In Which I Have a Tug-of-War with a Nile Monitor

 

 

Before starting out on a collecting trip you have to know what wild animals are wanted by the zoos; then, knowing their whereabouts, you choose those areas in which not only the specimens required are to be found, but other rare creatures as well. Zoologists and biologists, generally, have not the time or the money to travel to these distant corners of the earth to find out about wildlife on the spot. Therefore, the animals have to be caught and brought back to them, so that they can be studied more conveniently in the zoo. Now the larger and commoner creatures from most parts of the world are well represented in nearly all zoological collections, and quite a lot is known about them. So it was the smaller and rarer beasts, about which we know so little, that I wanted to collect. It is about them that I am going to write.

From many points of view it is sometimes the small animals in a country that influence man more than the large ones. At home, for instance, the brown rat does more damage every year than any of the larger creatures. It was for this reason that I concentrated during my collecting trips on the smaller forms of life. For my first expedition I chose the Cameroons, since it is a small, almost forgotten corner of Africa, which is more or less as it was before the advent of the white man. Here, in the gigantic rain forests, the animals live their lives as they have done for thousands of years.

It is of great value to get to know and study these wild creatures before they are influenced by civilization, for wild animals can be affected just as much by change as people. One of the results of cutting down forests, building towns, damming rivers, and driving roads through jungle, is an interference with their way of life, and they have either to adapt themselves to the new conditions or die out.

It was my intention to find out all I could about the animals of the great forests and to bring back as big and varied a collection as possible of its small fauna, the creatures that the African calls in pidgin English, “Small Beef.”

At the time of this trip the British Cameroons was a tiny strip of territory shaped rather like a shoe box and wedged between Nigeria and French West Africa. It lay in what is called the rain forest area, so you find there the same sort of thick, steamy forest as in the Congo.

When I arrived in the Cameroons for the first time what struck me most was the very vivid coloring of the undergrowth and the enormous size of the trees. There were leaves of every shade of green and red imaginable, from bottle green to pale jade, and from pink to crimson. The trees towered up to two hundred and three hundred feet into the air, their trunks almost the circumference of a factory chimney, and their massive branches weighed down with leaves and flowers and great coiling creepers.

I landed at the little port of Victoria and had to spend a week or so there, preparing for the journey into the interior. A great many things had to be done before I could start on the actual work of collecting. There were Africans to engage as cooks or houseboys, various stores to buy and a great many other things as well. Also the necessary permits to hunt and capture the animals I was after had to be obtained, for all the animal life in the Cameroons is strictly protected and, unless you obtain government permission, you are not allowed to capture or kill any animals or birds. Eventually, when all this had been done, a lorry was hired and the food and equipment piled into it, and I set off. In those days there was only one way leading into the interior of the Cameroons and this, if followed far enough, led you to the village of Mamfe on the banks of the Cross River, some three hundred miles from the coast. It was at this village I had chosen to make my base camp.

The earth you find in the Cameroons is red and so the road was a bright brick color winding through the hills, lined on each side by immense forest trees. As we drove along, I could see hosts of brilliant birds feeding in the trees, tiny glittering sun-birds sipping nectar from the flowers; great glowing plantain eaters, like giant magpies, eating wild figs; and sometimes the passage of the lorry would frighten a flock of horn-bills which would fly off across the road, making tremendous swishing noises with their wings, and honking dismally.

In the short undergrowth at the side of the road scuttled large numbers of Agama lizards. These reptiles were almost as bright in color as the birds, for the males had vivid orange heads, and the body decked out in blue, silver, red, and black, while the females are rose-colored with bright apple-green spots. They have a curious habit of nodding their heads vigorously up and down, and look very peculiar dashing here and there in pursuit of one another, suddenly stopping to nod their brightly colored heads. Almost as numerous as these lizards were the pygmy kingfishers, minute little birds, smaller than sparrows, with bright blue backs, orange shirt fronts and coral red beaks and feet. Unlike the English kingfisher, these little birds live on locusts, grasshoppers and other insects. Dozens of them were perched on the telegraph wires, or on the stumps of dead trees on the roadside, all peering down hopefully into the grass and bushes below. Occasionally, one of them would drop off his perch like a stone and when he fluttered out of the grass again a grasshopper that was almost the same size as himself would be clutched firmly in his beak.

Three days after leaving the coast I reached Mamfe. I had chosen this village as a base camp for a variety of reasons. When you are collecting wild animals you have to choose your base very carefully: it has to be within fairly easy reach of some sort of store, so that you can obtain sufficient supplies of tinned food, nails, wire netting and other important things, and also it has to be fairly near a road, so that when the time comes to depart you can bring your lorries near enough to the camp to load up. Secondly, you have to make sure that your base is going to be in a good collecting area, a place that is not so full of farms and people that most of the wild animals have been driven away. Mamfe was excellent in this respect, so a camp clearing was made on the banks of the river, about a mile away from the village, and the big marquee I had bought was erected. For the next six months this marquee was to act as a home for me and my animals.

The first thing I had to do, before I could even start collecting, was to make sure that the base camp was functioning smoothly. Cages, pens, and ponds had to be built, as well as palm-thatched huts for the Africans I employed. I had to arrange for an adequate food and water supply, for when you have collected two hundred or three hundred animals and birds, they manage to eat and drink a very great quantity every day. Another important thing was to interview as many of the local chiefs as possible, showing them drawings and photographs of the creatures I wanted, and telling them how much I was willing to pay for specimens. Then, when they went back to their villages, they told their people, and so eventually I had all the villagers for miles around helping me in my work.

Then, when everything was ready and there was a great pile of empty cages waiting to be filled, I could start hunting the strange animals that I had traveled so far to find.

There are really no set rules about capturing animals. It all depends on the type of country in which you are operating and the sort of animals you want to get hold of. There were several different methods that I used in the Cameroons, and one of the most successful was to hunt in the forest with the aid of native hunting dogs. These dogs wear little wooden bells round their necks, so that when they disappear into the thick undergrowth in pursuit of an animal you will know where they are and can follow them by the clonking noise these bells make.

One of the most exciting hunts of this sort occurred when I went up the mountain called N’da Ali, twenty-five miles from the base camp. I had been told by native hunters that on the upper slopes of this mountain there was found a rare animal which I particularly wanted, the black-footed mongoose, a very large mongoose, pure creamy white in color with chocolate-colored legs and feet. I knew that a live specimen of this animal had never been seen in England, and so I was determined to try to capture one if I possibly could.

We set off on our hunt very early one morning, four hunters as well as myself, and a pack of five rather mangy-looking dogs. One of the drawbacks of this type of hunting is that you cannot explain to the dogs exactly what sort of animal it is you want to catch, and so they pick up the scent of any and every creature in the forest and follow it. The result is that while you might go out hunting for a mongoose, it is more likely that you will end up catching something completely different. As a matter of fact that is exactly what did happen. We had been walking for about half an hour through the forest when the dogs picked up a fresh scent and rushed off yapping excitedly, with the sound of their bells echoing through the trees. We set off in hot pursuit, and for half an hour followed the distant sounds of the pack, running as hard as we could and feeling more and more exhausted. Suddenly, the leading hunter came to a stop and held up his hand. We stood there, panting for breath and straining our ears for the sound of the bells, but the forest around us was silent.

We spread out in a circle and walked among the trees in different directions, trying to find out which way the pack had gone. At last a shrill yodel from one of the hunters sent us all hurrying to the spot where he was waiting, and in the distance we could hear the sound of running water. As we ran toward it, the hunter explained to me, between gasps for breath, that if the dogs had been led to the edge of the river by the quarry, the roaring of the water would cover up the noise of the bells. This explained how we had managed to lose the pack. When we reached the water, we splashed our way upstream and came eventually to a place where the water cascaded and foamed over a small waterfall some twenty feet high. Around the base of the fall was a great jumbled mass of huge boulders fully overgrown with moss and small plants, and among these big rocks we could see the tails and the rear ends of the dogs, while above the roar of the water we could hear their shrill yapping. Peering among the rocks, we saw for the first time what it was we had been hunting: it was a tremendous Nile monitor, a great lizard, measuring six feet in length, with a long whiplike tail and heavy curved claws on his feet. He had backed himself into a cul-de-sac among the rocks and was facing the opening and keeping the pack at bay by lashing with his great tail and hissing with open mouth if they ventured too close.

We were about to call the dogs off when one of them, more stupid than the rest, rushed in among the rocks and grabbed hold of the monitor’s neck, hanging on as tightly as she could. The monitor returned the compliment by clasping her ear in his mouth, and then hunching himself up he brought his great hind legs on to the dog’s back, ripping the skin open with his sharp claws. The dog, giving a yelp of pain, let go of his neck, and, as she started to retreat, the monitor lashed round with his tail and sent her rolling over and over among the rocks. Hastily we called the rest of the dogs off and tied them to a nearby tree, and then we had to decide on the best way to capture the lizard, who lay hissing among the rocks like some great prehistoric monster.

We tried to throw a net over him but the sharp-edged rocks kept getting caught in the folds, and in the end we gave this up as a bad job. The only other method I could think of was to climb up above him and, while someone attracted his attention, get a noose round his neck. Explaining to the hunters what I wanted done, I scrambled up over the slippery rocks until I was perched about six feet above the place where the monitor lay. I made a running noose at the end of a long piece of rope and then, leaning over, lowered it gently toward the reptile. He did not appear to associate the length of rope with the human beings about him, and so it was quite easy for me to work the noose over his head and pull it back gently until it lay round his neck. Then I pulled it tight.

Unfortunately, in my excitement, I had forgotten to tie the end of the rope to anything and, what is more, I was kneeling on the loose end. As soon as the monitor felt the noose tighten round his neck, he shot forward like a rocket, pulling the rope taut, so that it jerked my knees from under me and I started to slip over the edge of the rock. On that smooth surface, wet with spray from the waterfall, I could find nothing to grip, and so I slipped over the edge and crashed down in the gully below. As I fell, I remember hoping that the monitor would be so frightened by my sudden appearance out of the clouds that he would not wait to give battle. I had no desire to get any closer than necessary to his well-armed feet. Luckily, that is exactly what happened. The monitor was so startled that he dashed out from among the rocks and scuttled off down the river bank, trailing the rope behind him. But he did not get very far, for as soon as he was clear of the rocks, the natives threw the net over him and within a few seconds he was writhing and hissing in its folds. We eventually got him out of the net and tied to a long pole, and I dispatched one of the hunters back to camp with him. I was extremely pleased to have caught this big reptile, but it was not exactly what we had come up the mountain to hunt for, and so we continued on our way through the forest.

It was not long before the dogs picked up a fresh scent. The chase they led us on this time was a far longer one and much more interesting than our chase after the monitor had been. First of all, the animal we were hunting ran downhill and we had to run desperately down the slope, leaping and jumping over fallen rocks, which was really rather dangerous as a slip could have meant a broken leg or something even worse. Then our quarry turned round and ran uphill again, and we were forced to follow, with our hearts pounding and with sweat streaming off us. This hunt lasted for three-quarters of an hour and eventually, following the sound of the dog bells, we came to a level area of forest where we found the pack grouped round one end of a great hollow tree trunk that lay across the forest floor. Sitting in the mouth of the hollow trunk was a big white animal with a curiously bearlike face and small ears. He was staring with an expression of great scorn on his face at the dogs that were yapping and snarling around him. One of the dogs, I noticed, had a bite on his nose, and so I understood why they were keeping such a discreet distance from this strange animal. When the black-footed mongoose saw us, he turned round and disappeared into the hollow interior of the tree.

We called the pack off and placed a net over the end of the trunk and then went up to the other end to make sure there was no exit hole. There was none, and so we knew that the mongoose had only one way of getting out of the trunk, and that was guarded by our net. The only thing now was to get him out of the tree. Luckily, the wood was very rotten and soft, and so by cutting with our knives we managed to make a hole at the opposite end of the trunk to where the net had been hung. We then laid a small fire inside the hole, and when it was nicely alight we piled green leaves on top of it, so a thick pungent smoke rushed down the hollow tree. For some time we could hear the mongoose inside coughing in an irritated manner, but finally the smoke became too much for him and he shot out of the end of the trunk and into the net where he rolled over and over, snapping and snarling. After a certain amount of difficulty, during which we were nearly all bitten, we managed to get him out of the net and into a strong bag. Then we carried him triumphantly back to camp. For the first two or three days he was very savage and would attack the bars of the cage whenever I went near. But after a while in captivity he grew quite tame and within two or three weeks would even come and take food from my hand, and let me scratch him behind his ears.

 

 

In the mountains of the Cameroons the thick forest gives way to rolling mountain grassland, and in this sort of country I had to use other methods of capturing animals, one of the best of which was to drive the creatures into nets. It was to this grassland territory that I went to capture the giant booming squirrel, the biggest squirrel found in the Cameroons, an animal about twice the size of the ordinary English gray squirrel. These squirrels were found also in the lowlands, but there they spent their time in the top branches of the very tallest trees, feeding on the fruit and nuts that grew up there, and very rarely coming down to the ground. This made it almost impossible to catch them. In the grasslands, however, they lived in the small strips of forests that bordered the streams and in the early morning and evening they would come down and venture out into the grass fields in search of food. My hunters had told me they knew of a section of forest land where these squirrels were plentiful, and I decided that we would try to catch them in the early morning when they came down into the grass to feed.

We set off about one o’clock in the morning and arrived at the place just before dawn. A suitable spot was chosen in the grass at the edge of the forest and there we spread out nets in a half-moon, camouflaging them with grass and bushes. We had to do this while it was dark, and we had to be very quiet about it, so that the squirrels would not know we were there. Then, the nets being ready, we went and hid under some large bushes at the very edge of the strip of forest and waited there, drenched with dew, until the dawn broke. In the mountains the climate is much colder than in the lowlands, and so by the time the sun rose we were frozen and our teeth were chattering with cold.

Presently, as the morning mist swirled about us in great white clouds, we heard some loud angry “chuck-chuck” noises echoing from the trees around us, and the hunters whispered that this meant the squirrels were preparing to come down for their breakfast. Soon, peering through the leaves toward the part of the grass fields where our nets were concealed, I saw a strange object bobbing up and down. It looked exactly like a long black and white balloon, and I could not for the life of me think what it could be. I pointed it out to the hunters and they explained that it was a squirrel’s tail bobbing up and down above the grass stalks while its body was hidden from view. Very soon this solitary “balloon” was joined by several others, and as the mist rose we could see the squirrels themselves hopping cautiously from tussock to tussock, sitting up on their great black and white striped tails. When we judged that they were far enough away from the trees, we rose from our cramped positions and spread out in a line. Then I gave the signal and we all walked slowly out into the grass field. Our appearance was greeted with a chorus of loud frightened chucking noises from the squirrels in the trees behind us. The ones in the grass field, however, just sat and stared at us suspiciously. Our plans were to walk forward, driving the squirrels farther and farther away from the trees and slowly to the nets. Once they were within the circle of the nets, we would suddenly charge down and stampede them so that in their panic they would run into the mesh before they saw it. This did not, however, work out quite the way we expected.

One of the squirrels, more cunning than the rest, suddenly realized that we were driving him away from the sanctuary of the tall trees, and he broke away to the left, skirted round the line of hunters and raced back into the forest. The other squirrels sat and watched, obviously undecided as to whether or not they should follow him. They were not quite within the circle of the nets, but I felt that if we did not charge them they would all break away and get around us as the first squirrel had done. So we all charged forward, shouting and yelling and waving our arms, trying to appear as frightening as possible. The squirrels took one look at us and turned and fled.

Two of them broke away to the left and right, and three others ran straight into the net and within a few seconds were struggling helplessly in the mesh. It was an extremely difficult job to disentangle them, for they uttered loud snarling grunts of rage and bit savagely at our hands with their orange-colored teeth. They were quite handsome animals, with russet-red upper parts, lemon-yellow bellies and with the big black and white ringed tails, each of which measured about eighteen inches in length. Now that the squirrels in the forest knew we were trying to catch them it was useless to go on with the hunt, and so we had to be content with the three that we had captured. We carried them back to camp in thick canvas bags and placed them in a nice roomy cage with a good supply of fruit and vegetables and left them to settle down. After they had thoroughly explored the cage, they ate up all the food that I had put in and then curled up and went to sleep.

It was very early the next morning when I discovered how these squirrels had come to be called booming squirrels. I was awakened at dawn by a very strange noise coming from the cage, and when I went to investigate I saw the squirrels sitting near the wire front of their cage giving their weird cry. It started off as a gentle thrumming sound, such as you hear in a telegraph pole when the wind is shaking the wires. It gradually grew louder and louder and more metallic until it sounded exactly like the reverberations of a huge gong. The squirrels produced this extraordinary sound every morning at dawn and, for the first week I was awakened at an unearthly hour. Until I grew used to it, I had begun to think that it was rather a doubtful privilege to have captured these animals.

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

⇐ Предыдущая12345678910Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: