Unwittingly one day – under the impression that I was doing them a kindness – I caused pandemonium in the patas cage. An army of local children kept us supplied with live food for the animals and they would arrive just after dawn with calabashes full of snails, birds’ eggs, beetle larvae, grasshoppers, spiders, tiny hairless rats and other strange food that our animals enjoyed. On this particular morning one lad brought in, as well as his normal offering of snails and palm beetle larvae, the larvae of two Goliath beetles. Goliath beetles are the biggest beetles in the world – an adult measures six inches in length and four inches across the back – so it goes without saying that the larvae were monsters. They were also about six inches long, and as thick as my wrist. They were the same horrid unhealthy white as the palm beetle larvae, but they were much fatter, and their skin was wrinkled and folded and tucked like an eiderdown. They had flat, nut-brown heads the size of a shilling, with great curved jaws that could give you quite a pinch if you handled them incautiously. I was very pleased with these monstrous, bloated maggots, for I felt that, since the patas liked palm beetle larvae so much, their delight would know no bounds when they set eyes on these gigantic titbits. So I put the Goliath larvae in the usual tin with the other grubs and went to give them to the patas as a light snack before they had their breakfast.
As soon as they saw the familiar tin on the horizon the patas started to dance up and down excitedly, crying, ‘proup … proup’. As I was opening the door they sat down in a circle, their little black faces wearing a worried expression, their hands held out beseechingly. I pushed the tin through the door and tipped it up so that the two Goliath larvae fell on to the floor of the cage with a soggy thud, where they lay unmoving. To say that the patas were surprised is an understatement; they uttered faint squeaks of astonishment and shuffled backwards on their bottoms, surveying these barrage-balloons of larvae with a horrified mistrust. They watched them narrowly for a minute or so, but as there was no sign of movement from the larvae, they gradually became braver, and shuffled closer to examine this curious phenomenon more minutely. Then, having studied the grubs from every possible angle, one of the monkeys, greatly daring, put out a hand and prodded a grub with a tentative forefinger. The grub, who had been lying on his back in a sort of trance, woke up at once, gave a convulsive wriggle and rolled over majestically on to his tummy. The effect of this movement on the patas was tremendous. Uttering wild screams of fear they fled in a body to the farthest corner of the cage, where they indulged in a disgracefully cowardly scrimmage, vaguely reminiscent of the Eton wall-game, each one doing his best to get into the extreme corner of the cage, behind all his companions. Then the grub, after pondering for a few seconds, started to drag his bloated body laboriously across the floor towards them. At this the patas showed such symptoms of collective hysteria that I was forced to intervene and remove the grubs. I put them in Ticky the black-footed mongoose’s cage, and she, who was not afraid of anything, disposed of them in four snaps and two gulps. But the poor patas were in a twittering state of nerves for the rest of the day and ever after that, when they saw me coming with the beetle larvae tin, they would retreat hurriedly to the back of the cage until they were sure that the tin contained nothing more harmful or horrifying than palm beetle larvae.
One of our favourite characters in the monkey collection was a half-grown female baboon called Georgina. She was a creature of tremendous personality and with a wicked sense of humour. She had been hand-reared by an African who had kept her as a sort of pet-cum-watchdog, and we had purchased her for the magnificent sum of ten shillings. Georgina was, of course, perfectly tame and wore a belt round her waist, to which was attached a long rope; and every day she was taken out and tied to one of the trees in the compound below the Rest House. For the first couple of days we tied her up fairly near the gate leading into the compound, through which came a steady stream of hunters, old ladies selling eggs and hordes of children with insects and snails for sale. We thought that this constant procession of humanity would keep Georgina occupied and amused. It certainly did, but not in the way we intended. She very soon discovered that she could go to the end of her rope and crouch down out of sight behind the hibiscus hedge, just near the gate. Then, when some poor unsuspecting African came into the compound, she would leap out of her ambush, embrace him round the legs while at the same time uttering such a blood-curdling scream as to make even the staunchest nerves falter and break.
Her first successful ambuscade was perpetrated on an old hunter who, clad in his best robe, was bringing a calabash full of rats to us. He had approached the Rest House slowly and with great dignity, as befitted one who was bringing such rare creatures for sale, but his aristocratic poise was rudely shattered as he came through the gate. Feeling his legs seized in Georgina’s iron grasp, and hearing her terrifying scream, he dropped his calabash of rats, which promptly broke so that they all escaped, leaped straight up in the air with a roar of fright and fled down the road in a very undignified manner and at a speed quite remarkable for one of his age. It cost me three packets of cigarettes and considerable tact to soothe his ruffled feelings. Georgina, meanwhile, sat there looking as if butter would not melt in her mouth and, as I scolded her, merely raised her eyebrows, displaying her pale pinkish eyelids in an expression of innocent astonishment.
Her next victim was a handsome sixteen-year-old girl who had brought a calabash full of snails. The girl, however, was almost as quick in her reactions as Georgina. She saw the baboon out of the corner of her eye, just as Georgina made her leap. The girl sprang away with a squeak of fear and Georgina, instead of getting a grip on her legs, merely managed to fasten on to the trailing corner of her sarong. The baboon gave a sharp tug and the sarong came away in her hairy paw, leaving the unfortunate damsel as naked as the day she was born. Georgina, screaming with excitement, immediately put the sarong over her head like a shawl and sat chattering happily to herself, while the poor girl, overcome with embarrassment, backed into the hibiscus hedge endeavouring to cover all the vital portions of her anatomy with her hands. Bob, who happened to witness this incident with me, needed no encouragement whatever to volunteer to go down into the compound, retrieve the sarong and return it to the damsel.
So far Georgina had had the best of these skirmishes, but the next morning she overplayed her hand. A dear old lady, weighing about fourteen stone, came waddling and wheezing up to the Rest House gate, balancing carefully on her head a kerosene tin full of groundnut oil, which she was hoping to sell to Phillip the cook. Phillip, having spotted the old lady, rushed out of the kitchen to warn her about Georgina, but he arrived on the scene too late. Georgina leapt from behind the hedge with the stealth of a leopard and threw her arms round the old lady’s fat legs, uttering her frightening war-cry as she did so. The poor old lady was far too fat to jump and run as the other victims had, so she remained rooted to the spot, uttering screams that for quality and quantity closely rivalled the sounds Georgina was producing. While they indulged in this cacophonous duet, the kerosene tin wobbled precariously on the old lady’s head. Phillip came clumping across the compound on his enormous feet, roaring hoarse instructions to the old lady, none of which she appeared to obey or even hear. When he reached the scene of the battle, Phillip, in his excitement, did a very silly thing. Instead of confining his attention to the tin on the old lady’s head, he concentrated on her other end, and seizing Georgina attempted to pull her away. Georgina, however, was not going to be deprived of such a plump and prosperous victim so easily and, screaming indignantly, she clung on like a limpet. Phillip, holding the baboon round the waist, tugged with all his might. The old lady’s vast bulk quivered like a mighty tree on the point of falling and the kerosene tin on her head gave up the unequal struggle with the laws of gravity and fell to the ground with a crash. A wave of oil leapt into the air as the tin struck the ground and covered the three protagonists in a golden, glutinous waterfall. Georgina, startled by this new, cowardly and possibly dangerous form of warfare, gave a grunt of fright, let go of the old lady’s legs and retreated to the full stretch of her rope, where she sat down and endeavoured to rid her fur of the sticky oil. Phillip stood there looking as though he was slowly melting from the waist down, and the front of the old lady’s sarong was equally sodden.