Half-way down the road towards the quay I remembered that I had no cage on board the ferry in which to house the little opossum. So I decided that I had better return to the shop in the village and buy a box which could be made into a cage on our journey down river. My companion ran ahead to hold up the ferry-boat until I arrived; and and so, carrying the irritated little animal dangling on the end of his string, I rushed madly back down the road to the village shop and breathlessly asked the man behind the counter if he could let me have a box.
He tipped out a whole lot of tins on the floor and silently handed me the box in which they had been. Grasping it in my hand and gasping out a word of thanks I dashed back along the road. The little East Indian boy accompanied me, and as we ran he took the box from my hands and carried it skilfully on his head. Running down the dusty road in the hot sun was very exhausting, and each time I paused for breath I could hear a loud, peevish hoot from the river ferry, which would spur me on, and at last I reached the quay just as their patience was exhausted and they were about to remove the gangway.
On board the boat, and after recovering my breath, I set about preparing a cage for my opossum, and when this was ready I had the unpleasant task of untying the string round the animal’s waist. By this time it was not in a very good temper and hissed at me like a snake and bit savagely at my fingers, but I succeeded in cutting the cord. As I did so, I noticed a strange sausage-shaped swelling in the skin of its stomach between its hind legs. I thought it possible that the little animal had been damaged internally. While I was gently feeling this peculiar lump, however, my fingers parted the fur and I found myself looking into a long shallow pocket in the opossum’s skin in which were four minute quivering pink babies.
This was the reason for the strange swelling, and not some injury that she had received. The mother was very indignant at my looking at her pouch without permission, and she screamed loudly and snapped at me. When I put her into the cage, the first thing she did was to sit up on her hind legs, open her pouch, and make sure that all the babies were there. Then she combed her fur into place and set about eating the fruit with which I had provided her.
As the four babies grew larger, they soon found it a very tight fit inside that shallow pouch, and it was not long before only one of them would fit in it at a time. They would lie around on the floor of the cage near their mother, but if anything frightened them, round they would turn and dash towards her in a mad race, for they knew that the one to get there first was the only one that could crawl into the shelter of her pouch, and the others would have to stay outside and face whatever danger threatened. When she was moving about the cage, the mother opossum would make all her babies climb on to her back, where they would cling tightly to her fur and twine their slender pink tails around their mother in a firm and loving embrace.
In which I catch a fish with four eyes
When I was in Guiana, I was very anxious to obtain some of the beautiful kinds of humming-birds which are to be found there. After some time, I happened to contact a hunter who was particularly good at catching these minute birds, and about once a fortnight he would bring me a small cage with five or six inside, fluttering their wings so rapidly that it sounded more like a cageful of bees. I had always been told that humming-birds were extremely difficult to look after, and was, therefore, very worried about the first four I acquired.
In the wild state they feed on the nectar from flowers, hovering in front of the blooms and sticking their long, fine beaks inside lapping up the substance with their fragile tongues. In captivity they have to be taught to drink a mixture of honey and water with a small amount of Bovril and some Mellin’s food mixed with it. This mixture, in the heat of the tropics, goes sour very quickly, and for this reason the hummingbirds have to be fed three times a day. The job was, of course, to teach them to feed out of a little glass pot, for they were used to getting their meals from a highly coloured flower, and did not realize at first that the pots contained the nourishment they needed.
When they first arrived, I removed each one very carefully from the cage and, holding it in my hand, dipped its beak into a pot of honey and water, time and time again, until eventually it stuck its tongue out, tasted the mixture and then began to suck it up greedily. When it had had a good feed, I put it in its new cage with one of the pots of food inside, and then plucked a scarlet hibiscus flower and placed it inside the pot on the surface of the honey.
The humming bird, which was about the size of a bumblebee, sat on its perch and preened itself and uttered tiny little chirrups in a self-satisfied sort of way. Then it took off from the perch and purred round and round the cage like a helicopter, its wings moving so fast that they were just simply a dim blur over its back. Eventually, as it was flying around, it caught sight of the hibiscus flower lying in the pot, and swooped down and pushed its beak towards the bloom. When it had sucked all the nectar out of the flower, it continued stabbing with its beak and soon stuck it between the petals and into the honey beneath, and started to drink rapidly, still hovering in mid-air.
Within twenty-four hours it had learnt by this means that the little glass pot hung on the wall of its cage contained a copious supply of the sweet honey, and from then onwards I did not have to bother to give it a sign-post in the shape of a flower.
These tiny birds settled down very happily, and in two days they had become so tame that when I put my hand inside the cage with the pot of food, they would not wait for me to hang it on the wire but would fly down and drink it as I was putting it in, occasionally perching on my fingers for a rest and to preen their glittering feathers.
There was generally something exciting happening at our base camp in Georgetown. You never knew at what hour of the day or night someone would arrive with some new specimens. It might be a man carrying a monkey on his shoulder or a little boy with a wicker cage full of birds, or it might be one of the professional hunters turning up after a week’s journeying into the interior, with a large horse-drawn cart piled high with cages full of different creatures.
I remember one day a very old Indian walked into the garden, carrying a raffia basket which he handed to me very courteously. I asked him what was inside it and he told me that it contained rats. Well now, it is perfectly safe to take the lid off a basketful of rats, as, generally, they will simply crouch on the bottom and not attempt to move. I removed the lid of the basket and found that it was not full of rats but full of marmosets, who leapt out with great speed and agility and fled in all directions. After a hectic chase that lasted about half an hour we managed to round them all up and get them into a cage. But it taught me to be more cautious about opening baskets full of specimens that were brought in.
These little marmosets were about the size of a rat with a long, bushy tail and intelligent little black faces. Their fur was a deep black colour and their paws were a bright orange-red. We kept them in a large cage where they had plenty of room to scuttle about, and gave them a box with a hole in it to act as their bedroom.
Every evening they would all come down and sit by the door, chattering and squeaking waiting for their supper. They would drink a potful of milk and then have five grasshoppers each, and, after crunching up the very last morsel, off they would troop in a line, the oldest one leading, and solemnly climb into their box and all curl up in a solid ball at the bottom. How they were able to sleep like this without suffocating, I have no idea, but apparently marmosets sleep in colonies in the wild state as well as in captivity.
One day, a tall Negro walked into the garden and trotting alongside him on a long string was a most extraordinary-looking animal. It was similar to a gigantic guinea-pig covered with great white blotches. It had large dark eyes and a mass of white whiskers. It was, in fact, a paca and a near relation of the guinea-pig and also of the capybara. When we had agreed on the price that I was to pay for this animal, I asked the Negro if it was tame, whereupon he picked it up, stroked it and talked to it and assured me that he had had it since it w
as a tiny baby, and that a more gentle creature you could not wish to find. At that particular time I had received a large consignment of animals and was, therefore, short of cages. But since the paca was tame, I thought I would simply just tie him up to a nearby stump. I did this and gave him some vegetables to eat, and promptly forgot all about him.
Some time later I was walking down the line of cages, taking out the water pots to wash them, when quite suddenly I heard a snarl that would have done credit to a tiger, and something flung itself at my leg and buried its teeth in my shin. Needless to say, I leapt in the air and dropped all the water pots which I had been so carefully collecting. It was, of course, the paca which had attacked me, though why he should have done so I cannot imagine, for he seemed perfectly tame when he arrived. My trousers were torn and my leg was bleeding. I was extremely angry with the animal, and for the next week he was quite unapproachable; if anything went near him he would dash at them, gnashing his teeth and uttering his ferocious snarling grunt. Just as suddenly as his bad temper had flared up, and for no apparent reason, so he became tame all over again and would allow you to scratch him behind the ears and tickle his tummy while he lay on his side. His behaviour alternated in this manner all the time he was with me, and whenever I approached his cage it was with the uncertainty of not knowing whether he was going to greet me with signs of affection or a savage bite from his large sharp teeth.
One of the most extraordinary specimens that we were brought while in Georgetown, was a small fish, some four or five inches long. A dear old Negress came to us one day with about five of them in an old tin kettle. When I bought them, I tipped them out into a large bowl, and I realized at once that there was something peculiar about them, but for a few seconds I could not place what it was. Then suddenly I noticed that there was something very strange about the fish’s eyes. I took one out of the bowl and put it in a glass jar, so that I could examine it more conveniently, and then I saw what it was that had puzzled me: the fish had four eyes.
Its eyes were large, and situated so that they bulged above the surface of its head, rather like a hippo’s eyes. Each eyeball was neatly divided into two, with one eye on top of the other. I discovered that this fish spends its life swimming along the surface of the sea, so one set of eyes looks downwards and keeps a watch for any large fish that may make an attack, while the other pair keep a look-out along the surface of the water for food, and above in case of attack by a fish-eating bird. It was certainly one of the most amazing defences I have ever seen in an animal, and certainly one of the most extraordinary fishes.
Guiana seems to go in for amazing forms of life. There, one of the most peculiar birds in the world is to be found, the hoatzin, or, as it is called in Guianese, the Stinking Anna, because of its strong musky scent. This strange bird has a ‘thumb’ on its wing, armed with a hooked claw. A baby hoatzin, a few hours after hatching, can scramble out of its nest, and crawl about in the trees like a monkey, using its thumb to get a grip on the twigs. The nests are built in thorn-bushes overhanging water, and a few hours after hatching, the babies think nothing, if any danger threatens, of dropping ten feet into the water where they swim and dive like fish. When the danger has passed, they use their thumbs to climb the tree and get back into the nest. The hoatzin is the only bird in the world able to do this, and the babies make a weird sight swinging among the thorns, or plopping into the water like little men clad in furry bathing-suits.
Which describes the giant cayman and the shocking electric eel
Keeping my animals in Georgetown was very good from a number of points of view: it was an excellent source from which to obtain food for my collection and also, by going down to the market, some nice new specimens brought in by traders from outlying districts could be picked up. There, too, I was also within fairly easy reach of the airport, and this meant that consignments of delicate creatures could be sent off regularly to England by air. The creatures that travel best by aeroplane are the reptiles, and so every two weeks or so I would pack up several big boxes full of a mixed assortment of frogs, toads, tortoises, lizards, and snakes, and get them driven down to the airport.
Sending reptiles by air is very different from sending them by sea. To begin with, they are packed in another way. To send off, say, a consignment of snakes, you need a large, light wooden box; you place each snake in a small cotton bag, tying up the opening firmly with string; then, drive nails into the sides of the crate and hang the bags from these. In this way, you do not have to worry if one kind of snake is going to eat another, for they are all separated and yet can be sent in the same box. The air trip from Guiana took about three days, and all the snakes had to have during that time was water, for these reptiles can go for long periods without food, and come to no harm. My snakes were given a good feed the day before their departure, and they would lie curled up in the little cotton bags, digesting the meal; by the time they had finished it, England would have been reached.
Frogs and toads and the smaller lizards were also sent in bags, and much the same rules applied to them. But for the larger lizards, such as the green iguana, special crates are necessary, and into each one you would put five or six iguanas and give them a lot of branches, wedged inside the box, so that they would have a plentiful supply of footholds on which to cling. Baby caymans, I found, travel very successfully by air, but the bigger ones did not take to it at all, and, quite apart from this, they weighed so heavy in their wooden crates that the freight charges were enormous: so most of the big caymans came back with me on board the ship.
The smallest cayman I caught in Guiana measured a little over six inches in length, and he must have been quite newly hatched. The largest one measured over twelve feet and was not nearly so tractable to deal with. He was caught in a big river up in the northern savannas, a river full of enormous electric eels and hundreds of caymans. Upon hearing that a zoo in England wanted a particularly large cayman, I decided that this was the spot to try to catch one. Just below the place where I was staying, the river had hollowed out a small bay in the bank, and opposite to this bay, about a hundred and fifty yards away, was an island, and it was there that these creatures spent their time.
The trap that I used to catch them in was very primitive but most effective: two long, heavy native canoes were pulled up on to the little beach of the bay, so that they were half-way out of the water and about a yard apart from each other, leaving a channel between them: in this channel I fitted up a noose attached to a bent sapling. Also attached to the bent sapling was a big hook with a dead and extremely smelly fish on it. To get at the fish, the cayman would have to stick his head through the noose, and as soon as he attacked the fish the small sapling would be released and, springing upwards, would draw the noose tightly round him. The other end of the rope was made fast to a big, strong tree on the bank some six feet above. I set my trap late one evening, but thought it very unlikely to make a catch much before the next day.
That night, just before going to bed, I felt it might be a good idea to go down and make sure that the trap was still set and ready, and, my friend joining me, we walked together down to the river bank, through the dark strip of woodland. Drawing near to the place where the trap was set, we could hear the most peculiar noise, a dull thudding sound, but could not make out what it might be. On reaching the bank, though, we soon saw what was causing it. An enormous cayman had crawled up the channel between the two boats, and, just as I had hoped, had stuck his head through the noose and pulled at the fish, and the rope had fastened tightly round his neck. Looking over the bank and shining our torches downwards, we could see the gigantic reptile writhing and splashing between the two boats which he had pushed far apart in his struggles.
His great mouth was opening and closing with a thud, like a chopper on a block, and his thick tail was lashing from side to side, churning the waters to foam, and thumping against the sides of the two boats, so that it was a wonder he had not smashed them in. The rope round his neck was fastened t
o a tree on the top of the bank, near where we were standing, and it was stretched taut, and each time his great weight pulled on it we could hear it humming with the strain. The tree itself was shaking and quivering with the cayman’s efforts to free himself, and continued to shudder when the cayman unexpectedly lay still in the foaming water, as if he had exhausted himself; and then I did an extremely silly thing.
Leaning over the bank, I took hold of the rope with both hands and started to haul it towards me. As soon as he felt the movement on the rope, the cayman renewed his efforts with the utmost vigour. The rope twanged taut again, and I found myself jerked over the edge of the cliff, to hang there more or less in mid air with my toes on the extreme edge and my hands grabbing the rope. I realized that if I let go and fell, it would mean crashing straight down on to the reptile’s scaly back, where, if not bitten by his huge jaws, I would most certainly be brained by a blow from his mightily muscular tail. All I could do was to cling on to the rope, and presently my companion managed to lay hold of it too. This enabled me to get a foothold on the bank and haul myself back to safety, and we both let go of the rope.
At once, the cayman lay still again, and we decided that the best thing to do would be to return to the house and collect more rope to tie him up with, since we felt that if we left him all night with just that one rope round his neck, he would eventually, in his struggles, break it and escape. We hastened back and collected all the things we needed. Then, carrying two lanterns and several torches, we went again to the river. The cayman was lying still, blinking up at us with his large eyes, each of which was the size of a walnut. The first thing to do was to put his great toothed jaws out of action, and for that purpose a noose was gently lowered, flipped over his snout, pulled tight, and fastened to the tree. While my companion held the lights, I crawled down into one of the boats, and after a certain amount of trouble, managed to get another noose over the cayman’s tail and work it down to the very base near the hind legs, where I worked it tight. This rope was also fastened to the tree. Thus, having three ropes on him, and feeling that the cayman was reasonably safe to be left, we retired to bed.