Saturday Snippet: the perils of small game collecting in West Africa

In the 1950's, naturalist Gerald Durrell went to what was then known as British Cameroon in West/Central Africa to collect animals for zoos in Britain.  He chose the region of Bafut for his collecting activities, and recruited local tribesmen to help him in his hunt for specimens.  In a moment of whimsy, he christened his hunters, collectively, The Bafut Beagles, which became the title of the book he wrote about his adventures.  It was an instant best-seller when it was released, and remains popular today.

Here's how Durrell and the Beagles hunted the rock hyrax, an animal well known to me in South Africa as the dassie.  The picture of two of them below is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Rock hyrax can be found all over Table Mountain in Cape Town, where I grew up.

The language the hunters are using in the excerpt below is known as Pidgin English, one of a variety of such dialects in West and Central Africa.

‘Listen, Masa!’ [the hunter] said excitedly.

We all fell silent, and then from the valley ahead a strange cry drifted down to us; it started as a series of short, tremulous whistles, delivered at intervals, and then suddenly turned into a prolonged hoot which echoed weirdly from the rocky walls of the valley.

‘Na N’eer dis, Masa,’ the Beagles whispered. ‘’E de hollar for dat big rock dere.’

I trained my field-glasses on the big huddle of rocks they indicated, but it was some seconds before I saw the hyrax. He was squatting on a ledge of rock, surveying the valley with a haughty expression on his face. He was about the size of a large rabbit, but with short, thick legs and a rather blunt, lion-like face. His ears were small and neat, and he appeared to have no tail at all. Presently, as I watched, he turned on the narrow ledge and ran to the top of the rock, paused for a moment to judge the distance, and then leapt lightly to the next pile of boulders and disappeared into a tangle of convolvulus that obviously masked a hole of some sort. I lowered the glasses and looked at the Bafut Beagles.

‘Well?’ I asked, ‘how we go catch dis beef?’

They had a rapid exchange of ideas in their own language, then one of them turned to me.

‘Masa,’ he said, screwing up his face and scratching his head, ‘dis beef ’e cleaver too much. We no fit catch him with net, and ’e fit run pass man.’

‘Well, my friend, how we go do?’

‘We go find hole for rock, sah, and we go make fire with plenty smoke; we go put net for de hole, an’ when de beef run, so we go catch um.’

‘All right,’ I said; ‘come, we go start.’

We started off up the valley, Jacob leading the way with a look of grim determination on his face. We struggled through the thick web of short undergrowth until we reached the first tottering pile of boulders, and there we spread out like terriers, and scrambled and crawled our way round, peering into every crevice to see if it was inhabited. It was Jacob, strangely enough, who first struck lucky; he raised a sweaty and glowing face from the tangle of undergrowth and called to me.

‘Masa, I done find hole. ’E get beef for inside,’ he said excitedly.

We crowded round the hole and listened. Sure enough, we could hear something stirring inside: faint scrabbling sounds were wafted to us. Rapidly we laid a fire of dried grass in the entrance to the hole, and when it was well alight we covered it with green leaves, which produced a column of thick and pungent smoke. We hung a net over the hole, and then fanned the smoke into the depths of the rock with the aid of large bunches of leaves. Blown by our vigorous fanning, the smoke rolled and tumbled up the tunnel into the darkness, and then suddenly things began to happen with bewildering rapidity. Two baby hyrax, each the size of a large guinea-pig, shot out into the bushes with it tangled round them. Close on their heels came the mother, a corpulent beast in a towering rage. She raced out of the hole and leapt at the nearest person, who happened to be one of the Beagles; she moved so rapidly that he had not time to get out of her way, and she fastened her teeth in his ankle and hung on like a bulldog, giving loud and terrifying ‘Weeeeeeeee!’ noises through her nose. The Beagle fell backwards into a great blanket of convolvulus, kicking out wildly with his legs, and uttering loud cries of pain.

The other Beagles were busy trying to disentangle the baby hyrax from the net and were finding it a whole-time job. The household staff had fled at the appearance of the irate mother, so it was left to Jacob and me to go to the rescue of the Beagle who was lashing about in the undergrowth, screaming at the top of his voice. Before I could do anything sensible, however, Jacob came into his own. For once his brain actually caught up with the rapidity of events. His action was not, I fear, the result of any sympathetic consideration for the sufferings of his black brother, but prompted rather by the thought that unless something was done quickly the female hyrax might escape, in which case he would get no money for her. He leapt past me, with extraordinary speed for one normally so somnolent, clutching in his hand one of the larger canvas bags. Before I could stop him he had grabbed the unfortunate Beagle’s leg and stuffed it into the bag, together with the hyrax. Then he drew the mouth of the bag tight with a smile of satisfaction and turned to me.

‘Masa!’ he said, raising his voice above the indignant screams of his countryman, ‘I done catch um!’

His triumph, however, was short-lived, for the Beagle had come to the end of his tether, and he rose out of the undergrowth and hit Jacob hard on the back of his woolly head. Jacob gave a roar of anguish and rolled backwards down the slope, while the Beagle rose to his feet and made desperate efforts to rid his foot of the hyrax-infested bag. I regret to admit that I could do nothing more sensible than sit down on a rock and laugh until the tears ran down my face. Jacob also rose to his feet, uttering loud threats, and saw the Beagle trying to remove the bag.

‘Arrrr!’ he yelled, leaping up the slope; ‘stupid man, de beef go run.’

He clasped the Beagle in his arms and they both fell backwards into the undergrowth. By now the other Beagles had successfully bagged the baby hyrax, so they could come to their companion’s rescue; they dragged Jacob away and helped their fellow hunter to remove the bag from his foot. Luckily the hyrax had released her hold on his foot when she was crammed into the bag, and had obviously become too frightened to bite him again, but even so it must have been an unpleasant experience.

Still shaken with gusts of laughter, which I did my best to conceal, I soothed the wounded Beagle and gave Jacob a good talking to, informing him that he would get only half the price of the capture, owing to his stupidity, and the other half would go to the hunter whose foot he had been so anxious to sacrifice. This decision was greeted with nods and grunts of satisfaction from everyone, including, strangely enough, Jacob himself. Most Africans, I have found, have a remarkably well-developed sense of justice, and will agree heartily with a fair verdict even if it is against themselves.

There you have it.  Animal collecting in Africa in the 1950's.  I haven't been to Bafut, which is now in the country known as Cameroon, but I've been nearby from time to time.  I know my friend Lawdog is familiar with the area, and with the pidgin English spoken there (and almost universally in West and Central Africa).  He and I share a love of Gerald Durrell's writing, and we've enjoyed many a laugh together as we relive his stories.  Gerald Durrell played a part in one of Lawdog's most famous (and hysterically funny) story sequences about the ratel, or honey badger;  links to the episodes are available here.

Politically correct people today seem to think that Gerald Durrell and others of his kind were exploiting the natives, and treating them almost as trained apes rather than children.  I don't think that can be supported by his books.  Sure, they reflect a vaguely paternalistic attitude common in 1950's Britain, but they're anything but condescending.  The Fon of Bafut, for example (the hereditary leader of the area) is portrayed as a vibrant personality in his own right, certainly shackled to some extent by the primitive superstitions of his people, but nevertheless a shrewd and careful ruler who did his best to maintain a stable local environment in the face of all the geopolitical and regional turmoil of that period.  The Fon in Durrell's time, Achirimbi II, was a widely respected leader in the region.

As for the rock hyrax on Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa:  they've learned that tourists like to feed them.  There's a cableway up the mountain, just above the city center, with a restaurant at the top station.  In my day, and presumably still, it was infested with dassies, who hung around begging for french fries (preferably with ketchup, thank you very much) from tourists eating their burgers at the outdoor tables.  They were the fattest hyrax I've ever seen anywhere!  The local hawks lived very well off them, because they became so fat they could hardly waddle, let alone escape a fast-moving bird of prey;  but they were also so heavy that smaller raptors often had a real problem picking them up, to carry them off and eat them.  Their numbers never seemed to diminish, no matter how rich the raptor harvest might be.  I suspect there was a never-ending supply of young hyrax waiting their turn at the tourist bounty!  There are several videos on YouTube of Table Mountain's dassies doing their thing.

Gerald Durrell's many books have recently been re-released in very inexpensive e-book editions, to my great pleasure, as my paper copies were almost worn out.  I've had them in my library since I was a child, and fully expect to be re-reading them until the end of my life.  They're that good (and still very entertaining).  Highly recommended.

Peter