So, for three and a half hours I endeavoured, by example, to show Minnie that the crate was harmless. I sat in it, lay in it, jumped about on top of it, even crawled round with it on my back like a curiously shaped tortoise. Minnie enjoyed my efforts to amuse her immensely, but she still treated the crate with a certain reserve. The trouble was that I realized I should only have one opportunity to trap her, for if I messed it up the first time and she realized what I was trying to do, no amount of coaxing or cajoling would induce her to come anywhere near the crate. Slowly but surely she had to be lured to the crate so that I could tip it over on top of her. So, after another three-quarters of an hour of concentrated and exhausting effort, I had got her to sit in front of the upturned crate and take bananas from inside it. Then came the great moment.
I baited the box with a particularly succulent bunch of bananas and then sat myself behind it, eating a banana myself and looking around the landscape nonchalantly, as though nothing could be farther from my mind than the thought of trapping chimpanzees. Minnie edged forward, darting surreptitious glances at me. Presently she was squatting close by the box, examining the bananas with greedy eyes. She gave me a quick glance and then, as I seemed preoccupied with my fruit, she leant forward and her head and shoulders disappeared inside the crate. I hurled my weight against the back of the box so that it toppled over her, and then jumped up and sat heavily on top so that she could not bounce it off. Bob rushed into the compound and added his weight and then, with infinite caution, we edged the lid underneath the crate, turned the whole thing over and nailed the lid in place, while Minnie sat surveying me malevolently through a knot hole and plaintively crying ‘Ooo … Oooo … Oooo,’ as if shocked to the core by my perfidy. Wiping the sweat from my face and lighting a much-needed cigarette, I glanced at my watch. It had taken four and a quarter hours to catch Minnie; I reflected that it could not have taken much longer if she had been a wild chimpanzee leaping about in the forest. A little tired, we loaded her on to the Land-Rover and set out for Bafut again.
At Bafut, we had already constructed a large cage out of Dexion for Minnie. It was not, of course, anywhere near as big as the one she was used to, but big enough to prevent her feeling too confined to begin with. Later she would have to get used to quite a small crate for the voyage home, but after all her customary freedom I wanted to break her gradually to the idea of being closely confined. When we put her into her new cage she explored it thoroughly with grunts of approval, banging the wire with her hands and swinging on the perches to see how strong they were. Then we gave her a big box of mixed fruit and a large white plastic bowl full of milk, which she greeted with hoots of delight.
The Fon had been very interested to hear that we were getting Minnie, for he had never seen a large, live chimpanzee before. So that evening I sent him a note inviting him to come over for a drink and to view the ape. He arrived just after dark, wearing a green and purple robe, accompanied by six council members and his two favourite wives. After the greetings were over and we had exchanged small chat over the first drink of the evening, I took the pressure lamp and led the Fon and his retinue down the verandah to Minnie’s cage which, at first sight, appeared to be empty. Only when I lifted the lamp higher we discovered Minnie was in bed. She had made a nice pile of dry banana leaves at one end of the cage and she had settled down in this, lying on her side, her cheek pillowed on one hand, with an old sack we had given her carefully draped over her body and tucked under her armpits.
‘Wah!’ said the Fon in astonishment, ‘’e sleep like man.’
‘Yes, yes,’ chorused the council members, ‘’e sleep like man.’
Minnie, disturbed by the lamplight and the voices, opened one eye to see what the disturbance was about. Seeing the Fon and his party she decided that they might well repay closer investigation, so she threw back her sacking cover carefully and waddled over to the wire.
‘Wah!’ said the Fon, ‘’e same same for man, dis beef.’
Minnie looked the Fon up and down, plainly thought that he might be inveigled into playing with her, beat a loud tattoo on the wire with her big hands. The Fon and his party retreated hurriedly.
‘No de fear,’ I said, ‘na funning dis.’
The Fon approached cautiously, an expression of astonished delight on his face. Cautiously he leant forward and banged on the wire with the palm of his hand. Minnie, delighted, answered him with a positive fusillade of bangs, that made him jump back and then crow with laughter.
‘Look ’e hand, look ’e hand,’ he gasped, ‘’e get hand like man.’
‘Yes, yes, ’e get hand same same for man,’ said the councillors.
The Fon leant down and banged on the wire again and Minnie once more responded.
‘She play musica with you,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, na chimpanzee musica dis,’ said the Fon, and went off into peals of laughter. Greatly excited by her success, Minnie ran round the cage two or three times, did a couple of backward somersaults on her perches and then came and sat in the front of the cage, seized her plastic milk bowl and placed it on her head, where it perched looking incongruously like a steel helmet. The roar of laughter that this manoeuvre provoked from the Fon and his councillors and wives caused half the village dogs to start barking.
‘’E get hat, ’e get hat,’ gasped the Fon, doubling up with mirth.
Realizing that it was going to be almost impossible to drag the Fon away from Minnie, I called for the table, chairs and drinks to be brought out and placed on the verandah near the chimp’s cage. So for half an hour the Fon sat there alternately sipping his drink and spluttering with laughter, while Minnie showed off like a veteran circus performer. Eventually, feeling somewhat tired by her performance, Minnie came and sat near the wire by the Fon, watching him with great interest as he drank, still wearing her plastic bowl helmet. The Fon beamed down at her. Then he leant forward until his face was only six inches away from Minnie’s and lifted his glass.
‘Shin-shin!’ said the Fon.
To my complete astonishment Minnie responded by protruding her long, mobile lips and giving a prolonged raspberry of the juiciest variety.
The Fon laughed so loud and so long at this witticism that at last we were all thrown into a state of hysterical mirth by merely watching him enjoy the jest. At length, taking a grip on himself, he wiped his eyes, leant forward and blew a raspberry at Minnie. But his was a feeble amateur effort compared to the one with which Minnie responded, which echoed up and down the verandah like a machine-gun. So, for the next five minutes – until the Fon had to give up because he was laughing so much and out of breath – he and Minnie kept up a rapid crossfire of raspberries. Minnie was definitely the winner, judged by quality and quantity; also she had better breath control, so that her efforts were much more prolonged and sonorous than the Fon’s.