In the morning I examined the python, and as far as I could judge it seemed undamaged, though very cramped by the size of the basket, which appeared to have been built round the reptile after capture. After a long bargaining session, which lasted all through breakfast, I at length bought it at my price, and then the question of caging arose. I chose the largest box I could find, and the carpenter was detailed to do a rush job converting it for the snake. By lunch time the cage was ready and filled with a thick layer of dried banana leaves to give the python a soft bed to lie on. Then came the question of getting him out of the basket and into the box.
Now, ordinarily, if you have a few trustworthy men to help you, the moving of a python of any size is simple. Someone grabs the head, someone the tail, and the others hold on to various bits of his body. Keep him well stretched out so that he has no chance to coil round anything, and he is comparatively helpless. All I lacked was the few trustworthy men. To the Africans the python is a poisonous snake, and does not only poison you with his tongue, but with the sharp point of his tail as well. Useless for me to protest that I would hold the head, while they held the harmless parts of his anatomy. They would point out that they could easily be killed by the tail. I had no particular desire to get the python out of his basket and then have my helpers suddenly let go and leave me on my own to subdue his great length. After a prolonged argument I got angry.
“Listen,” I said, “if this snake is not inside that box in half an hour no one will get any pay.”
So saying, I cut through the side of the basket, grabbed the python firmly round the neck, and proceeded to pull him out, yard by yard. As each length of him was pulled out of the basket reluctant black hands took hold of it. Holding his head in one hand I waited for his tail to come into view, and then I grabbed it. Thus the python was now stretched in a circle: I held his head and his tail, and a ring of frightened Africans held gingerly on to his wriggling body. Then I thrust his tail into the box, and we gently eased his body after it, foot by foot. When it was all inside I pushed his head in, let go quickly, and slammed the door shut and sat on it with a sigh of relief. The staff were very excited at their own bravery and stood around showing each other how they had held it, what it had felt like, and what a great weight it was and so on. I sent one of them down to the village to purchase a chicken, for I felt that the reptile might be hungry, and when it arrived I placed it with the snake. During the night it ate the fowl and I thought it was going to be all right. Then came one of those twists that make collecting so difficult: the python’s tail, which had been tied up so tightly and for so long, developed gangrene. This is the danger of tying up any creature too tightly even in a cool climate, but in the tropics gangrene develops and spreads with ferocious rapidity. Within ten days there was nothing I could do for the reptile: it was feeding well, but the condition of its tail got worse, in spite of antiseptic treatment. Very reluctantly I was forced to put it out of its misery. Stretched out, it measured eighteen and a half feet in length. On dissection it proved to be a female with some half-developed eggs inside.
I never saw a python that size alive again, and I was never brought another even approaching that size.
The general impression of collecting seems to be that you have only to obtain an animal, stick it in a cage, and the job is done. As a rule it means that the job has only just begun: to locate and capture a specimen may be hard, but it pales into insignificance in comparison with the task of finding it a suitable substitute food, getting it to eat that food, watching to see that it does not develop some disease from close confinement, or sore feet through constant contact with wooden boards. All this in addition to the daily routine of cleaning and feeding, seeing they get neither too much sun nor too little, and so on. There are some creatures who simply will not eat on arrival, and hours have to be spent devising titbits to try and tempt them. Sometimes with this sort of specimen you are lucky, and by experiment you discover something which it likes. But in some cases they will refuse everything, and then the only thing to do is to release the creatures back into the forest. In some cases, which were fortunately rare, you could neither satisfy the animal’s palate, nor could you release it: these cases were the very young specimens. The very worst of these in my experience were the baby duikers.
The duikers are a collection of antelope found only in Africa. They range from the size of a fox- terrier to the size of a St Bernard, and in colour from a pale slaty blue to a rich fox-red. It was the latter species of duiker which seemed exceedingly common around Eshobi. During the time I was there it was apparently the breeding season for this duiker, and the hunters out shooting were always finding the young in the forest, or else shooting a female to find that she had been accompanied by her baby. Then the baby was caught and brought to me. Apropos of this I would like to point out that the protection laws for animals in the Cameroons do not take into consideration the breeding season of any animal, so that the hunter is within his rights to kill a
female with young. To him this is a windfall, for he not only gets the mother but the youngster as well, and this without wasting any gunpowder on it. Judging by the number of babies that were brought to me, the annual slaughter during the breeding season must be considerable and, although this species of duiker seems very common at the moment, one wonders how long they will remain so.
When the first duiker was brought to me I purchased it, constructed a suitable cage, and felt very elated at this beautiful addition to the collection. Very soon I realized that these duiker were going to be more difficult than any deer or antelope I had previously dealt with. For the first day the baby would not eat anything, and was very nervous. The next day it realized that I was not going to hurt it and then started to follow me around like a dog, gazing up at me trustfully out of its great, dark, liquid eyes. But it still refused the bottle. I tried every trick I knew to get it to drink: I bought an adult duiker skin and draped it over a chair, and when the baby nosed round it, presented the nipple of the bottle from under the skin. The baby would take a few half-hearted sucks, and then wander off. I tried hot milk, warm milk, cold milk, sweet milk, sour milk, bitter milk, all to no purpose. I put a string around its neck and took it for walks in the adjacent forest, for it was just at the age when it could be weaned, and I hoped that it might come across some leaf or plant that it would eat. We walked round and round, but the only thing it did was to scratch a small hole in the leafy floor and lick up a little earth. Day by day I watched it getting weaker, and I tried desperate measures: it was held down and forced to drink, but this process frightened it so much in its weakened condition that it was doing more harm than good. In desperation I sent the cook off to the nearest town to try and buy a milking goat. Goats are not so easy to come by in the forest areas, and it was three days before he returned. By this time the baby was dead. The cook had brought with him the most ugly and stupid goat it had ever been my misfortune to come into contact with, a beast that proved to be absolutely useless. During the three months we had her she gave, very reluctantly, about two cupfuls of milk. At the sight of a baby duiker she would put her head down and try to charge it. It required three people to hold her while the baby drank. In the end she was consigned to the kitchen, where she provided the main ingredients for a number of fine curries.