‘Does anyone know what the present population of these reptiles is?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ said Wahab, pursing his lips, ‘it’s a bit difficult to get accurate figures but we reckon that Gunther’s geckos and Telfair’s skinks and Night geckos are probably down to five hundred or so. One snake, the Burrowing boa, has only been seen a few times in the last twenty years and is possibly extinct. The other, they reckon, is under seventy in number.’
‘You ought to get some into captivity as a safeguard,’ I suggested. Wahab’s eyes gleamed.
‘There’s talk of a captive breeding programme. It was even suggested in the Proctor report, but so far no one has been willing to undertake it,’ he said.
‘I’ll undertake it if you’ll give me permission,’ I said. We’ve just built a marvellous new Reptile Breeding Complex for this very kind of thing.’
‘It will be excellent if you could,’ said Wahab, as if the idea had only just occurred to him. ‘How would you go about it?’ ‘Well let’s do it in stages. If we get some of the more robust species first and meet with success with them, then next year, when I come out to help judge the candidates for the scholarship, we can get the other species. I would think we ought to start with the skinks and the Gunther’s gecko which is a large, fairly tough thing, I imagine.’
‘OK,’ said Wahab, happily, ‘I’ll make arrangements for you to go to Round Island as soon as the weather is right. Meantime, Dave can show you the Macabee Forest.’
‘Sure,’ said Dave, ‘I want to try and mist-net another kestrel, so that we can go and spend the day up there. We will take a couple of nets with my American kestrel as a lure, and try our luck. It’s a lovely bit of country even if you don’t catch anything. We can do that tomorrow, if you like.’
And show him the Dodo tree,’ said Wahab.
‘What’s a Dodo tree?’ I asked.
‘Wait and see,’ said Wahab, mysteriously.
So, the following morning, we set out to spend the day in Macabee. To get to the Macabee Forest, you have to cross the Plains of Champagne, another evocative name. Here we stopped briefly to see some of the few remaining patches of native heath left in Mauritius; small, tough plants that form a unique ecological niche. It will be a pity to lose it. All over the world we are destroying forests and plant life generally with a profligacy that is incredible, for in our present state of knowledge we might well be destroying some species which might prove of enormous value to medicine.
Crossing the Plains of Champagne, with the scarlet and black Fodys perched like guardsmen in the heath or flying like scraps of fire across the road, we eventually entered a rough track like a ride in an English forest. This was the outskirts of Macabee. We drove for some way and then, in a clearing where the road split into four, Dave stopped the car and we got out. In the still, warm air, small flies hung like helicopters in the sun, their bodies golden green, their large eyes peacock blue. Occasionally, a chocolate-coloured butterfly would flap past in a tumble of wings like an old lady that was late for an appointment. On the ebony trees, tiny clusters of cream-coloured orchids clung, and everywhere there were the tall, slender, caramel and silver-green staves of the Chinese guava and little patches of privet, the pale and delicate green leaf edges of the young plants crinkled like a ballet skirt. It was warm and quiet and friendly. Here in these woods, there was nothing to harm you. The only seriously malign inhabitant was the scorpion, but in over fourteen weeks in Mauritius, during which I turned over stones, dissected rotting trees and rooted among fallen leaves like a truffle hound — the normal behaviour of a naturalist — I did not find one. Macabee was a friendly forest where you did not hesitate to sit down or lie down on the forest floor, secure in the knowledge that the only member of the local fauna likely to cause any trouble was the mosquito.
‘Look there,’ said Dave, ‘now there’s a sight for you, a phelsuma on a Dodo tree.’
He pointed to where a tall, silver-trunked tree grew at the side of the track. It was obviously old and in places it was starting to rot, for there were cracks in its buttress roots. It was some fifty feet high, ending in a tangle of branches and dark green leaves. On the trunk about six feet from the ground clung a breathtakingly beautiful lizard. It was some five inches long and the basic colouring was a bright, rich dragon green. On the head and neck, however, the colours merged into kingfisher blue with scarlet and cherry-red markings. It had large, intelligent, black eyes, and each of its toes was pressed out into a tiny pad, which gave it the suction necessary to cling to the smooth surface of the tree. We wanted to collect some of these beautiful day geckos, and so John had prepared our special lizard fishing rod which consisted of a long, slender bamboo with a fine nylon noose welded on to the end of it. Armed with this, he approached the phelsuma, which regarded him with an air of wide-eyed innocence. It let John get within six feet of the tree before it started to move, sliding gently over the bark as smoothly as a stone on ice. By the time John was close to the tree, the lizard was out of range some twenty feet up it and, for good measure, round the other side of the trunk.
‘They are a bit wary here,’ said Dave. ‘I think it’s because this road is used quite a bit. They are tamer farther into the forest, we should get some there.’
Why do you call this the Dodo tree?’ I asked.
‘Ah,’ said Dave, ‘well, this is a tambalacoque tree, you see. It is one of the oldest of the Mauritian trees and there are only about twenty or thirty left. Now, this is the seed.’
He delved into his pocket and produced a curious-looking seed the size of a chestnut. It was pale biscuit brown and on one side it was fairly smooth, rather like a peach stone, while on the other it looked as though someone had started to carve it into an oriental face and had stopped halfway. The seed was quite heavy and obviously hard.
‘Now,’ said Dave, ‘this is the theory and God knows who made it up, but it’s a nice story. They’ve tried to germinate these seeds in various botanical gardens and at the Forestry Nursery but for some reason they can’t grow the damn things. Now the tambalacoque was very common during the time of the Dodo and the theory goes that the Dodo liked to eat the fruit of the tree. As the flesh is digested, the gastric juices got to work on the hard seed and by the time the Dodo passed the seed out of its body, it was soft enough to germinate.’
‘It’s a lovely story,’ I said, fascinated at the thought of such a link between a bird and a tree, and how the extermination of one was causing the disappearance of the other, ‘but I’m afraid it’s got more holes in it than a colander.’
‘Yes,’ said Dave, reluctantly, ‘but it’s a good story to tell the tourists and it is true that the tambalacoque is almost extinct.’ We made our way farther down into the forest, seeing the bright flash of phelsumas on nearly every tree trunk. The little golden greenflies hovered everywhere, sometimes pursued by large pale-green dragonflies with crisp, transparent wings, and once a large stick insect blundered across the path, sealing-wax red and black, some eight inches long. Three or four times, mongooses — swift and deadly as arrows — sped across the ride ahead of us and once we rounded a corner and surprised a troop of monkeys who, like a conjuring trick, melted into the thick guava grove so rapidly you were almost uncertain that you had really seen them. Once, a flock of Ring-necked parakeets flew across the ride and away into the forest. They were a large proportion of the estimated fifty birds that were left. We stopped to admire a pair of the Mauritian merle, again a bird whose numbers are also declining with alarming speed. They are handsome birds with pleasant bubbling cries, and they evinced enormous curiosity at Dave’s imitation of them, and came quite close, peering through the branches at us and ‘chucking’ in amazement to each other.