The New Noah

  Without bothering to inquire what this pit was like, I agreed, and we set off in his car to the plantation. On arrival at his bungalow I found that my friend had invited several other people to watch my snake hunt. Then, while we were having a drink, I noticed that my friend was searching round for something, and when I asked him what he was looking for he told me it was some rope. I asked him what he wanted the rope for, and he explained that it was to lower me into the pit with. This made me inquire for the first time what sort of pit it was, for I had imagined something about thirty feet square and about three feet deep.

  I discovered to my dismay that the pit resembled a large grave, being about twelve feet long, about three feet wide and some ten feet deep. My friend had decided that the only way for me to get down there was to lower me on the end of a rope, like a pantomime fairy! I hastily explained that in order to catch snakes in a pit like that I would have to have a torch, which I had not got. None of the other members of the party had a torch either, but my friend solved the problem.

  He tied the big paraffin pressure lamp on to the end of a long string, and explained that he would lower this into the pit with me. I could not protest, for, as my friend rightly pointed out, it gave a much better light than any torch. Then we all walked out through the moonlit banana plantation towards the pit, and I remember thinking to myself on the way that there was just a chance the snakes might turn out to be a harmless variety. But when we reached the edge of the pit and lowered the light into it I saw that it was full of baby Gaboon vipers, perhaps one of the most deadly snakes in West Africa, and all of them seemed very annoyed at being disturbed, and lifted their spade shaped heads and hissed at us.

  Now I had not thought that I would have to go down into the pit with the snakes in order to catch them, and so I was wearing the wrong sort of clothes. Thin trousers and a pair of Plimsoll shoes are no protection at all against the inch-long fangs of a Gaboon viper. I explained this to my friend, and he very kindly lent me his trousers and shoes, which were quite thick and strong. So, as I could think of no more excuses, they tied the rope round my waist and started to lower me into the pit.

  I very soon discovered that the rope had been fastened round my waist with a slip-knot, and the lower I got into the pit the tighter grew the slip-knot round my waist, until I could hardly breathe. Just before I landed at the bottom I called up and told my friends to stop lowering me: I wanted to examine the ground that I was going to land on, to make sure there were no snakes in the way. The area being clear, I shouted to them to lower away, and at that moment two things happened.

  First, the light, which no one had remembered to pump up in the excitement, went out; secondly, one of the shoes which I had borrowed off my friend, and which were too large for me, came off. So there was I, standing at the bottom of a ten-foot deep pit, with no light and no shoe on one foot, surrounded by seven or eight deadly and extremely irritated Gaboon vipers. I have never been more frightened. I had to wait in the dark, without daring to move, while my friends hauled the lamp out, pumped it up, relit it and lowered it into the pit again. Then I could see to retrieve my shoe.

  With plenty of light and both shoes on, I felt much braver, and set about the task of catching the vipers. This was really simple enough. I had a forked stick in my hand, and with this I approached each reptile, pinned it down with the fork and then picked it up by the back of the neck and put it into my snake bag. What I had to watch out for was that while I was busy catching one snake, another might wriggle round behind me and I might step back on it. However, it all passed off without accident, and at the end of half an hour I had caught eight of the baby Gaboon vipers.

  I thought that was quite enough to be going on with, and so my friends hauled me out of the pit. I decided, after that night, that collecting was only as dangerous as your own stupidity allowed it to be, no more and no less.

  In which Puff and Blow take over

  When the base camp was finished, it looked rather as though a circus had moved into the forest, and it looked even more like a circus when the camp had started filling up with specimens we had captured. Along one side of the marquee was a line of cages in which I kept all the smaller animals, a great variety of creatures that ranged from mice to mongooses.

  The first cage in the row belonged to a couple of baby red river hogs which I had called Puff and Blow, and they were the most charming pair of babies imaginable. A full-grown red river hog is about the most colourful and handsome of the pig family. Its fur is a rich orange-red colour and along its back and neck is a mane of pure white fur; on the tips of its long, pointed ears are two dangling tufts of white hair. Puff and Blow, however, like all baby piglets, were striped; they were a dark chocolate brown, and their stripes were a light buttercup yellow, running from nose to tail. This made them look like fat little wasps, as they trotted round their pen.

  Puff was the first one to arrive at the camp. He was brought in one morning, sitting rather sadly in a wicker basket balanced on the head of a native hunter. He had been captured in the forest, and I soon discovered the reason for his doleful appearance was that he had eaten nothing for two days, a thing that was enough to make any self-respecting pig look down in the snout. The hunter who had caught him had tried to feed him on bananas but Puff was far too young for that sort of food. What he wanted was milk, and plenty of it. So, as soon as I had paid for him, I mixed a big bottleful of warm milk with sugar, and taking Puff on to my knees, I tried to make him drink. He was about the size of a pekinese, with very small hooves and a pair of sharp little tusks as well, as I soon found out to my cost.

  Of course, he had never seen a feeding bottle before, and treated it with the gravest suspicion from the start. When I lifted him on to my knees and tried to put the rubber into his mouth, he decided that this was some special kind of torture I had invented for him. He screamed and squealed, kicking me with his sharp little hooves and trying to stab me with his little tusks. After the struggle between us had lasted for about five minutes, both Puff and I looked as though we had been bathed in milk, but not a single drop of it had gone down his throat.

  I filled another bottle and again grasped the squealing pig firmly between my knees, wedged his mouth open with one hand, and started to squirt the milk in with the other. He was so busily squeaking for help that every time the milk was squirted into his mouth, the next squeal would spit it all out again. At last I was fortunate enough to get a few drops to trickle down his throat, and waited for him to get the taste of it, which he soon made apparent by stopping to yell and struggle, and by starting to smack his lips and grunt. I dribbled a little more milk into his mouth and he sucked it down greedily, and within a short while he was pulling away at the bottle as though he would never stop; while his tummy grew bigger and bigger. At length, when the last drop had disappeared from the bottle, he heaved a long sigh of satisfaction and fell into a deep sleep on my lap, snoring like a hive full of bees.

  After that he was no more trouble, and after a few days had lost all his fear of humans, and would run, grunting and squeaking delightedly, to the bars of his pen when he saw me coming, and flop over on his back to have his tummy scratched. At feeding time, when he saw the bottle coming, he would push his nose through the bars and scream shrilly with excitement, and, to hear him, you would think he had never had a square meal in his life.

  After Puff had been with me for about two weeks, Blow arrived on the scene. She had also been caught in the forest by a native hunter and had objected to it most strongly. Long before she, or her captor, had appeared in sight, I could hear her loud squealing protest, and she never stopped once until I had bought her and put her into the cage next to Puff’s. I did not house them together straight away, for she was a bit bigger than Puff, and I thought she might hurt him.

  As soon as he saw there was another pig like himself in the next cage he hurled himself at the bars between, grunting and squeaking with delight, and when Blow saw him, she stopped screaming and went over
to investigate. They were as pleased to see each other as though they had been brother and sister. They rubbed noses through the bars between them, and since they seemed so friendly I decided to put them together straight away. In doing this I seemed justified, for they both ran forward and sniffed round each other excitedly: Puff gave a loud grunt and prodded Blow in the ribs with his nose; Blow grunted in return and skipped off across the cage. Then the fun started, round and round the cage Puff chased Blow; they ran, dodging and doubling, twisting and turning until both of them were quite exhausted and fell asleep on their bed of dry anana leaves, snoring and snoring until the whole cage vibrated.

  Blow soon learnt to drink from the bottle like Puff, but, as she was a few weeks older, her diet included some solid food as well. So every day, after they had both had their bottles, I would put a flat pan full of soft fruit and vegetables into the cage and Blow would spend the morning with her nose stuck in this, squelching and snuffling about, dreamily, in true piggy fashion.

  Puff did not like this at all. He was too young to eat solid food himself but did not see why Blow should do so if he could not. He felt that he was being done out of something and would stand and watch her, as she ate, with an angry expression on his face, grunting to himself peevishly.

  Sometimes he would try to drive her away from the food by pushing her with his head, and then Blow would wake up out of her dream among the mashed bananas and chase him angrily across the cage, squealing furiously. The longer Blow spent at her food dish, the more depressed Puff became.

  The idea must have come to him one day that he too could get an extra meal by the simple method of sucking Blow’s tail. I suppose her tail looked to him not unlike the end of the bottle from which he got his meal; anyway, he became convinced that if he sucked it long enough he would get an extra supply of delicious milk from it.

  So there Blow would stand, grunting to herself, her nose buried in the soft fruit, while behind her Puff would be solemnly sucking her tail. She did not mind this as long as he only sucked; occasionally, however, he would become annoyed and impatient because no milk appeared, and would start to tug and bite with his sharp, little tusks. Then Blow would whisk round and chase him into the corner, pushing him hard in the ribs, and return muttering angrily to her delicious plate of food.

  In the end, however, I was forced to separate them, only putting them together again for a game once a day, for Puff had sucked at Blow’s tail so enthusiastically that he had removed all the hair and it had become quite bald. So for some time they lived next door to one another while Blow’s tail grew new fur, and while Puff learnt to eat solid food.

  Blow, for some unknown reason, was much more nervous than Puff, and as soon as he discovered this he used to go out of his way to frighten her. He would hide behind the fence and jump out on her when she passed, or else he would lie there pretending to be asleep, and as soon as Blow came near him would leap to his feet and charge her with loud grunts. One day he frightened her so much that she fell into the food and came out with bits of banana and mango stuck all over her.

  Puff invented one special trick which he took great delight in playing on her every morning after their cage had been cleaned out. I would leave a pile of crisp, dry banana leaves in one corner for their bed; no sooner had I put it in, than Puff would race over, burrow down under the leaves until he was completely hidden, and wait there patiently, sometimes for as long as half an hour, until Blow came to see where he had gone. Then, with a loud squeal, he would leap out of the leaves and chase her across the pen. Sometimes, he would play this trick three times in a morning, but poor Blow would never learn from experience. As soon as he shot out of the leaves like a striped rocket, she would turn tail and run as fast as her fat legs would carry her, obviously thinking that it was a leopard or something of a similar nature that was attacking her.

  Since they spent most of their day chasing each other about or playing tricks on one another, the baby pigs naturally became very tired, and towards evening they would only just have enough energy left to eat their supper.

  Sometimes, in fact, they would go to sleep while still sucking at the bottle and I would have to wake them up so that they could finish their meal. Then, grunting sleepily, they would burrow deep down into their bed of banana leaves and lie there side by side, snoring in chorus all through the night.

  Just about the time that the baby pigs were going sleepily to bed, the animals in the cage next door were starting to wake up and take an interest in life. They were the galagos, or bush babies, tiny animals, the size of a newly-born kitten, which look rather like a cross between an owl and a squirrel with a bit of monkey thrown in. They had thick, soft, grey fur and long bushy tails. Their hands and feet were like a monkey’s and they had enormous great golden eyes similar to an owl’s.

  All day the galagos would sleep curled up together in their bedroom, but towards evening, just as the sun was getting low, they would wake up and peer out of their bedroom door, yawning sleepily and blinking at you with their great astonished-looking eyes. Very slowly, they would come out into the cage, still yawning and stretching, and then the three of them would sit in a circle and have a wash and brush up.

  This was a very lengthy and complicated performance. They would start with the very tips of their tails and slowly work upwards until every scrap of their furs had been combed and smoothed by their long, bony fingers; then, blinking their golden eyes at each other in self-satisfaction, they would begin the next job of the evening. This was doing their exercises. Sitting on their hind legs, they would stretch up as far as they could and suddenly jump up into the air, twisting right round to land facing in the opposite direction. After limbering up, they would start to leap and jump among the branches in their cage, ending up by chasing each other round and pulling one another’s tails, until they had worked up an appetite for their supper. Then down they would come and sit by the door of the cage, staring out hopefully, waiting for me to appear with their food.

  Their main course was finely chopped fruit with a dishful of sweetened milk. As a dessert, I would fetch a large tin in which was kept a delicacy that the galagos liked best of all – grasshoppers. They would sit by the door, squeaking to each other, their long fingers trembling with excitement, watching me as I scooped out a handful of kicking grasshoppers. Opening the cage door, throwing in the insects and slamming the door shut had to be done in a matter of seconds.

  Uproar would break out immediately in the cage: the grasshoppers leaped and jumped in all directions, and the galagos, their eyes almost popping out of their heads with excitement, would give chase, dashing madly round the cage, grabbing the grasshoppers and stuffing them into their mouths. As soon as their mouths were full, they would grab as many as they could in their hands, and then settle down to eat them as fast as possible, gobbling and grunting.

  All the time they would watch with their big eyes, to see where the other grasshoppers were going, and to make quite sure that their companions did not have more than their fair share. As soon as the last succulent morsel had been gulped down, off they would go again in a mad chase after the remaining insects. Within a short while there would not be a single grasshopper left in the cage and only a few odd legs and wings would be lying scattered on the floor. The galagos, however, were never convinced of this, so they would spend an exciting hour examining every crack and crevice in the cage, in the hope that one of these delicacies would somehow be overlooked.

  Each evening, as the sun was setting, I would clean out the galagos’ cage and replace the dirty grass with a big handful of clean leaves. The galagos loved having a big bundle of foliage in the bottom of the cage, for they would play among the stalks and spend a lot of time searching for imaginary insects which they felt sure were hiding there.

  One evening, I put grass in, as usual, and, quite by accident, put in with it a long stalk with a golden flower on the end, which looked very like a marigold. Some time later I passed the cage and was astonished to s
ee one of the galagos sitting up on his hind legs with the flower clutched in one hand, slowly biting off the petals and eating them. The fluffy centre part of the flower he threw away, and one of his companions immediately seized this and began to play with it. First he tossed it up into the air and then chased it and ‘killed’ it in the corner, as he would do with a grasshopper. He did this so realistically that one of his companions must have thought he had a grasshopper, and went over to find out. The first galago ran off with the flower head in his mouth and the other two gave chase, all of them ending up by falling in a struggling heap on the bottom of the cage. By the time they had finished with it, the flower head was torn up into tiny pieces and scattered all over the place. They seemed to enjoy playing with this flower so much that every night afterwards I would put two or three of these marigolds into their cage and they would eat the petals and play ‘catch-as-catch-can’ with the remains.

  Although I watched the galagos playing in their cage every evening and marvelled at their speed and graceful movements, I never realized quite how fast they could be until the night that one of them escaped.

  They had finished their food, and I was removing the empty plates from the cage, when one of the little animals suddenly ran through the door, up my arms and jumped from my shoulder on to the roof of the cage. I made a grab at the end of his tail, but he bounded away like a rubber ball and perched on the very edge of the cage top, watching me. I moved round slowly and carefully, and made a quick grab at him, but long before my hand was anywhere near him he had launched himself into space. He jumped across a gap of about eight feet and landed as lightly as a feather on one of the centre poles of the marquee, clinging there as though he had been glued on. I dashed after him and he let me come quite close before moving. Then, without warning, he jumped off the pole, landed on my shoulder and immediately bounced off again on to the top of another cage. I chased him for about half an hour, and the hotter and more annoyed I became, the more he seemed to enjoy the whole business.