Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

CHAPTER ONE MACABEE AND THE DODO TREE

When you are venturing into a new area of the world for the first time, it is essential — especially if you are an animal collector — that you do two things. One is to get as many personal introductions as you can to people on the spot; the second to amass as much information as possible, no matter how esoteric or apparently useless, about the place that you are going to. One of the ways you accomplish this latter is by contacting the London Embassy or High Commission of the country concerned. In many cases, this yields excellent results and you are inundated with maps and vividly coloured literature containing many interesting facts and much misinformation. In other cases, the response is not quite so uplifting. I am, for example, still waiting for all the information promised me by a charming Malay gentleman in the London High Commission when I was going to that country. My trip there was eight years ago. However, the response you get from the Embassy or High Commission generally gives you some sort of a clue as to the general attitude prevailing towards life in the country concerned.

Bearing this in mind, I hopefully rang up the Mauritian High Commission in London when it was finally decided we were going there. The phone was answered by a charming young lady with a most attractive Asian accent.

‘Hallo,’ she said, with interest, but cautiously, not divulging her phone number or identity.

‘Is that the Mauritian High Commission?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she admitted at last, rather reluctantly, ‘that’s right.’

‘The Mauritian High Commission?’ I repeated, making sure.

‘Yes,’ she said, more certainly this time, ‘Mauritian.’

‘Oh, good.’ I said, ‘I was hoping you could give me some information as I am very much hoping to go there soon.’

‘Go where?’ she asked at length.

I knew that Mauritius was fairly remote but this, I felt, was too much. However, this was my first introduction to the charming illogicality of the Mauritian way of life. Eventually I did receive from the High Commission a small booklet containing, amongst other things, slightly out-of-focus pictures of Miss Mauritius 1967 lying about on beaches which could have been situated in Bognor or Bournemouth, for all the evidence to the contrary. Reluctantly I went back to the books of the early naturalists and more up-to-date zoological and geographical tomes for my information.

The Mascarene Islands, of which Mauritius is the second largest, lie embedded in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. Forty miles by twenty, Mauritius gleams in a million tropical greens, from the greens of dragon wing and emerald, to delicate dawn greens and the creamy greens of bamboo shoot. All this is encrusted with a rainbow of flowers from the great trees that flame like magic bonfires of fragile violet-shaped magenta blooms, lying like a thousand shed butterfly wings among the grass, which itself can be green or yellow, or as pink as the sunset.

In the dawn of the world, Mauritius was formed — when the great volcano pustules were still bursting and spilling out fire and lava. In a series of cataclysmic convulsions, the island was wrenched from the sea bed and lifted skywards, the hot rocks glowing and melting so that cyclone and tidal wave, hot wind and great rains, moulded and fretted it, and tremendous earth shudders shook it and lifted it into strange mountain ranges, churning the tender rocks as a chef whips egg whites until they become stiff and form weird peaks when lifted up on a fork tip. So the strange-shaped mountains of Mauritius grew; miniature mountains all under 3,000 feet, but as distinctive, unique and Daliesque, as if carefully designed for a stage back-drop. A multitude of coral polyps, as numerous as stars, then formed a protecting roof round it and contained the lagoon, which encircled the island as a moat encircles a fortress.

Gradually, as the earth formed, seeds arrived, either sea or air-borne, to send their roots into the volcanic soil, now soft and rich, watered by many bright rivers. Following, came birds and bats carried by errant winds, tortoises and lizards like shipwrecked mariners on rafts of branches and creepers from other lands. These settled and prospered and gradually, over millions of years, their progeny evolved along their own lines, unique to the islands.

So the Dodo came into being; and the big, black, flightless parrot. The tortoises grew larger and larger until they were the size of an armchair and weighed over two thousand pounds, and the lizards vied with each other in evolving strange shapes and rainbow colours. There being no major predators except an owl and a small kestrel, the creatures evolved without defence. The Dodo became flightless, fat and waddling, nesting on the ground in safety, as did the parrot. There was nothing to harass the slow, antediluvian life of the tortoise; only the quick, glittering lizards and the golden-eyed geckos needed to fear the hawk and the owl.

There, on this speck of volcanic soil in the middle of a vast sea, a complete, unique and peaceful world was created slowly and carefully. It waited there for hundreds of thousands of years for an annihilating invasion of voracious animals for which it was totally unprepared, a cohort of rapacious beasts led by the worst predator in the world, Homo sapiens. With man, of course, came all his familiars: the dog, the rat, the pig, and, in this instance, probably one of the worst predators next to man, the monkey.

In an incredibly short space of time, a number of unique species had vanished — the Dodo; the giant, black, flightless parrot; the giant Mauritian tortoise, rapidly followed by the Rodrigues tortoise; and that strange bird, the Solitaire. The dugong, which used to throng the reefs, vanished and all that was left of a unique and harmless fauna was a handful of birds and lizards. These, together with what is left of the native forest, face enormous pressures. Not only is Mauritius one of the most densely populated parts of the globe, but as well as dogs, cats, rats and monkeys, a number of other things have been introduced in that dangerous, unthinking way that man has. There are, for example, 20 introduced species of bird, which include the ever-present house sparrow and the swaggering, dominating mynah. There is the sleek and deadly mongoose and less damaging but still out of place, the hedgehog-like tenrec from Madagascar. Then there are the introduced plants and trees, so that the native vegetation is jostled and strangled by Chinese guava, wild raspberries, privet and a host of other things. In the face of all this, the indigenous flora and fauna of Mauritius can be said to be hanging on to its existence by its finger nails.

In spite of my misgivings after my exchange with the High Commission, I found Mauritius, although indeed remote, was neither unknown nor inaccessible. Within a few days, Air France, who wonderfully stage-managed the entire trip, wafted us halfway across the world in the lap of luxury, our every want catered for by voluptuous air hostesses; so much so, that John Hartley and I felt we would be reluctant to leave the plane and brave the outside world again. But when the island came into view, we were seized with the excitement that always engulfs one when a new country suddenly presents itself to be explored. It lay, green and smouldering, mountains smudged blue and purple, like some monstrous precious stone in a butterfly-blue enamel setting, ringed with the white foamed reef and displayed, as a jewel is displayed on velvet, on the dark blue of the Indian Ocean. As our pachyderm aircraft lumbered in to land, we could see the green islets lying within the reef, star-white beaches and the square fields of sugar cane covering, it seemed, every available piece of flat land, lapping the base of the curiously shaped mountains like a green check tablecloth. It was somehow ironical that we, the flightless mammals, were landing, in one of the biggest flying edifices known on earth, on the area of land that covered the remains of one of the earth’s strangest flightless birds; for the Dodo’s graveyard, from which were extracted the bones on which our tenuous knowledge of the Dodo is based, lies beneath the tarmac of Plaisance airport.

The doors of the plane opened and we were lapped in the warm scented air and dazzled by the brilliance of colours that only the tropics can provide. In thick clothes — it had been snowing in England — one felt the sweat prickle out all over one’s body and dribble in uncomfortable rivulets down one’s back and chest. We were ushered through Customs with the minimum of fuss, thanks to the enchantingly charming gentleman with the euphonious name of Lee Espitalier Noel

— there were, we discovered, over two hundred in the family which caused them to give up exchanging Christmas presents

— who had a delicious French accent that would have made Maurice Chevalier sound Cockney.

It was here that we discovered one of the many incongruities of Mauritius. In an island that had been an English colony for over one hundred and fifty years and was still a member of the Commonwealth, where English was taught in schools as the official language, everyone gaily and volubly spoke French. We also found a strange amalgamation of the English and Gallic cultures; although traffic progressed on the left-hand side of the road and hand signals were correct and as graceful as a ballerina’s dance movements, the driving was of the suicidal variety that the French nation delighted to indulge in.

Our Creole driver drove at a ferocious speed down the road lined with half-grown sugar cane, the stems of delicate pinky-blue and the leaves acid green, through villages of tin and wooden houses, thronged by groups of women, gay as butterflies in multi-coloured saris, surrounded by dogs, chickens, goats, humped-backed cattle and children in an exuberant melee. Each village was fragrant with the smells of fruit and flowers, alight with trailing shawls of bougainvillaea, each shaded by a giant banyan tree, like a hundred huge, black melted candles with green flames of leaves fused together in a mammoth, sheltering, shade-quivering bulk.

I was enchanted by the signs we passed — ‘Mr Tin Win Wank’ who was licensed to sell tobacco and spirits On and Off (the premises, one presumed, rather than as the spirit moved him); the mysterious signpost in the miles and miles of sugar cane that said, simply and unequivocably, ‘Trespass’, and as to whether this was a warning or invitation, there was no indication. When we slowed down for a group of grunting, fly-veiled pigs to cross the road, I was delighted to observe that the village contained a ‘Mr Me Too’, who was a watchmaker, and a ‘Mr Gungadin’, no less, who finding his premises at a crossroads had, with a flash of Asian originality, called his shop ‘Gungadin Corner Shop’. This was to say nothing of the neat little notices everywhere in the cane fields under the banyan trees saying ‘Bus Stop’ or, on several occasions, ones adjuring you to ‘Drive slowly School crossing’. In this Alice in Wonderland atmosphere one had a vision of a large wooden building on rollers, full of enchanting children, being drawn back and forth across the road. Other place names in Mauritius had fascinated me as I pored over the map before leaving, and now we passed through some of them.

Eventually, drugged by heat, jet-lag and all the tropical scents, dazzled by sun and colour, and terrified by our driver’s ability to avoid death by inches, we arrived at the rambling, spacious hotel spread out in groves of hibiscus, bougainvillaea and casuarina trees along the blue and placid lagoon, with the strange mini-Matterhorn of Le Morne mountain looming up behind it. Here, we were greeted with gentle, languid charm and wafted to our respective rooms, thirty yards from where the blue sea whispered enticingly on the white beach.

The next day, we went down to meet the McKelveys of Black River, where the captive breeding programmes, sponsored by the International Council for Bird Preservation, the World Wildlife Fund and the New York Zoological Society, has been set up. David and his attractive wife, Linda, greeted us warmly and started telling us some of the trials and tribulations attendant upon trying to track down and capture specimens of the 33 Pink pigeons and the eight kestrels, which were the total population of these, some of the world’s rarest birds, in a thickly forested area the size of Hampshire. That Dave had met with success at all, was a miracle. He was an attractive-looking man in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and blue eyes that beamed with enthusiasm. His somewhat nasal voice seemed just a shade too loud, as if pitched towards that section of the audience farthest back in the hall. He had that nimbleness of wit and phrase that makes the speech of humorous Americans among the funniest and raciest in the world. The rapid, wise-cracking speech, studded with superlatives like a Dalmatian with spots, was in Dave’s case accompanied by the most extraordinary power of mimicry, so that he not only told you how the pigeons flew in overhead and landed and cooed, but imitated them so vividly that you felt you were witnessing the event.

‘I walked in those goddarned woods looking for the roosting sites until I sure as hell felt like a water-shed, the way I was rained on. I thought maybe I would get to growing mushrooms between my toes as a sideline. I felt about as hopeful as if I was looking for Dodos. I used to stay up there until way after dark, and let me tell you, it’s blacker than the inside of a dead musk ox’s stomach on those hills after dark. Then one day, wham, there they all were, flying in to Cryptomeria Valley, their wings going “whoof, whoof, whoof” and then, when they settled, they kind of bowed to each other and then went “caroo, coo, coo, caroo, coo, coo”. ’

Dave burbled on in this vein as he led us from his house to the walled garden nearby, where an enthusiastic local aviculturalist had donated the aviary space for the project.

‘Now,’ said Dave, as he led us up to the first aviary, ‘now you are going to see one of the rarest birds in the world and one of the most goddarned beautiful too, and tame as a newly-born guinea pig. They were from the start. There!’

In the aviary sat three undeniably handsome pigeons. They were much larger than I had imagined and more streamlined, but this was due to their extraordinary long tails and necks. With their reddish-brown plumage and the delicate cyclamen- pink blush on their necks and breasts, they were large and very elegant members of the family. They had small heads perched on long, soigne necks, which gave them a look rather like a feathered antelope. As we approached the wire, they peered at us in the mildly interested, oafish way that pigeons have and then, dismissing us from what passed for their minds, they fell into a doze. I felt that even though their rarity made them of great biological and avicultural importance, one could hardly say that they had personalities that inspired one.

‘They look rather like a wood pigeon that has been dyed,’ I said, unthinkingly, and Dave gave me a wounded look.

‘There’s only thirty-three of them left,’ he said, as though this made them much more desirable and beautiful than if there had been 25 million.

We moved on to the aviary that contained a pair of Mauritian kestrels. They were small, compact birds with wild, fierce- looking eyes, but here again, they bore such a close resemblance to the European and North American kestrels that only an expert could tell them apart, and the uninitiated could well be pardoned for wondering what all the fuss was about. Was I, I wondered, being unfair to the Mauritian kestrel just because it closely resembled a bird that I had been familiar with from childhood, had kept and flown at sparrows? Did this make me less anxious to enthuse over it than if it had been something as bizarre as a Dodo? After mature reflection for at least thirty seconds, I decided that this was not the case. Nothing could be more boringly like a guinea pig than a West Indian hutia, a rodent to which I was passionately attached and whose future was as black as the kestrels’. No, it was simply that I was more mammal than bird-orientated, and so a small, dull mammal appealed to me more than a small, dull hawk. I decided that this was remiss of me and made a vow to make amends in the future. Dave, meanwhile, was regaling me with the fate of a pair of kestrels that had been foolish enough to nest on a cliff face that was not totally inaccessible.

‘Monkeys,’ said Dave, dramatically, ‘the forest’s full of the damn things. Big as a six-year-old child, some of the males. Travel in huge troops. You can hear them, “aaagh, aaagh, aaagh, eeek, eeek, eeek, yaah, yaah” (that’s the old male), and then there are the babies, “week, week, week, eeek, eeek, eeek, yaah, yaah, yaah”.’

A whole troop of malevolent monkeys, from grandfathers to newly born, were conjured up as a torrent of sound poured from Dave’s vocal chords. These unnecessary, ingenious, and omnivorous pests had overrun the island and attacked not only the kestrels’ nests but the Pink pigeons’ as well.

After we had finished admiring the pigeons and the kestrels, we drove up to Curepipe, where the Forestry headquarters were situated. Here we met Wahab Owadally, the Conservator of Forests. He was a boyishly good-looking young Asian with an infectious grin and an even more infectious enthusiasm. After we had made polite noises at each other in his office, he and his European second-in-command, Tony Gardner, took us out to show us the handsome botanical garden that adjoined the office building. It was here that Wahab’s enthusiasm completely changed my attitude towards palm trees. They had never seemed to me a very inspiring dendrological growth when seen, dusty and moulting, lining tropical streets or standing shivering in what passes for an English summer in places like Bournemouth or Torquay, but here in the spacious and beautifully laid-out grounds of the botanical gardens of Curepipe they had come into their own. There were the tall, elegant Hurricane palms, the Royal ones, with trunks like a piece of the Acropolis, the famous Coco de Mer from the Seychelles and, above all, the palms that went straight to my heart, the Bottle palms. Wahab introduced us (and I use the term advisedly) to a small plantation of these enchanting trees. The trunk of each baby palm was shaped just like a Chianti bottle and from the top, exuberant and uncombed, the fronds sprang out like a green fountain. They looked like strange pot-bellied people and when their fronds moved in the breeze, it seemed as if they were waving at you.

Back in Wahab’s office, we discussed the things we ought to see and do in Mauritius. First of all, I was anxious to visit the Cryptomeria Grove in which the Pink pigeons nested, and then the Macabee Forest and the Black River Gorge Nature Reserves, which were the last haunt of the kestrel and the Mauritian parakeet. Wahab was also very insistent that we visit Round Island, a small island in a group lying north of Mauritius.

‘It is Mauritius’s answer to the Galapagos,’ he said, grinning, ‘an island of only three hundred and seventy- five acres, yet you have three species of tree, three species of lizard and two species of snake that are found nowhere else in the world. At the moment, the island is in great danger from introduced rabbits and goats, eating up all the vegetation. It’s a desperate situation which I’ll tell you more about when we are there. Until we solve this problem, the island is getting steadily more eroded so the reptile fauna is in great danger.’

‘Does anyone know what the present population of these reptiles is?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ said Wahab, pursing his lips, ‘it’s a bit difficult to get accurate figures but we reckon that Gunther’s geckos and Telfair’s skinks and Night geckos are probably down to five hundred or so. One snake, the Burrowing boa, has only been seen a few times in the last twenty years and is possibly extinct. The other, they reckon, is under seventy in number.’

‘You ought to get some into captivity as a safeguard,’ I suggested. Wahab’s eyes gleamed.

‘There’s talk of a captive breeding programme. It was even suggested in the Proctor report, but so far no one has been willing to undertake it,’ he said.

‘I’ll undertake it if you’ll give me permission,’ I said. We’ve just built a marvellous new Reptile Breeding Complex for this very kind of thing.’

‘It will be excellent if you could,’ said Wahab, as if the idea had only just occurred to him. ‘How would you go about it?’ ‘Well let’s do it in stages. If we get some of the more robust species first and meet with success with them, then next year, when I come out to help judge the candidates for the scholarship, we can get the other species. I would think we ought to start with the skinks and the Gunther’s gecko which is a large, fairly tough thing, I imagine.’

‘OK,’ said Wahab, happily, ‘I’ll make arrangements for you to go to Round Island as soon as the weather is right. Meantime, Dave can show you the Macabee Forest.’

‘Sure,’ said Dave, ‘I want to try and mist-net another kestrel, so that we can go and spend the day up there. We will take a couple of nets with my American kestrel as a lure, and try our luck. It’s a lovely bit of country even if you don’t catch anything. We can do that tomorrow, if you like.’

And show him the Dodo tree,’ said Wahab.

‘What’s a Dodo tree?’ I asked.

‘Wait and see,’ said Wahab, mysteriously.

So, the following morning, we set out to spend the day in Macabee. To get to the Macabee Forest, you have to cross the Plains of Champagne, another evocative name. Here we stopped briefly to see some of the few remaining patches of native heath left in Mauritius; small, tough plants that form a unique ecological niche. It will be a pity to lose it. All over the world we are destroying forests and plant life generally with a profligacy that is incredible, for in our present state of knowledge we might well be destroying some species which might prove of enormous value to medicine.

Crossing the Plains of Champagne, with the scarlet and black Fodys perched like guardsmen in the heath or flying like scraps of fire across the road, we eventually entered a rough track like a ride in an English forest. This was the outskirts of Macabee. We drove for some way and then, in a clearing where the road split into four, Dave stopped the car and we got out. In the still, warm air, small flies hung like helicopters in the sun, their bodies golden green, their large eyes peacock blue. Occasionally, a chocolate-coloured butterfly would flap past in a tumble of wings like an old lady that was late for an appointment. On the ebony trees, tiny clusters of cream-coloured orchids clung, and everywhere there were the tall, slender, caramel and silver-green staves of the Chinese guava and little patches of privet, the pale and delicate green leaf edges of the young plants crinkled like a ballet skirt. It was warm and quiet and friendly. Here in these woods, there was nothing to harm you. The only seriously malign inhabitant was the scorpion, but in over fourteen weeks in Mauritius, during which I turned over stones, dissected rotting trees and rooted among fallen leaves like a truffle hound — the normal behaviour of a naturalist — I did not find one. Macabee was a friendly forest where you did not hesitate to sit down or lie down on the forest floor, secure in the knowledge that the only member of the local fauna likely to cause any trouble was the mosquito.

‘Look there,’ said Dave, ‘now there’s a sight for you, a phelsuma on a Dodo tree.’

He pointed to where a tall, silver-trunked tree grew at the side of the track. It was obviously old and in places it was starting to rot, for there were cracks in its buttress roots. It was some fifty feet high, ending in a tangle of branches and dark green leaves. On the trunk about six feet from the ground clung a breathtakingly beautiful lizard. It was some five inches long and the basic colouring was a bright, rich dragon green. On the head and neck, however, the colours merged into kingfisher blue with scarlet and cherry-red markings. It had large, intelligent, black eyes, and each of its toes was pressed out into a tiny pad, which gave it the suction necessary to cling to the smooth surface of the tree. We wanted to collect some of these beautiful day geckos, and so John had prepared our special lizard fishing rod which consisted of a long, slender bamboo with a fine nylon noose welded on to the end of it. Armed with this, he approached the phelsuma, which regarded him with an air of wide-eyed innocence. It let John get within six feet of the tree before it started to move, sliding gently over the bark as smoothly as a stone on ice. By the time John was close to the tree, the lizard was out of range some twenty feet up it and, for good measure, round the other side of the trunk.

‘They are a bit wary here,’ said Dave. ‘I think it’s because this road is used quite a bit. They are tamer farther into the forest, we should get some there.’

Why do you call this the Dodo tree?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ said Dave, ‘well, this is a tambalacoque tree, you see. It is one of the oldest of the Mauritian trees and there are only about twenty or thirty left. Now, this is the seed.’

He delved into his pocket and produced a curious-looking seed the size of a chestnut. It was pale biscuit brown and on one side it was fairly smooth, rather like a peach stone, while on the other it looked as though someone had started to carve it into an oriental face and had stopped halfway. The seed was quite heavy and obviously hard.

‘Now,’ said Dave, ‘this is the theory and God knows who made it up, but it’s a nice story. They’ve tried to germinate these seeds in various botanical gardens and at the Forestry Nursery but for some reason they can’t grow the damn things. Now the tambalacoque was very common during the time of the Dodo and the theory goes that the Dodo liked to eat the fruit of the tree. As the flesh is digested, the gastric juices got to work on the hard seed and by the time the Dodo passed the seed out of its body, it was soft enough to germinate.’

‘It’s a lovely story,’ I said, fascinated at the thought of such a link between a bird and a tree, and how the extermination of one was causing the disappearance of the other, ‘but I’m afraid it’s got more holes in it than a colander.’

‘Yes,’ said Dave, reluctantly, ‘but it’s a good story to tell the tourists and it is true that the tambalacoque is almost extinct.’ We made our way farther down into the forest, seeing the bright flash of phelsumas on nearly every tree trunk. The little golden greenflies hovered everywhere, sometimes pursued by large pale-green dragonflies with crisp, transparent wings, and once a large stick insect blundered across the path, sealing-wax red and black, some eight inches long. Three or four times, mongooses — swift and deadly as arrows — sped across the ride ahead of us and once we rounded a corner and surprised a troop of monkeys who, like a conjuring trick, melted into the thick guava grove so rapidly you were almost uncertain that you had really seen them. Once, a flock of Ring-necked parakeets flew across the ride and away into the forest. They were a large proportion of the estimated fifty birds that were left. We stopped to admire a pair of the Mauritian merle, again a bird whose numbers are also declining with alarming speed. They are handsome birds with pleasant bubbling cries, and they evinced enormous curiosity at Dave’s imitation of them, and came quite close, peering through the branches at us and ‘chucking’ in amazement to each other.

Presently we left the ride and followed the narrow forester’s path that ran along the spine of a razor-backed ridge. The ground fell away sharply on each side of the trail, and between the trees we caught glimpses of the spectacular Black River gorges, thickly covered in forests of greens and reds and golds, with waterfalls like feathers trailing down the steep, spectacular cliff faces. At the bottom of the gorges, where the rivers ran bright and shining, or white and thunderous through mossy rock, the air was filled with drifting, wheeling, white crosses that were the White-tailed tropic birds. Soon we came to a place where a large, dead tree jutted out from the side of the path and overhung the valley far below, and it was here that Dave said he had seen Mauritian kestrels perch during their hunting sweeps through the gorges.

We unwrapped the mist nets and, with some difficulty, positioned them; then Dave unhooked the American kestrel and tethered her by her jesses to the branch of the dead tree. She bated a couple of times but soon settled down. We spread out along the path, concealed ourselves in the undergrowth and waited. I asked Dave, who had curled himself up into a bush quite close to me, who used these narrow paths that snaked through the forest, such as the one we were on. We had to be on the path for if you moved more than three feet either side you fell several hundred feet into the valley below, if not neatly spiked by guava trees on the way.

They’re forestry paths,’ he said, ‘but they’re also used by the marijuana growers.’

What marijuana growers?’ asked Ann Peters, from her vantage point farther down the path.

‘It’s a flourishing business, growing pot,’ David explained, ‘they come into the forests and carve out a little garden, and then harvest the stuff and sell it ‘

‘Isn’t it illegal?’ John asked.

‘Of course,’ said Dave. ‘Mauritius has no army but they have what they call the Special Mobile Force, like the Marines or Commandos and one of their jobs is to hunt pot growers. They even do it by helicopter. I found a large garden a few weeks back and reported it to them. It was one of the largest hauls they’d had for a long time, so I guess that made me persona non grata with the drug boys for a time.’

The morning wore on and suddenly it was noon and the heat of the day. The sun burned down like the core of a furnace, and the forest was silent, lapped in heat. This was the time when nothing with any sense was abroad, so the kestrels would be wisely siesta-ing somewhere. We decided to have our lunch so we uncurled our cramped limbs and assembled on a moderately wide bit of path near the dead tree. Here, we spread out the food we had brought. We had just moved from sandwiches to some delicious mangoes, when two slender youths appeared walking towards us, dressed in multi-coloured shirts and flared trousers. Their shoulder-length hair, in a style which most Mauritian young men now favour, was black and glossy and framed incredibly handsome and gentle faces. They got to the point in the path where we and our picnic were presenting an obstacle, then came to a halt, smiling shyly and beguilingly.

‘Good morning,’ we said, politely.

‘Good morning, Sir,’ they chorused softly, raising their straw hats.

Y>u want to pass? Pass along,’ said Dave, ‘but don’t step on me.’ ‘No, Sir,’ they said, shocked at such a thought, and picked their way over our recumbent bodies and among our picnic things with the delicacy of a pair of gazelles. Having reached the other side without untoward incident, they said ‘thank you, Sir, goodbye,’ raised their hats again politely and set off down the path. Both of them, I noticed, carried machetes.

Who on earth are they?’ asked Ann.

Well, they’re not foresters,’ said Dave, ‘so they must be pot growers because, sure as hell, nobody but pot growers and lunatics like us are going to be out in the forest at this hour. I don’t think they will be the only ones. I think “Mr Big” will probably be following.’

His prediction was right, for within five minutes another handsome, slender, deer-like Asian made his appearance. He had the indefinable something that stamped him as a lad from the big city. His suit was better cut and of better material, his shirt was more elegant, his hat more jaunty. He paused briefly and uncertainly when he saw us littering the path, then came on with an ingratiating smile.

‘Good morning, Sir,’ he said, all-embracingly doffing his hat, ‘excuse me, but have you seen my friends?’

Yes, two of them. They went that way,’ said Dave, as if there was any choice. ‘Do you want to pass?’

‘Er... no, no,’ said the young man. ‘I must go and tell my other friend.’

Ah, you have another friend?’ said Dave.

Yes,’ said the young man, ‘he is waiting back there. I must go and tell him which way my other friends go. Goodbye, Sir.’

‘Goodbye,’ we said, and watched him pick his way back along the path like an elegant, dusky ungulate.

What was all that about?’ asked John, puzzled.

‘He’s now gone back to warn the others,’ said Dave, ‘and they will get to the garden by the lower path. It is longer but it is a lot less risky as we are here.’

The afternoon wore on. It soon became obvious that we had little chance of catching a kestrel, so we dismantled the nets and Dave put the American kestrel on a stump nearby while we had some tea. Soon, to our astonishment, we descried ‘Mr Big’ himself approaching, but now from the opposite direction. As he reached us, it became obvious that during the course of the afternoon he had suffered a sea change. His hat was on the back of his head, his raven locks were dishevelled, and his eyes had the opaque, glazed look of one who has been suddenly woken from a deep sleep and has not quite bridged the gap between dreaming and reality. Though he still walked gracefully, he was more uncertain of his movements. When he reached us, he stopped and leaned negligently against a tree.

‘Hello,’ said Dave, ‘have you had a nice walk?’

‘Yes, I am walking,’ ‘Mr Big’ explained, smiling benignly, ‘I am walking in the forest.’

‘Did you have a nice time?’ asked Ann.

‘Very nice, Madam,’ he said, and went on to explain, ‘I am walking for my health.’

We were a bit nonplussed by this, so said nothing. He gazed dreamily down into the wild vistas of the gorge, where the tropic birds whirled like snowflakes. He appeared to have forgotten our existence. His face had an expression of vacuous tranquillity on it. Suddenly, he came-to briefly.

^You are English?’ he asked me.

^Yes,’ I said.

‘From London?’ he asked.

‘Thereabouts,’ I said, not wanting to get bogged down in a lot of explanations as to where the Channel Islands were.

‘I have many relatives in London,’ he said, ‘also many parents.’ ‘Really?’ I said, fascinated.

‘Many, many,’ he said, ‘I also have many parents and relatives in Birmingham.’

‘A very nice place, Birmingham,’ said John.

‘Very nice, and London also. My parents say they are very nice, and...’ he closed his eyes for a moment and I thought, like the dormouse in Alice, he had fallen asleep in mid-sentence. He suddenly opened his eyes, sighed deeply and continued, ‘... and I shall go there one day to join all my parents.’

‘Do you often walk in the forest?’ asked Dave.

‘For my health, I often walk in the forest,’ said ‘Mr Big’.

‘Do you ever see any birds?’ asked Dave.

‘Birds?’ said ‘Mr Big’, examining the question. ‘Birds? You are meaning birds?’

^Yes,’ said Dave, ‘you know, like pigeons or conde.’

‘Birds?’ said ‘Mr Big’. ^Yes, sometimes I am seeing birds and sometimes hearing birds too, singing.’

‘Do you ever see a small hawk, a kestrel?’ asked Dave, ‘the thing they call the “Mangeur de Poule”?’

‘Mr Big’ looked at Dave and then at the American kestrel, preening herself some three feet away. He closed his eyes briefly and licked his lips, then opened his eyes and looked at Dave and the kestrel again.

‘Hawk?’ he said, uncertainly.

‘Yeah, we’re looking for one,’ Dave explained, oblivious.

‘You are looking for a small hawk?’ asked ‘Mr Big’, determined to get it right.

^Yes,’ said Dave, ‘the Mangeur de Poule.’

Again ‘Mr Big’ carefully examined Dave and the kestrel in close proximity. He closed his eyes again and then opened them, obviously hoping that the hawk could have vanished — it hadn’t.

He was in a quandary. Was the hawk a figment of his marijuana- inflamed imagination? In which case, should he draw attention to it? If, on the other hand, it was real, why could not these people, who presumably had parents in London and Birmingham too, see the bird? The whole thing was very difficult, too difficult for him to manage. He gazed round desperately. We tried not to catch each others’ eyes for fear of laughing. At last ‘Mr Big’ found the solution to the problem.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, and taking off his hat, he bowed, stepped over our recumbent forms and made his way uncertainly down the path.

An hour later, when we made our way down to the main ride, we suddenly came upon ‘Mr Big’ sitting on the ground with his back against a tree, reading a book and consuming a large sandwich.

‘You have finished your walking?’ he asked, jovially, getting to his feet and brushing some crumbs from his lap.

^Yes, we are going home now,’ said Dave.

To London?’ asked ‘Mr Big’, surprised.

‘No, Black River,’ said Dave.

Well, goodbye,’ said ‘Mr Big’, ‘I must be waiting for my friends.’

We got into the car and ‘Mr Big’ waved us a cheerful farewell.

‘Did you see what he was reading?’ asked Ann.

‘No, I was dying to look,’ I said. ‘What was it?’

‘Othello, in English,’ she replied.

I decided I was going to like Mauritius very much.