The Drunken Forest

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Rafael say that many ñandúes are sitting over there. He says we take this cart and go over there, then Rafael and the other mens will make the ñandúes run near us.’

  Rafael galloped off to instruct the other horsemen in their part in the plan, while Carlos urged the reluctant greys through the prickly thistles at a gallop. We burst out on to the pampa and thundered across it, the cart swaying so much that I thought it would overturn at any minute. Carlos crouched on the seat, slapping the swaying bottoms of the horses with the reins and uttering shrill nasal cries of encouragement. A pair of spur-wing plover, black and white as two dominos against the green, watched our lurching approach and then ran six feet and leapt lightly into the air, where they flew around on their piebald wings, screaming ‘Tero . . . tero . . . tero . . .’ as they swooped over us, warning the creatures of the pampa of our approach. Leaning precariously out of the swaying cart, I caught a glimpse of the horsemen about half a mile away, strung out in a line, waiting for us to reach the right position. The heat from the sun was now terrific, and the grey’s flanks were striped darkly with sweat: the horizon was blurred and heat-shimmered, as though you looked at it through a misted glass. Carlos suddenly pulled on the reins and brought the cart to a standstill.

  ‘Here is good, Gerry. We will take the camera over there,’ he said, pointing. ‘The ñandu will run this way.’

  We scrambled down from the cart, I carrying the camera and tripod, while Carlos strode ahead armed with the tiny paper parasol. Jacquie remained in the cart field-glasses glued to her eyes, ready to warn us when the rheas broke cover. Carlos and I walked some fifty yards away from the cart to a spot where we could command a clear view of a wide ‘avenue’ of grass between two great thistle patches, and there I set up the camera, took light readings, and focused, while Carlos held the ridiculous parasol over me to keep the camera cool.

  ‘All right,’ I said at last, wiping the sweat from my face.

  Carlos raised the vivid parasol and waved it from side to side, and in the distance we could faintly hear the shrill cries of the peons as they urged their horses into the thistle jungle. Then there was silence. Since we remained without movement, the two plovers circled round several times and then landed near us, where they took sudden darting runs from side to side, and paused while they bobbed up and down suspiciously. Jacquie sat immobile in the cart, her hat pushed on to the back of her head, the glasses to her eyes. The greys stood with drooping heads, occasionally shifting their weight from one haunch to the other, like elderly barmaids towards closing time. I could feel the sweat trickling down my face and back, and my shirt stuck unpleasantly to me. Suddenly Jacquie raised her hat and waved it wildly from side to side, at the same time emitting ear-splitting and incomprehensible instructions to us. At the same moment the two plovers leapt from the ground and circled round wildly, screaming loudly, and we could hear the distant cracking of the thistles, the thunder of the horses’ hooves and the excited cries of the peons. Then from the thistle-bed appeared the rheas.

  I never would have believed that a ground bird could move with the speed and grace of a bird in flight, but I learnt otherwise that morning. There were eight rheas, spread out in roughly a V-formation, and they seemed to be running as fast as they could. Their long legs were moving with such speed that they were blurred, being only clearly defined on the downward stroke when the foot touched the ground and lifted the bird forward. Their necks were stretched out almost straight, and their wings were held away from their bodies and hanging down slightly. Clearly above the noisy screams of the plovers we could hear the rapid and rhythmic thudding of their feet on the iron-hard ground. If it had not been for this, you could have imagined they were on wheels, so swift and effortless was their movement. As I say, they appeared to be running as fast as they were able, but suddenly two peons galloped out of the thistles, uttering shrill whoops, and an amazing thing happened. Each rhea tucked his tail in as though fearing a slap on the rump, and they all accelerated to twice their previous speed in what appeared to be three enormous, splay-footed leaps. Certainly they dwindled into the distance with astonishing rapidity. The peons galloped after them, and I could see one of them loosening the boleadoras that hung from his belt.

  ‘Surely they’re not going to catch them right over there, Carlos; I can’t possibly film them at that distance:

  ‘No, no,’ said Carlos soothingly; ‘they will go round them and bring them back. Let us go back to the cart . . . there is most shade there.’

  ‘How long will they be rounding them up?’

  ‘Oh, five minutes, maybe.’

  We walked back to the cart, where Jacquie in her grandstand seat was bouncing up and down, field-glasses to her eyes, giving onomatopoeic cries of encouragement to the distant hunt. I set the camera up in the small patch of shade cast by the cart, and climbed up beside her.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, for by now the peons and the quany were distant specks on the horizon.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ she cried, retaining a firm hold on the glasses as I tried to take them from her; ‘it’s terribly exciting. Did you see them run? I didn’t know they could run so fast.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  ‘All right, all right, in a minute. I just want to see . . . Oh, oh, no, no, look out . . .’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘They tried to break back, but Rafael saw them in time . . . Oh, just look at that one running . . . Did you ever see anything like it?’

  ‘No,’ I said truthfully; ‘so what about letting me have a look?’

  I prised the glasses from her reluctant grasp and trained them on the distant scene. I could see the rheas dodging and twisting among the thistles with an ease and grace that would have been the envy and despair of a professional footballer. The peons were galloping hither and thither, endeavouring to keep the birds in a fairly tight bunch and drive them back. All the peons now had their boleadoras out, and I could see the balls gleaming on the ends of the long strings as they whirled them round and round their heads. The rheas turned in a bunch and ran towards us, and with cries of triumph the peons wheeled their horses and followed. I handed the glasses back to Jacquie and scrambled down to set up the camera. I had scarcely focused when the rheas appeared, running in a tight bunch, straight towards us. At about seventy yards they saw us, and all swerved at right angles at the same moment and with such precision that the move might have been carefully rehearsed. Hot on their heels came the peons, the horses’ hooves kicking up lumps of black earth, the boleadoras whirling round their heads in a blurred glinting pattern emitting a shrill whistling sound. The shrill cries, the vibrating thud of the hooves, the whine of the boleadoras, and then they were all past, and the noises faded in the distance. Only the plovers flew round and round above us, hysterically calling. Jacquie kept up a running commentary from the cart above.

  ‘Rafael’s going to the right with Eduardo . . . they’re still running . . ah! . . . one’s broken away to the right and Eduardo after it . . . oh, now the whole bunch have scattered . . . they’re all over the place . . . they’ll never round them up now. . . . one of them’s going to throw his boleadoras . . . oh, he’s missed . . . you should have seen that rhea swerve . . . what on earth’s that one doing? . . .it’s turned right round . . . it’s coming back . . . Rafael’s after it . . . it’s coming back . . . it’s coming back.’

  I had just lit a cigarette, but had to throw it down and leap for the camera as the rhea came crashing through the thistles. I had thought that there would be a pause of at least a quarter of an hour before the peons succeeded in rounding up the birds, and so, although the camera was wound up, it was not focused, nor had I taken a light reading. But there was no time to remedy the defect, for the bird was bearing down upon us at a speed of twenty miles an hour. I slewed the camera round on the tripod, got the rheas framed in the view-finder and pressed
the button, wondering, as I did so, whether anything would come out at all. The rhea was about a hundred and fifty feet away when I started to film, with Rafael fairly close behind. His proximity obviously worried the bird, for it did not seem to notice either the cart or the camera, through which I could see it running straight towards me. It came nearer and nearer, gradually filling the view-finder; I could hear muffled squeaks from Jacquie above me. The rhea kept on coming towards me until the whole of the view-finder was filled. I began to get worried, for the bird did not seem to notice either me or the camera, and I had no particular desire to be hit amidships by a couple of hundred pounds of speeding rhea; uttering a brief prayer, I kept my finger down on the button. The rhea suddenly seemed to notice me for the first time, a ludicrously horrified look came into its eyes and its muscles contracted as it made a sudden wild swerve to the left and disappeared from my vision. I stood up and wiped my forehead.

  Jacquie and Carlos were regarding me owlishly from the safety of the cart.

  ‘How close did it get?’ I asked, for it was difficult to tell whilst filming.

  ‘It swerved when it got to that tuft of grass there,’ said Jacquie.

  I paced from the tripod to the tuft of grass. It was just under six feet.

  The rhea’s wild swerve was its undoing, for Rafael was so close behind that even that slight deviation lost it several yards of its lead.

  Rafael, urging.his sweat-stained horse to a terrific effort, overhauled the flying bird and turned it back towards the camera. The rhea came scudding back, and this time I was ready. I could bear the whine of the boleadoras reach a crescendo ending in a sort of long-drawn ‘wheep’. The cord and the balls flew flailing through the air, wound themselves with octopus-like skill round the legs and neck of the flying bird. It ran for two more steps, then the cord tightened and it fell to the ground, legs and wings thrashing. Rafael, uttering a long-drawn cry of triumph, pulled up alongside it and was down in a second, grasping the kicking legs that could easily have disembowelled him if his grip had loosened. The rhea struggled briefly and then lay still. Carlos, dancing triumphantly on the seat of the cart, whooped long and loud to tell the other peons we had been successful, and when they galloped up we all gathered round our quarry.

  It was a large bird, with great muscular thighs like a ballerina’s. In contrast, the wing-bones were fragile and soft, for they could be bent like a green twig. The eyes were enormous, almost covering the side of the skull, fringed with thick, film-star-like eyelashes. The large feet with their four toes were thick and powerful. The centre toe was the longest, and it was armed with a long, curved claw. Whether the bird kicked from the back or the front, this claw met its adversary first, and acted with the slashing, tearing qualities of a sharp knife. The feathers, which were quite long, looked more like elongated fronds of grey fern. When I had examined the bird, and taken some close-ups of it, we unwound the boleadoras from its legs and neck. It lay for a moment in the grass, and then suddenly its strong legs shot it to its feet, and it bounced off through the thistles, gathering speed as it ran.

  We turned the cart round and started back towards Secunda and a meal. The peons, laughing and chattering, rode close around us, their belts glittering in the sun, their bits and bridles jangling musically. The horses were black with sweat, but though they must obviously have been tired, their step was jaunty and light, and they bickered and snapped skittishly at each other. The greys, who had done little but stand between the shafts all afternoon, plodded onwards as though at the end of their strength. Behind us the pampa stretched, limitless, golden, and quiet. In the distance two black-and-white specks rose above the grass briefly, and very faintly I could hear the voice of the pampa, the shrill warning to all the living creatures that lived there, the cry of the ever-watchful plovers: ‘Tero . . . tero . . . tero . . . teroterotero . . .’

  Adios!

  It was nearing the day of departure. With the utmost reluctance we had to leave the estancia Secunda, taking with us the animals we had caught: armadillos, opossums, and a handful of nice birds. We travelled back to Buenos Aires in the train, the animals accompanying us in the luggage van. With these new additions our collection began to look more like a collection and less like the remnants from a pet-shop sale. But we still had very few birds, and, as I knew that Argentina contains some extremely interesting species, this gap in our collection irritated me.

  Then, the day before we sailed, I remembered something that Bebita had told me, so I phoned her up.

  ‘Bebita, didn’t you say you knew of a bird shop somewhere in Buenos Aires?’

  ‘A b-b-bird shop? Ahhh, yes, there is one I have seen. It is somewhere near the station.’

  ‘Will you take me and show me?’

  ‘B-b-but naturally. Come to lunch, and we will go afterwards.’

  After a prolonged lunch, Bebita, Jacquie, and I climbed into a taxi and sped through the wide streets in search of the bird shop. We ran it to earth, eventually, on one side of an enormous square which was lined with hundreds of tiny stalls, selling meat, vegetables, and other produce. The shop was large, and, to our delight, contained an extensive and varied stock. Slowly we walked round staring avidly into cages that pulsated with birds of all shapes, sizes, and colours. The proprietor, who looked like an unsuccessful all-in-wrestler, followed us around with a predatory gleam in his black eyes.

  ‘Have you decided what you want?’ inquired Bebita.

  ‘Yes, I know what I want, but it’s a question of price. The owner does not look as though he’s going to be reasonable.’

  Bebita, tall, elegantly clad, turned her amused gaze on to the squat owner of the store. Taking off her gloves, she placed them carefully on a sack of bird seed, and then smiled dazzlingly at the man. He blushed and ducked his head in salute. Bebita turned to me.

  ‘He looks so sweet,’ she said, and really meant it.

  Still unused to Bebita’s ability to see something divine in people who looked to me as though they would cheerfully deliver their own mothers to the knackers’ yard for half a crown, I just gaped at the villainous pet-shop owner.

  ‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘he doesn’t look sweet to me’.

  ‘B-b-but I’m sure he is an angel,’ said Bebita firmly; ‘now, you just show me the b-b-birds you want and I will talk with him.’

  Feeling that this was quite the wrong way to start a bargain, I led her round the cages again and pointed out the specimens, some of which were so unusual that they made my mouth water just to look at them. Bebita then asked me how much I was prepared to pay for them, and I named a price which I thought was fair without being exorbitant. Bebita floated over to the owner, turned him scarlet again with another smile, and in a gentle voice – the sort of voice which you use for talking with angels – she started to discuss the purchase of the birds. As her voice went on, punctuated now and then by an eager ‘Si, si, señora’ from the owner, Jacquie and I wandered round the darker and less accessible parts of the shop. Eventually, some twenty minutes later, we drifted back. Bebita still stood among the dirty cages like a visiting goddess, while the proprietor had seated himself on a sack of seed and was mopping his face. His ‘Si, si, señora,’ which still accompanied Bebita’s discourse, had lost its first enthusiasm, and was now more doubtful. Suddenly he shrugged, threw out his hands and smiled up at her. Bebita looked at him fondly as though he had been her only son.

  ‘B-b-bueno,’ she said, ‘muchisimas gracias, señor.’

  ‘De nada, señora,’ he replied.

  Bebita turned to me.

  ‘I have b-b-bought them for you,’ she said.

  ‘Good. What’s the damage?’

  Bebita then named a price which was a quarter of what I said I was willing to pay.

  ‘But Bebita, that’s highway robbery,’ I said incredulously.

  ‘No, no, child,’ she said earnes
tly; ‘all these b-b-birds are very common here, so it’s silly for you to pay too much. B-b-besides, the man is, as I said, an angel, and he likes reducing his price for me.’

  ‘I give up,’ I said resignedly ‘Would you like to come on my next trip with me? You’d save me pounds.’

  ‘Silly silly silly,’ said Bebita, chuckling, ‘I didn’t save you pounds; it was this man that you said looked so awful.’

  I glared at her, and then made a dignified retreat to choose my birds and cage them. When this was done, a mountainous pile of cages done up in brown paper stood on the counter. Having paid the man, amid the usual exchange of ‘gracias’, I then asked him, through Bebita, whether he ever had any waterfowl for sale.

  Not waterfowl, he replied, but he had some other, similar birds, which the señor might be interested in. He led us through a door at the back of the shop out to a tiny lavatory. Throwing open the door, he pointed, and I only just managed to stifle the exclamation of delight that rose to my lips, for there, crouched on either side of the lavatory, were two dirty, exhausted, but still beautiful black-necked swans. Trying to appear unconcerned, I examined them. They were both very thin, and seemed to have reached the stage of weakness which is characterized by complete apathy and lack of fear. In any other circumstances I would not have dreamt of buying such decrepit birds, but I knew that this was my last chance to obtain any of these swans. Apart from this, I felt that if they were going to die, at least they should die in comfort; to leave those lovely birds languishing by the side of a lavatory pan was more than I was able to do. Bebita therefore went into battle again, and after some stiff bargaining the swans were mine. Then came a problem, for the owner had no cages big enough to transport them. At length we unearthed two sacks, and the swans were encased in them, with their heads sticking out. Then, collecting up our purchases, we were bowed out of the shop by the owner. Once outside, a sudden thought came to me.