The Drunken Forest

by Gerald Durrell

  Rafael was strumming on the guitar, singing a Gaucho ditty, in which alliteration appeared to be nicely blended with vulgarity; Jacquie had retired to bed with a month-old copy of the Buenos Aires Herald, which she had unearthed from somewhere; and I was examining the gun which Paula had procured for me. It was a Spanish make which I had not come across before, but it seemed in reasonable condition. As far as I could see, there appeared to be only one thing wrong with it.

  ‘Rafael,’ I said, ‘this gun’s got no safety-catch.’

  He came across the room and peered at it.

  ‘Yes, Gerry . . . see, that is the safety.’

  ‘What, this little lever?’

  ‘Yes, that is safety,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t, you know. I’ve tried it in both positions and the hammer still falls.’

  ‘No, no, Gerry. . . . she go click, yes. But she no go bang.’ I looked at him sceptically.

  ‘Well, it seems very queer to me. A safety-catch is a safety-catch, and when it’s on you should be able to pull the trigger without anything at all happening,’ I pointed out.

  ‘No, Gerry, you no understand . . . she is Spanish gun . . . I show you how she work,’ he said.

  He loaded the gun, pressed the small lever down, pointed it out of the window, and pulled the trigger. There was a shattering roar, all the dogs in the village started barking, and Jacquie appeared suddenly out of the bedroom, under the impression that the yarará had escaped from its box. Rafael straightened his spectacles and stared at the gun.

  ‘Well,’ he said philosophically, ‘this way must be safety.’

  He pressed the lever up, reloaded, aimed out of the window and pulled the trigger again. For the second time the gun went off with a roar, and the village dogs became almost hysterical.

  ‘You can tell it’s a Spanish gun,’ I pointed out to Jacquie, ‘because you can shoot yourself just as easily with the safety-catch on or off.’

  ‘No, Gerry, she is good gun,’ said Rafael indignantly, ‘but I think she is broke inside.’

  ‘I’m sure she is broke inside,’ I agreed.

  We were still arguing about this some ten minutes later when there came a thunderous knocking on the front door. Mystified, for it was quite late, Rafael and I went to see who our visitors were. On the veranda we found two rather scared Paraguayans, dressed in tattered green uniforms, peaked caps, and clutching in their hands a brace of antiquated and rusty rifles. As they saluted in unison, we recognized them as two members of the local constabulary. Having said good evening, they asked us if we had fired a gun, and if so, who was dead. Rafael, rather taken aback, said the gun had gone off by accident and that no one was dead. The policemen shuffled their bare feet in the dust and looked at each other for inspiration. Then they explained, rather hesitatingly, that they had been sent out by the chief of police to arrest us and bring in the corpse of our victim. As there was no corpse, they were not quite sure what to do next. They would, they explained earnestly, earn the wrath of their chief if they returned without us, even though we had killed no one. They looked so woebegone and puzzled by the whole matter that Rafael and I took pity on them, and offered to accompany them to the police station and explain to the chief of police ourselves. They were pathetically grateful for this, and saluted a great number of times, smiling and saying, ‘Gracias, señor, gracias.’

  We made our way down the moonlit village street, our captors trotting ahead, occasionally stopping to steer us carefully round a puddle or a patch of mud. At the other end of the village we came to the police station, a two-room, whitewashed shack, shaded by a large, golliwog-headed palm tree. Our escort led us into a bare little room where, behind an ancient table piled high with an impressive array of documents, sat the chief of police. He was a lank and scowling man, whose polished boots and belt proclaimed his importance; he had only recently taken over this post, and it was obvious that he intended to prove to the inhabitants that crime did not pay. Our escort saluted, stood more or less to attention, and proceeded, in a chorus, to give an account of the incident. Their chief heard them out, scowling impressively, and when they reached the end of the story he gave us a searching look through narrowed eyes; then, with a magnificent gesture, he pulled a cigarette butt from behind his ear and lit it.

  ‘So,’ he hissed melodramatically, blowing smoke through his nose, ‘you are responsible for the outrage, eh?’

  ‘Si, señor,’ said Rafael meekly, his lips twitching, ‘we are responsible.’

  ‘Ah! So you admit it?’ said the chief of police, pleased at having trapped us into a confession.

  ‘Si, señor,’ said Rafael.

  ‘So,’ said the chief of police, sticking his thumbs in his belt and leaning precariously back in his chair, ‘so, you confess, eh? You come here to the Chaco and you think you can commit these out-rages with impunity, eh? You think that here it is incivilizado, and that you can get away with this sort of thing, eh?’

  ‘Si, señor,’ said Rafael.

  There is nothing so irritating as having a purely rhetorical question answered, and the chief of police glared at him.

  ‘But you didn’t realize that there were laws here, the same as anywhere else, did you? You did not realize that you had a police force to contend with, did you, eh?’

  The police force had, meanwhile, relaxed, content to let their chief handle the matter. One of them was picking his teeth very thoroughly, while the other was sticking his finger down the barrel of his rifle, and then pulling it out and examining it with a worried expression: presumably the gun was due for its annual clean.

  ‘Look, señor,’ said Rafael patiently, ‘we haven’t committed any crime. All we did was let off a gun by accident.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said the chief of police cleverly; ‘you might have been committing a crime.’

  In the face of such astute reasoning, Rafael was struck dumb.

  ‘As it is,’ the chief went on magnanimously, ‘I will not arrest you at once. I will consider the matter. But you must report here first thing tomorrow morning with your police permits. D’you understand?’

  It was useless to argue, so we just nodded. The chief of police rose to his feet, bowed to us, and then clicked his heels together with such vigour that one of the constables dropped his rifle, and had to salute hurriedly to cover up his clumsiness. Rafael and I managed to get out of earshot of the police station before dissolving into helpless mirth over our interview. When we got back to the house, Rafael gave a wonderful imitation of the chief of police for Jacquie’s benefit, and was so amused by his own act that the tears of laughter ran out from under his spectacles.

  The next morning, while we had breakfast, we related the whole incident to Paula. Instead of being amused, as we thought she would be, she was shocked and revolted by the whole thing, She described the chief of police in terms no lady should use, and told us that he was far too full of his own importance; once before she had been forced to have words with him, when he had tried to stop her girls going on board the river steamer. But this treatment we had received was the last straw. This time he had gone too far, and she herself was going to come down to the police station and tell him where he got off. So after breakfast she draped her massive shoulders in a purple-and-green shawl, pinned a large straw hat covered with scarlet poppies to her head, and accompanied us, breathlessly indignant, down the road to the village.

  When we reached the police station we saw outside it an enormous double bed placed in the shade of a palm tree, and in it, snoring blissfully, lay the chief of police himself. His unshaven face wore a seraphic expression, and a couple of empty bottles by the bed argued that he had celebrated our arrest in a lavish fashion. Paula, at the sight of him, uttered a grunt of derision, and then, waddling rapidly forward, she drew back her hand and slapped vigorously at the heap of bed-clothes that presumably cov
ered the chief of police’s rear end. It was a fine, powerful blow, delivered with the full weight of Paula’s massive body behind it, and the chief sat bolt upright in bed and stared wildly around; then he recognized Paula, and modestly drew the bedclothes up to his chin while giving her good morning. But Paula was in no mood for niceties, and she swept aside his greeting and launched her attack. Bosom heaving, eyes flashing, she hung over the bed and proceeded to tell him what she thought of him in a voice so shrill and so clear that half the village could hear. I began to feel rather sorry for the poor man; pinned down as he was, in his own bed and in full view of the village, he was forced to lie there while Paula loomed over him like a great avalanche of brown flesh, pouring scorn, ridicule, slander, and threats over him in a remorseless stream that flowed so steadily he had no chance to get a word in. His sallow face turned from indignant pink to white, and then, when Paula got on to the more intimate details of his love life, it turned a delicate shade of green. All the inhabitants of the nearby houses had gathered in their door-ways to watch the fun and shout encouragement to Paula, and it became apparent that the chief of police was not a popular member of the community. At length the poor man could stand it no longer; he flung back the blankets, leapt out of bed, and scuttled into the police station, clad only in his vest and a pair of natty, striped underpants, to the raucous delight of the assembled villagers. Paula, panting but triumphant, sat down for a short rest on the vacated bed, and was then able to accompany us homewards, stopping at various houses en route to receive the congratulations of her admirers.

  The sequel to this episode came that evening, when one of the constables turned up at the house, looking distinctly embarrassed, clutching in one hand his trusty rifle and in the other a large and disorderly bunch of canna lilies. He explained that the chief of police had sent this floral offering for the señora, and Jacquie accepted them with suitable expressions of gratitude. After that, whenever we met the chief striding importantly about the village, he would come to attention and salute smartly, and then sweep off his peaked cap and beam at us. But he never did get around to seeing our police permits.

  Terrible Toads and a Bushel of Birds

  By the time we had been in the Chaco two months, our collection had reached such proportions that it took us all our time to cope with it. Our day would begin just before dawn, when Paula would surge into the bedroom with the tea. The reason we arose at such an ungodly hour was not, I regret to state, because we liked early rising, but simply that we found it paid to get the heavier work done before the sun got too high and the temperature shot up.

  Our first job was the cleaning out – a long, tedious, and messy business that generally took us a couple of hours. The length of time taken over a cage depended entirely on the occupant: if it was bad-tempered, a longer time was needed in order to avoid being bitten or pecked; and if it was playful, a lot of time was wasted trying to persuade it that the cleaning out was not a game designed for its benefit. Most of the specimens very soon learnt the routine and would stand patiently to one side while half the cage was cleaned out, and then they would skip over into the clean section while the other half was dealt with. After the cleaning out was done and all cages had received a fresh bed of dry leaves or sawdust, we could start preparing the food. First of all came the fruit, which had to be peeled or cut up. Now, this sounds a fairly straightforward job, and it would have been so if we could have prepared the fruit in exactly the same way for every member of the collection, but, unfortunately, it was not quite as easy as that. Some birds, for example, liked their banana split lengthwise, put on a hook and hung on the wire front of their cage; others liked their bananas cut up into small pieces, just the right size to swallow. Some would not touch their mango unless it was mixed into a slush with bread and milk, while others demanded (before they would touch anything else) that they should have a slice of over-ripe pawpaw with the seeds left in. Remove the seeds and they would not touch it, although they did not eat the seeds but merely plucked them out of the soft orange flesh and scattered them about the cage. So preparing the fruit was a long job that required a good memory for the animals’ likes and dislikes.

  After the fruit, the next big task was the meat. We used fourteen pounds a day: a sort of gigantic mixed grill that was composed of heart, liver, brain, and steak, all of which had to be chopped or minced into an acceptable form. Preparing fourteen pounds of meat when the temperature is over a hundred in the shade is no joke, and, in order to try to facilitate this operation, I had purchased in Asunción a gigantic mincing machine. On its base was proudly embossed ‘Primero classe’, but in spite of its rash boast this ponderous piece of mechanism was the bane of our lives. Bits dropped off of it at the slighest provocation, and no matter how small the pieces of meat we inserted into its maw, they always managed to stick, which meant that the whole thing had to be dismantled. Even when working properly, it shuddered and groaned, emitting at intervals a piercing shriek calculated to try the sternest nerves.

  The meat prepared, the next job was to wash all the food- and water-pots. Anyone who thinks that by taking up collecting they will be rid of such domestic chores as washing up are sadly mistaken. Towards the end of our trip we had some fifty cages, and all of these had at least two pots in them, while some had three and even four. Every one of these had to be scrupulously scrubbed and rinsed before feeding could begin. In that heat any small bits of food left in the pots would soon start to decay, infect the fresh food, and probably kill the specimens.

  To someone who has never been collecting it may seem as though we gave ourselves a lot of unnecessary trouble by pampering our animals. The answer is, of course, that unless you pamper them you will get precious few back alive. In every collection there is a nucleus of creatures of such phlegmatic disposition that they will put up with almost any sort of treatment, but for every one animal like this there will be twenty which are just the opposite.

  Having got through the routine work, we could then devote ourselves to the more unusual and sometimes complicated jobs, such as bottle-feeding baby animals, doctoring any sick specimens and dealing with any new arrivals. These would turn up at any time of the day or night, and most of them caused trouble before we had them settled. Most specimens are fairly straightforward and are not much trouble once they are used to the routine, but occasionally we would get a creature which appeared to go out of its way to cause extra work. In a lot of instances this would be an animal which, by normal collecting standards, should be the easiest thing on earth to keep in captivity.

  There is found in certain parts of South America a toad which must be one of the most bizarre looking of the batrachians. It is called the horned toad, and, as toads as a general rule are easy enough to keep, I thought the horned toad would be simple. For some reason, I had an overwhelming desire to obtain some of these toads while we were in the Chaco. I knew that they were found there, that the local name for them was escuerzo, but there, so to speak, the matter ended. It is one of the strange things about collecting that a creature you are most anxious to capture, no matter how common it was before, immediately becomes nonexistent as soon as you ask about it. So it was with the horned toad; I showed everyone pictures of it, I offered fabulous rewards for its capture, and I nearly drove Jacquie and Rafael mad by forcing them out of bed at two o’clock in the morning to investigate marshes with me in the hope of catching some, but with no success. If I had known the trouble that the horned toads were to cause me, I would not have made such efforts to try to obtain them.

  One lunchtime I found a battered tin can, the mouth plugged with leaves, waiting for me on the veranda. Paula could give me no more information than that it was a bicho, which was fairly obvious, and that it had been brought by an elderly Indian. I removed the plug of leaves circumspectly with a stick. Peering into the rusty inside, I saw, to my surprise, a gigantic horned toad squatting placidly on the backs of two smaller ones.

  ‘
What is it?’ inquired Jacquie, who had kept a discreet distance with Paula.

  ‘Horned toads . . . three beauties,’ I answered delightedly.

  I tipped the tin over, and out spilled the toads on to the veranda in a tangled heap. Paula let out a whoop and disappeared into the house; from behind the safety of a window she looked out, palpitating.

  ‘Señor, señor, look out,’ she wailed; ‘es un bicho muy malo, señor, muy venenoso.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘No es venenoso . . . no es yarará . . . es escuerzo, bicho muy lindo.’

  ‘Madre de Dios,’ said Paula, rolling her eyes to Heaven at the idea of a horned toad being called beautiful.

  ‘Are they poisonous!’ inquired Jacquie.

  ‘No, of course not . . . they just look as though they ought to be, that’s all.’

  By now the toads had sorted themselves out, and the largest was squatting there, regarding us with an angry eye. He was about the circumference of a saucer, and three-quarters of his bulk seemed to consist of head. He had short, thick legs, a paunchy body, and this enormous head in which were set two large eyes filigreed with a pattern of gold and silver. Above each of these the skin was raised into an isosceles triangle, like the horns of a baby goat. His mouth was incredible, for it was so large it almost appeared to split him in two. The toad, with his rubber lips, horned head, and sulkily drooping mouth, managed to achieve an expression that was a combination of extreme malevolence with the arrogant bearing of an obese monarch. His whole air of evil was enhanced by the fact that he was a pale mustard-yellow in colour, covered with rust-red and sage-green patches that looked as though someone, lacking in artistic and geographical knowledge, had tried to draw a map of the world all over him.