Free Gerald Durrell by The Overloaded Ark

to the sandy floor. Then we would drop our weapons and
pounce on them before they could regain the air. The knocks they received were
not severe, owing to the twigs and leaves on our sticks, but it was sufficient
to make them lose control and fall to the floor. Here they would flap their way
along the ground, trying hard to get into the air again. Even when in this
helpless state they showed a great turn of speed, and it required considerable
agility on our part to corner them, and great care in stuffing them into the
cloth bags, for their teeth were sharp and very large.
     
    In
three-quarters of an hour, during which we vied with the bats in performing
strange gyrations round the cave, we had caught twenty-five of these creatures.
By now the bats had become wise: some had flown outside, where they hung
festooned in the trees like bunches of quivering black fruit, while the others
had discovered that if they all crowded to the highest point of the cave’s roof
they would be safe from us. I decided that twenty-five specimens would be
enough to cope with as a beginning, so we called a halt. Some distance from the
cave we sat on the ground and enjoyed well-earned cigarettes, and watched the
bats dropping from the trees, one by one, and then swooping into the dark
interior of the cave to join their chattering companions. It was, in all
probability, the first time in the centuries that the colony had lived and bred
there that they had been attacked like this. It would probably be the same
length of time before they were attacked again. Taking all things into
consideration, it must be a pleasant life to lead: all day they sleep, hanging
in the dark, cool security of the cave, and then in the evening they awake
hungry and fly forth in a great flapping, honking crowd into the light of the
setting sun, above the golden treetops, to alight and feed in the giant fruit
trees aglow with the sunset, gorging on the sweet fruit as the shadows creep
through the branches. Chattering and flapping among the leaves, knocking the
ripe fruit off so that it falls hundreds of feet down to the forest floor
below, to be eaten by other night prowlers. Then, in the faint light of dawn,
to fly back to the cave, heavy with food, the fruit juices drying on their fur,
to bicker and squabble over the best hanging-places, and gradually fall asleep
as the sun rises above the trees to ripen a fresh crop of fruit for the next
night’s feast.
     
    As we left, the
shadows were lengthening and I turned for one last look at the cave. It lay
like a dark mouth in the cliff face, and as I watched I saw the vanguard of the
colony flutter out and soar off high above the trees. Another and another,
until a steady stream of bats was pouring forth, like a wisp of smoke at that
distance. As we stumbled through the forest in the gloom we could hear them
high above us, honking loudly and clearly as they flew off to feed.
     

CHAPTER
FOUR
     
    THE FOREST BY NIGHT
     
     
    THE results of
our days spent hunting in the forest, and the prodigious efforts of the
villagers for miles around, soon filled my cages to overflowing, and then I
found my whole day taken up with looking after the animals. The only time I had
for hunting was after the day’s work was done, and so it was that we took to
hunting at night with the aid of torches. I had brought four great torches out
from England with me, and these threw a very strong beam of light, I
supplemented our lighting with four more torches purchased on arrival in the
Cameroons. Armed with this battery of lights we would scour the forest from
midnight to three o’clock in the morning, and by this method we obtained a
number of nocturnal beasts which we would otherwise never have seen.
     
    The forest at
night was a very different place from the forest by day: everything seemed
awake and watchful, and eyes gleamed in the tree-tops above you. Rustles and
squeaks came from the undergrowth, and by the light of the torch you could see
a