hand. Owing to the ease with which even an unprepared person could capture these birds, it was not long before we had several pairs, and they afforded us endless amusement. In each of their cages there was an inch gap left for cleaning purposes. The cuckoos could have asked for nothing better, as by squatting on the floor and sticking their heads out, they could keep an eye on everything that went on in camp, and discuss it together in loud trills and chuckles. When they peered out of their cages like this, tattered crests erect, eyes bright with curiosity, their shrill voices screeching comments, they reminded me of groups of frowsty old charladies peering out of some attic window at a street-fight below.

  The guiras had a passion for sun-bathing that was almost an obsession. The slightest gleam of sunshine in their cage would excite them beyond all measure. Trilling happily, they would crowd on to the perch and prepare for their sun-bath, which they considered a serious matter and one not to be undertaken lightly. To begin with, it was very important that the posture should be exactly right. They had to be seated comfortably on the perch, balanced so skillfully that they could remain sitting there even if they released their grip on the wood. Then they would puff out their feathers and shake them vigorously, like an old feather duster. After this they would puff out the feathers of their breasts, raise the feathers on the rump, lower their long tails, close their eyes, and gradually sink down until their breast-bones rested against the perch, breast-feathers drooping one side, the tail drooping the other. Then, very slowly and carefully, they would unclench their feet, and sit there, swaying delicately. When sun-bathing like this, with their feathers stuck out at odd and completely un-bird-like angles, they looked as though they were completely egg-bound; in that unprotected condition they also looked as if they had been severely attacked by clothes-moth. But, in spite of their crazy ways, the cuckoos were endearing birds, and even if we had only left them for half an hour they would greet our return with such joyful trills of greeting that you could not help feeling affectionate towards them.

  The first pair we got – the ones from Los Ingleses – always remained our favourites, and underwent a lot of spoiling from Jacquie. At the end of the trip, when we had handed them over to London Zoo, we were not able to go and see them for nearly two months. Thinking that such brainless birds would by now have completely forgotten us, we approached their cage in the birdhouse with mixed feelings. It was a weekend, and there were a number of other visitors clustered round the guiras’ cage. But no sooner had we joined the spectators than the cuckoos, who a moment before had been preening themselves on their perch, stared at us with bright, mad eyes, erected their crests in astonishment, and flew down to the wire with loud rattles of excitement and pleasure. As we scratched their necks and watched them stretch out like rubber, we decided that perhaps they were not quite so unintelligent as we had supposed them to be.

  Eggbert and the Terrible Twins

  The great screamers were one of the commonest birds round Los Ingleses; within a radius of a mile or so one could see ten or twelve pairs of these stately creatures, pacing side by side through the grass, or wheeling through the sky on wide wings, making the air ring with their melodious trumpet-calls. How to catch the eight I wanted was a problem, for, as well as being the commonest of the pampa birds, they were also the most wary. Their goose-like habit of grazing in huge flocks, completely devastating enormous fields of alfalfa in the winter, has earned the wrath of the Argentine farmers, and they are hunted and killed whenever possible. So, while you could approach fairly close to most of the bird-life on the pampa, you were extremely lucky if you got within a hundred and fifty yards of a pair of screamers. We knew they were nesting all about us, but the nests were well concealed; and though we realized that several times we had been close to finding one, by the way the parents flew low over us with loud cries, we had never been successful.

  One evening we were out at a small lake, thickly fringed with reed, setting up flight-nets to try to obtain some ducks. Having fixed my side of the net, I hauled myself out of the brackish water and wandered through the reed-beds. I stopped to examine a small nest, rather like a reed-warbler’s, which was cunningly suspended between two leaves, and which proved to be empty, when my attention was attracted to a pile of grey clay which winked at me. Just as I was becoming convinced that there must be something wrong with me, the pile of clay winked again. Then, as the patch of ground at which I had been staring came into focus, I saw that I was not looking at a patch of clay, but at an almost fully grown baby screamer, crouched among the reeds, still as a stone, with only the lids flicking over its dark eyes to give it away. I went forward slowly and squatted down near it. Still it did not move. I reached forward and touched its head, but it lay quite quietly, ignoring me. I picked it up and put it under my arm like a domestic fowl, carrying it back to the car. It made no effort to struggle and displayed no symptoms of panic. Just as I reached the car, however, a pair of adult screamers flew over quite low, and, on seeing us, gave a series of wild cries. Immediately the bird in my arms turned from a placid and well-behaved creature into a flapping, panic-stricken beast that took me all my time to subdue and place in a box.

  When we returned to the estancia, Dormouse’s brother John came out to see how we had fared. With considerable pride I showed him my screamer.

  ‘One of those damn things,’ he said in disgust. ‘I didn’t know you wanted them.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said indignantly; ‘they’re a most attractive show in any zoo.’

  ‘How many do you want?’ asked John.

  ‘Well, I need eight, really, though judging by the difficulty we had in getting this one I doubt whether I’ll get that many,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that; I’ll get eight for you,’ said John airily. ‘When d’you want them? . . . Tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t want to be greedy,’ I said sarcastically, ‘so suppose you just bring me four tomorrow, and four the next day?’

  ‘O.K.,’ said John laconically, and wandered off.

  Beyond reflecting that John had a peculiar sense of humour if he could joke about such a sacred subject as screamer-catching I thought no more about it until the following morning I saw him mounting his horse. A peon, already mounted, waited nearby.

  ‘Oh, Gerry,’ he called, as his horse waltzed round and round impatiently, ‘did you say eight or a dozen?’

  ‘Eight or a dozen what?’

  ‘Chajás, of course,’ he said in mild surprise.

  I glared at him.

  ‘I want eight,’ I said, ‘and then you can get me a dozen or so tomorr
ow.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said John, and, turning his horse, cantered off through the eucalyptus trees.

  At lunch-time I was in the small hut in which we housed the animals, attempting to make a cage. Three pieces of wood had split, and I had hit myself twice on the hand with the hammer, and nearly taken the top off my thumb with the saw. Altogether I was not in the most jovial of moods, and Jacquie and Ian had long since left me to my own devices. I was making another frenzied assault on the cage, when there was the clop of hooves, and John’s voice hailed me cheerfully from outside.

  ‘Hola, Gerry,’ he called. ‘Here are your Chajás.’

  This was the last straw. Clutching a hammer murderously, I strode out to explain to John, in no uncertain terms, that I was in no mood for practical jokes. He was leaning against the sweating flanks of his horse, a smile on his face. But what brought me up short and made my irritation evaporate was the sight of two large sacks lying at his feet, sacks that bulged, sacks that heaved and quivered. The peon was getting off another horse and also lowering a couple of sacks to the ground, sacks that seemed heavy, and that gave forth a rustling sound.

  ‘Are you serious?’ I asked faintly. ‘Are those sacks really full of screamers?’

  ‘But of course,’ said John surprised. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought you were joking,’ I said meekly. ‘How many have you got?’

  ‘Eight, like you asked for,’ said John.

  ‘Eight?’ I squawked hoarsely.

  ‘Yes, only eight. I’m sorry I couldn’t get a dozen, but I’ll try and get you eight more tomorrow.’

  ‘No, no, don’t . . . Let me get these established first.’

  ‘But you said . . .’ began John, bewildered.

  ‘Never mind what I said,’ I interjected hastily; ‘just don’t get me any more until I tell you.’

  ‘Right,’ he said cheerfully; ‘you know best. By the way, there’s a very young one in one of the sacks. I had to put him in there. I hope he’s all right. You’d better have a look.’

  Feeling that the age of miracles was not past, I staggered into the hut with the heavy, heaving sacks, and then went in search of Jacquie and Ian to tell them the good news and get them to help me unpack the birds. Most of the screamers that we hauled out, tousled and indignant, from inside the sacks, were about the same size as the one I had caught the day before. But right at the very bottom of the last sack we emptied we discovered the young one that John had mentioned. He was quite the most pathetic, the most ridiculous-looking and the most charming baby bird I had ever seen.

  He could not have been much more than a week old. His body was about the size of a coconut, and completely circular. At the end of a long neck was a high, domed head, with a tiny beak and a pair of friendly brown eyes. His legs and feet, which were greyish-pink, appeared to be four times too big for him, and not completely under control. On his back were two small, flaccid bits of skin, like a couple of cast-off glove fingers which had become attached there by accident, which did duty as wings. He was clad entirely in what appeared to be a badly knitted bright yellow suit of cotton wool. He rolled out of the sack, fell on his back, struggled manfully on to his enormous flat feet, and stood there, his ridiculous wings slightly raised, surveying us with interest. Then he opened his beak and shyly said ‘Wheep’. As we were too enchanted to respond to this greeting, he very slowly and carefully picked up one huge foot, swayed forward, put it down and then brought the other one up alongside it. He stood and beamed at us with evident delight at having accomplished such a complicated manoeuvre. He had a short rest, said ‘wheep’ again, and then proceeded to take another step, in order to show us that the first one had been no fluke, but a solid achievement. Unfortunately, when he had taken the first step, he had not watched what he was doing, and so his left foot was resting on the toes of his right foot. The results were disastrous. He struggled wildly to extricate his right foot from underneath his left, swaying dangerously. Then, with a mighty heave, he succeeded in lifting both feet from the ground, and promptly fell flat on his face. At our burst of laughter, he looked up into our faces from his recumbent posture, and gave another deprecating ‘wheep’.

  At first, owing to his shape and the colouring of his suit, we called this baby Egg. But later, as he grew older, it was changed to a more sedate Eggbert. Now, I have met a lot of amusing birds at one time and another, but they generally appeared funny because their appearance was ridiculous, and so even the most commonplace action took on some element of humour. But I have never met a bird like Eggbert, who not only looked funny without doing anything, but also acted in a riotously comical manner whenever he moved. I have never met a bird, before or since, that could make me literally laugh until I cried. Very few human comedians can do that to me. Yet Eggbert had only to stand there on his outsize feet, cock his head on one side and say ‘wheep!’ in a slyly interrogative way, and I would feel unconquerable laughter bubbling up inside me. Every afternoon we would take Eggbert out of his cage and allow him an hour’s constitutional on the lawn. We looked forward to these walks as eagerly as he did, but an hour was enough. At the end of that time we would be forced to return him to his cage, in sheer self-defence.

  Eggbert’s feet were the bane of his life. There was so much of them, and they would get tangled together when he walked. Then there was the danger that he would tread on his own toes and fall down and make an exhibition of himself, as he had done on the first day. So he kept a very close watch on his feet for any signs of insubordination. He would sometimes stand for as long as ten minutes with bent head, gravely staring at his toes as they wiggled gently in the grass, spread out like the arms of a starfish. Eggbert’s whole desire, obviously, was to be dissociated from these outsize feet. He felt irritated by them. Without them, he was sure, he could gambol about the lawn with the airy grace of a dried thistle-head. Occasionally, having watched his feet for some time, he would decide that he had lulled them into a sense of false security. Then, when they least suspected it, he would launch his body forward in an effort to speed across the lawn and leave these hateful extremities behind. But although he tried this trick many times, it never succeeded. The feet were always too quick for him, and as soon as he moved they would deliberately and maliciously twist themselves into a knot, and Eggbert would fall head first into the daisies.

  His feet were continually letting him down, in more ways than one. Eggbert had a deep ambition to capture a butterfly. Why this was we could not find out, for Eggbert could not tell us. All we knew was that screamers were supposed to be entirely vegetarian, but whenever a butterfly hovered within six feet of Eggbert his whole being seemed to be filled with blood-lust, his eyes would take on a fanatical and most unvegetarian-like gleam, and he would endeavour to stalk it. However, in order to stalk a butterfly with any hope of success one has to keep one’s eyes firmly fixed on it. This Eggbert knew, but the trouble was that as soon as he watched the butterfly with quivering concentration, his feet, left to their own devices, would start to play up, treading on each other’s toes, crossing over each other, and sometimes even trying to walk in the wrong direction. As soon as Eggbert dragged his eyes away from the quarry, his feet would start to behave, but by the time he looked back again the butterfly would have disappeared. Then came the never-to-be-forgotten day when Eggbert was standing in the sun, feet turned out, dreaming to himself, and a large, ill-mannered, and obviously working-class butterfly of the worst type flew rapidly across the lawn, flapped down, and settled on Eggbert’s beak, made what can only be described as a rude gesture with its antennae, and soared up into the air again. Eggbert, quivering with justifiable rage, pecked at it as it swooped over his domed forehead. Unfortunately, he leaned too far back, and for one awful moment he swayed and then he crashed on his back, his feet waving helplessly in the air. As he lay there, demoralized and helpless, the cowardly butterfly took the opportunity to land on his pr
otuberant, fluff-covered tummy, have a quick wash-and-brush-up before flying off again. This painful episode naturally only made Eggbert feel even more belligerently inclined towards the lepidoptera, but in spite of all his efforts he never caught one.

  At first, Eggbert gave us some concern over his food. He rejected with disdain such commonplace vegetation as cabbage, lettuce, clover, and alfalfa. We tried him on biscuit with hardboiled egg, and he regarded us with horror for trying to force him into cannibalism. Fruit, bran, maize, and a variety of other things were inspected briefly and then ignored. In desperation I suggested that the only thing to do was to let him out in the kitchen garden in the faint hope that he would, young as he was, give us some indication of the sort of menu he desired. By this time Eggbert’s food problem was worrying practically the whole estancia, so there was quite a crowd of anxious people assembled in the kitchen garden when we carried Eggbert out for the experiment. He greeted the assembled company with a friendly ‘wheep’, stood on his own foot and fell down, regained his equilibrium with an effort, and started off on his tour, while we followed in a hushed and expectant group. He passed through the rows of cabbages without a glance, and seemed mainly concerned with gaining control over his feet. At the tomatoes he started to look about him with interest, but just as it seemed he was coming to some sort of decision, his attention was distracted by a large locust. Among the potatoes he was overcome with fatigue, so he had a short nap while we stood patiently and waited. He awoke, apparently much refreshed, greeted us with surprise, yawned, and then ambled drunkenly on his journey. The carrots were passed with scorn. Among the peas he obviously felt that a little relaxation would be in order, and he tried to inveigle us into playing hide-and-seek among the plants. He reluctantly gave up this idea and moved on to the beans when he discovered that we refused to be side-tracked from the matter in hand. The bean-flowers seemed to fascinate him, but the interest was apparently aesthetic rather than gastronomic. Among the parsley and mint he was seized with a tickling sensation in the sole of his left foot, and his attempts to stand on one leg to search for the cause of the irritation made him fall back heavily into a pool of rainwater. When he had been picked up, dried, and comforted, he staggered off and entered the neat rows of spinach. Here he came to a sudden halt and examined the plants minutely and suspiciously. Then he edged forward and glared at them from close range with his head on one side. The suspense was terrific. Just as he leant forward to peck at a leaf, he tripped and fell head first into a large spinach plant. He extricated himself with difficulty and tried again. This time he managed to seize the tip of a leaf in his beak. He tugged at it, but the leaf was a tough one and would not give way. He leant back, legs wide apart, and tugged frantically. The end of the leaf broke, and Eggbert was once more on his back, but this time looking distinctly triumphant with a tiny fragment of spinach in his beak. Amid much applause, he was carried back to his cage, and a large plate of chopped spinach was prepared for him. But then a new difficulty made its appearance. Even finely chopped spinach was too coarse for him, for having gulped it down he would straightaway proceed to be sick.