Ark on the Move by Gerald Durrell

Author:Gerald Durrell
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2011-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

5. The Dance of the Lemurs

Our first expedition out of Antananarivo was to fly right down to the south of the island to Fort Dauphin, now called Taolanaro. This is a pretty, quite little port, surrounded by beautiful, pale, straw-coloured beaches which embrace the warm blue sea. Here we paused only long enough to enjoy some of the fabulous oysters and lobsters which abound, and then we headed for our goal which was the reserve at Berenty, lying some fifty miles west of the port.

Berenty, with its colonies of ring-tailed lemurs, has the distinction of being the best-studied area in Madagascar. The reserve is the brainchild of Monsieur Jean DeHeaulme. He owns vast sisal plantations the creation of which, of course, eliminated the natural forests. But M. DeHeaulme, aware that the fauna of Madagascar was under pressure caused by the usurping or destruction of natural habitat, decided to create, in Berenty, an oasis in the vast, serried ranks of spiky sisal plants, by fencing off an area of the virgin gallery forest along the banks of the Mandrare River. Here the forest is protected from indiscriminate grazing by zebu and from logging by man, and so the lemur colonies not only flourish, but have become so tame that they are easy to study and photograph. As we drove through mile after mile of hot, dry sisal plantation, however, my spirits sank as I thought of how many areas of beautiful natural forest had been snuffed out to make way for prickly, cactus-like ugly plant whose only attribute is that it provides hemp. Lee, on the other hand, grew more and more excited the nearer we got to Berenty for this was where she had spent a lot of her time during her two years of study in Madagascar and so she knew what was in store for us.

Presently the road ran out of the sisal plantations and became lined with forest, mainly composed of huge, grey-trunked tamarind trees. These tamarinds form the bulk of the forest at Berenty and, in fact, are not a Malagasy species, but were imported by the Arabs five or six hundred years ago. They have flourished, however, and the lemurs have adapted well to them, feeding voraciously off the leaves and fruit. The road wound through these huge, shady trees and ended at a small group of whitewashed buildings which made up the hotel and museum which M. DeHeaulme had built for visitors. Behind the buildings the thick forests began, spreading for some two hundred and forty acres along the river bank.

As Berenty, scientifically speaking, is most famous for its ringtail troops, it was naturally these artistically designed creatures I expected to see first. But what suddenly catapulted into my life was a completely different kind of lemur, one I had never seen before, and one which, from the moment I set eyes on it, became and still is, my favourite creature in Madagascar.

It fell out of a small tree at the wayside. There is no other way to describe it.

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