The New Noah by Gerald Durrell

Author:Gerald Durrell [Durrell, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447214571
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Toads that have pockets, and other weird beasts

The creeks ran all round the village of Santa Maria, and so to all intents and purposes we were living on an island. The creeks, I found, were full of vast numbers of baby caymans, and I was very anxious to catch a good supply of these. I soon found out that it was not quite as simple as had been the capturing of crocodiles in the Cameroons. For there you wade along the shallow streams and catch them on the sandbanks. The creeks round Santa Maria were far too deep to do this, quite apart from the fact that they were inhabited by other things besides caymans, such as electric eels and a vicious and bloodthirsty fish called the piranha, both of which would make unpleasant bathing companions. So, in order to capture the baby caymans, I had to adapt my method for hunting crocodile to the country I was in.

We had a big canoe and went off down the creeks late one night, taking with us a big torch and a long stick with a cord tied to the end, which terminated in a slip-knot. I sat right up in the bows of the canoe, holding the torch and this stick, while the paddler in the stern propelled us slowly and gently across the dark waters. I soon found that the baby caymans preferred to lie in the places where the weeds were thick on the surface, with just their noses and their bulbous eyes sticking out. As we moved gently along I shone the torch to and fro, over these patches of weed, until eventually I saw the fiery glow of a baby cayman’s eyes some thirty yards away. Using my free hand to signal, I guided the paddler in the stern until we came to the edge of this weed patch and then signalled him to slow down and eventually stop.

Keeping the beam directed into the creature’s eyes, I leant forward, slipped the noose of cord gently over his head, and then, with a quick jerk, pulled him right out of the water and into the boat, where he wriggled and uttered loud indignant snoring grunts. As soon as they heard these protests, all the other baby caymans for miles around started grunting in sympathy, but this proved to be their undoing, for by listening to the direction from which the grunts came, I could tell where the greatest number of them were hiding, and it was not long before I had a bulging sack on the floor of the canoe which wriggled and slithered as the reptiles moved inside. This great quantity of caymans made such a noise that we could not progress any farther, for everything for miles around could hear the canoe coming with all the baby caymans grunting in unison.

One of the strangest inhabitants of this watery world of the creeks was the pipa toad. It is probably one of the most extraordinary amphibians in the world, for it is quite literally a toad with pockets.

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