Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

CHAPTER TWO PINK PIGEON PALAVER

The day on which we decided to go and hunt Pink pigeons dawned (if this is not too strong a word for such a dismal birth) and it appeared that the entire Indian Ocean from beginning to end was covered with a malevolent, swirling layer of thick cloud. In due course, this regurgitated floods of rain whose most noticeable attribute was that they were served at bath temperature. We gazed at the sky and cursed. This sort of weather was particularly annoying from two points of view.

Firstly, this was the only night in that week that we could receive the vital help of the Mauritian Special Mobile Force, the island’s answer to the British Commandos and the American Marines, a stalwart body of men who, under their English Commanding Officer, Major Glazebrook, were to assist us in pigeon spotting and tree climbing, searchlight carrying and, eventually, we hoped, Pink pigeon capturing. Secondly, if this deluge of rain kept up, it would make any venture into the dripping and slippery forest futile in the extreme.

To our relief, mid-afternoon saw the break-up of the solid roof of cloud and blue patches started to appear like bits of a jigsaw on a dirty woollen shawl. By four o’clock, there was not a cloud in the sky and, in the warm air, the earth steamed gently. The blazing sun picked out all the raindrops trapped on the leaves and flowers so that they gleamed like some fallen galaxy of stars among the greens of the shrubs and trees. The Flamboyant trees that lined the road up towards the Pink pigeon forest had been battered by the fierce downpour and now each tree, aflame with scarlet and yellow blossom, stood in a great circle of mashed flowers as if rooted in a pool of its own blood.

In high spirits, we drove up the winding road towards the mountains. It was a road that curved and twisted as it climbed, now showing a wonderful vista of forest, its edges lapped by cane fields appearing as smooth and as bright as a billiard table from this height, and now and then showing us great shining sections of sea in halcyon array of blues with the reef, like a white garland of foam flowers, laid carelessly upon it. In the glittering bushes by the road, flocks of black and white bulbuls, with pointed crests and scarlet checks, fed among the leaves, sighing melodiously to each other; occasionally one would face another, raise its wings over its back like a tombstone angel, and flutter them gently in a delicate gesture of love. Sometimes, a mongoose would cross the road, slim, brindled, brisk, with a predatory Mafia gleam in its tiny eyes, nose to the ground as it snuffed its way to some blood-letting. We rounded one comer and came unexpectedly upon a troop of eight Macaque monkeys, sitting at the side of the road, their piggy eyes and air of untrustworthy arrogance making them look exactly like a board meeting of one of the less reliable consortiums in the City of London. The old male ‘yaahed’ out a staccato warning, the females gathered their megalocephalic Oliver Twist-thin babies to their breasts and the whole troop melted into the wall of Chinese guava that lined the road and disappeared with miraculous suddenness.

Eventually, we reached the Forestry Department’s nursery of small trees and swung off the main highway on to a rough but serviceable track. Half a mile down this, and we saw Dave’s car and the Army Land-Rover parked by the side of the track. Dave came bouncing over to greet us as we drew up.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘did you ever see such weather? Black as a mole’s behind one minute, and blue as a monkey’s backside the next. I really thought, with all that rain, we’d have to call the damn operation off. As it is, it’ll be as wet as a well down there in the valley, but that’s OK, we’ll make out. Come and meet the guys.’

We decanted ourselves and our equipment from the car and followed him over to the Land-Rover. Standing by it, very smart in their green uniforms and berets, stood a group of soldiers, each as glossy as newly minted chocolate and of Herculean proportions. Their arms and legs were twice lifesize, their chests like firkins, their hands big enough to uproot whole trees, their smiles as wide and as glittering as any concert grand; yet, for all their Brobdingnagian proportions, they moved slowly and benignly, like Shire horses, beaming down at us lesser mortals from their exalted height. I decided, as they engulfed our puny hands in their gigantic, gentle paws, that I would rather have them on my side than against me. Their Commanding Officer, though not small by any standard, somehow looked slightly puny beside them.

Our military force had brought with them, as well as torches, nets and a portable searchlight, an enormous milk churn of tea, without which — as history relates — no British soldier or soldier trained by the British can possibly function smoothly and efficiently in outwitting and defeating the enemy. Making sure we all had our strange equipment, we set off in single file along a narrow path through the waist-high scrub, so laden with rain that we were soaked to the skin within a hundred yards.

Presently, the path dipped down into the valley and we were walking through a jungle of straight Chinese guava stems, interspersed here and there with a twisted, black ebony tree, or a group of Traveller’s palms, like neat eighteenth-century fans whose handles had been stuck in the ground. The path was steep and knotted across it lay roots like varicose veins. The whole was drenched in rain so the water gleamed at every footstep in the mud, like a splintered mirror, and the mud itself turned into a caramel-coloured, sticky slide that, conspiring with the roots, could break a leg or an ankle as one would snap a stick of charcoal. The sun was starting to sink and shadows slanted across the path, which added further to the hazards. As we slid and tripped our way down into the valley, the air grew heavy and warm, and sweat was now added to make our condition even more aquatic. Presently we slid down a precipitous slope and the forest changed from a mixed assortment of plants to groves of cryptomeria trees, at first glance looking rather like a prickly species of pine tree, dark green with heavy bunches of needles.

‘Pink Pigeon Valley,’ said Dave, proudly. ‘Took me an age to discover it. This is where most of them hang out.’

As he spoke, from the trees on our left came a loud, husky, seductive call: ‘caroo, caroo, caroo, coo, coo, coo’.

There,’ Dave exclaimed, ‘there’s one now. They’ve arrived early.’

With great enthusiasm, he threw back his head and imitated what appeared to be a whole flock of Pink pigeons in a variety of moods, ranging from anger to abject love. The real pigeons fell silent, seeming surprised by this sudden cacophony of sound, much as someone humming in the bath would be taken aback to be suddenly joined by the massed choirs of the Russian army.

‘Funny,’ said Dave, surprised. ‘They generally answer. Oh well, we’d better spread out and start spotting, they’ll all be coming in to roost pretty soon.’

Acting on his instructions, we spread out and made our way through the close-growing cryptomeria trees, seeking either trees we could climb and so view sections of the valley, or areas where there were breaks in the trees where we would get an uninterrupted sight of the pigeons flighting in. I found myself a large cryptomeria on a slope with branches growing practically down to the ground, so that scrambling up it was as easy as climbing a ladder. Some forty feet from the ground, I wedged myself into a convenient fork, unslung my binoculars and prepared to wait for the Pink pigeons. From my vantage point, I had a wide field of view which included a large slope of the cryptomeria forest where, Dave assured me, the pigeons roosted every night.

As I waited, I mused on the extraordinary method of capture that Dave had evolved. You arrived just before the sun went down and waited until the pigeons flighted in. When it was beginning to get dark they would flap heavily from wherever they were perching into another tree. This was the tree they would generally roost in, and it was this one that you had to mark. When it grew really dark, for the moon was fatal to such a venture, you approached the tree with torches, surrounded it and pinpointed the sleeping pigeon with your light beams. Then, quite simply, you shinned up the tree and either with your hands or a net shaped like a pair of sugar tongs, caught the bird, either soundly asleep still, or else awake but in a daze such as only a pigeon can get into. It sounded the most improbable technique but I had travelled in far too many countries and seen too many unlikely methods of capturing animals, to dismiss it out of hand.

The sun was now very low and the sky turned from a metallic kingfisher-blue to a paler, more powdery colour. The valley was washed with green and gold light, and the whole scene was calm and peaceful. A group of zosterops, minute, fragile, green birds, with pale, cream-coloured monocles round each eye, appeared suddenly in the branches above me, zinging and twittering to each other in high-pitched excitement as they performed strange acrobatics among the pine needles in search of minute insects. I pursed up my lips and made a high-pitched noise at them. The effect was ludicrous. They all stopped squeaking and searching for their supper, to congregate on a branch near me and regard me with wide eyes from behind their monocles. I made another noise. After a moment’s stunned silence, they twittered agitatedly to each other and flapped inch by inch nearer and nearer to me until they were within touching distance. As long as I continued to make noises, they grew more and more alarmed and, with their heads on one side, drew closer and closer until they were hanging upside down a foot from my face, peering at me anxiously and discussing this strange phenomenon in their shrill little voices. I was just wondering whether I could get them actually to perch on me, when two Pink pigeons flew over the brow of the hill and settled in a cryptomeria fifty feet away. By raising my glasses to watch, I put my Lilliputian audience of zosterops to flight.

‘Two have just flighted in,’ shouted Dave from the stream bed at the bottom of the valley. ‘Did anyone mark them?’

He had told me how tame the pigeons were, but I was still surprised to see these two billing and cooing in the tree, totally oblivious to Dave’s shout.

‘I’ve marked them,’ I yelled back, and again was faintly astonished that the pigeons, who were very close to me, did not fly away, panic-stricken. They sat side by side on the branch, their breasts glowing pale cyclamen-pink in the rays of the sinking sun, occasionally rubbing beaks in what, for pigeons, was a passionate kiss. From time to time the one I took to be the male would bow to the female and give his loud, husky chant. The female, like all female pigeons, succeeded in looking vacant, affronted and hysterical all at once, like a Regency maiden about to have the vapours. Presently, the other pigeons flighted in and then there were four more; each one’s arrival was greeted with a shout from one or other of our band. On one occasion, through my binoculars, I was watching Major Glazebrook climb laboriously to the straggling top branches of a cryptomeria on the other side of the valley, when a pair of pigeons flighted in and settled on a branch within six feet of him. Another one landed the same distance away from me and regarded me gravely for several minutes before deciding I might be dangerous and flying away. Given their tameness — or was it merely stupidity? — I was surprised that there were any of the species left, they presented such an easy target for an unscrupulous marksman.

We settled down, watching our respective pigeons, and as the sun sank, and the valley became washed in shadow, the birds flapped heavily from tree to tree. The pair I was watching flew languidly out of sight among the branches; I was just preparing to descend from my tree and go in search of them, when they reappeared and settled themselves comfortably on a high branch. They looked smug and satisfied, and I hoped that they had at last chosen their roost for the night, but just before it grew too dark to see them, to my intense annoyance, they took flight again. This time, fortunately, they only flew some twenty feet to a higher branch and there settled themselves. Gradually, the valley grew dark. I slowly eased my way down the tree to the ground — a not unhazardous undertaking. In the depths of the

valley, Dave, for some reason best known to himself, elected to impersonate an entire sounder of wild boar and was splashing about in the stream, grunting and squealing, screaming and moaning in the most lifelike fashion. It was calculated, one would have thought, to have given permanent insomnia to any Pink pigeons. However, it appeared to be a sound they were well used to and they slumbered on, uninterruptedly.

I made my way towards the tree in which my pigeons slept, plucking some fat, scarlet guavas en route to assuage my thirst. They were tart but pleasantly refreshing. Sitting with my back to the base of my pigeon tree, I ate a handful of them and my mouth felt less dry. Now that it was dark, the cicadas started, a shrill, whining zither that was ear-piercing. Not only did it seem to penetrate your skull like a trepanning job, but it had a ventriloquial effect, so that a cicada which appeared to be singing on your shoulder turned out to be thirty feet away These insects were a little over an inch long, pale emerald- green with golden eyes, their shimmering wings looking like frosted-green church windows.

My head ringing with their exuberant cries, I gave my mind to the problem now on hand. Owing to the fact that we had to match our pigeon-catching exploits to the availability of our gargantuan Task Force, we had been forced to choose this evening, when the moon was half full, rather than an evening when there was no moon at all. This meant that now it was dark, we would have to move very fast and try to catch our birds before the moonlight became too strong and thus gave them sufficient light to escape by.

Presently, we were all congregated at the foot of my pigeon tree to discuss strategy. We decided that, as all the birds we had pinpointed — five in all — were widely scattered throughout the cryptomeria forest, we would start with the one in the smallest and most easily climbed tree nearest to the path and gradually work outwards to the others. Having decided this, we converged on the first tree and surrounded it with our torch beams and the blinding light of the portable searchlight, directed up into the branches where a fat, sleepy, bewildered pigeon sat some thirty-five feet above us.

At first sight, it looked extremely simple to shin up and grab or net the bird, but closer inspection revealed that the tree was so constructed that in order to climb it one would have to cause the maximum amount of noise and commotion. This could well startle the bird into launching itself into the frightening, black night. We had a rapid council ofwar in whispers, while the pigeon, now fully awake, watched us with benign interest. It was decided that the Sergeant, possibly the most gigantic of our force but the best tree climber, would scale one of the adjacent trees while John Hartley, who had long arms, would scale another. They would then endeavour to manoeuvre themselves into a position from which the capture of the pigeon would be possible. We decided not to plan any further at this stage since things tend to look different when you are dangling thirty-five feet up in the air.

The Sergeant started up his tree, massive but extraordinarily agile, and John Hartley, long-legged as a crane fly, started up his. The pigeon watched them coming aloft with deep interest untinged by alarm, its head slightly on one side. When the Sergeant and John had simultaneously reached a height equal to that of the pigeon’s roost, they paused for breath, then in hoarse whispers confided to us that the Sergeant could edge along the branch to within netting distance of the bird. We eagerly told him to go ahead. We watched as he edged his twenty-odd stone of bone and muscle out along a branch that seemed too fragile to support a squirrel, let alone our ebony Goliath, but to our amazement he reached the end without it snapping.

Here, he manoeuvred the net into position. This net, as I have explained, was like a pair of sugar tongs with a net on each end. Clapped together, they caught the bird in the middle. At the sight of the net, the pigeon showed its first signs of wariness; that is to say, it put its head on one side and gave a slight flirt of its wings. The Sergeant now found that he needed to get another three feet closer to his prey and that this meant climbing to a higher branch. As the pigeon was now showing definite signs of unease, we decided to turn off our battery of lights and let the Sergeant get to his new vantage point in the dark as best he could. Some time, and a considerable amount of blasphemy later, he called down to us that he had successfully reached his new position.

We switched on our lights and discovered to our astonishment that the pigeon had seized this opportunity to tuck its head under its wing and snatch forty winks. When the lights came on again it pulled its head out from under its wing, with a gesture of irritability, and looked distinctly put out. The Sergeant, with an air of desperation, was now clinging to yet another fragile branch and working the net into position. Breathlessly, we watched him as he swept the net towards the pigeon; then we saw the bird, with surprising agility, hop farther down the branch but not fly away into the night. The Sergeant, clinging desperately to his bending, creaking branch, edged closer and took another swipe. This time, the two halves of the net snapped together and engulfed the bird, but the effort had been too much; Sergeant and branch bent downwards and in an effort not to let go and fall, he relinquished his hold on the handle of the net.

In silent horror, we watched it fall. The two sides of the ‘sugar tongs’ fell open so that our precious Pink pigeon was now only contained in one half of the net and could easily escape. Then

the falling net hit a tree limb and hung there. The pigeon gave a couple of half-hearted flaps and we waited to see if it would extricate itself from the net and fly away into the impenetrable gloom of the cryptomerias. However, after a token effort to escape, it lay stoically still, which was just as well as the net was only just hanging on to the branch.

Now we noticed something else. The branch in which the net was caught grew out at an angle and came quite close to the tree in which John Hartley was ensconced. Seeing this, John made his way rapidly down his tree and then out along the branches until he was separated from the net by a mere four- foot gap. With great care, since the branch he was on was both fragile and elastic, he reached across the gap. For a moment, I thought his arms were not long enough but then, to my relief, his hands closed round the mouth of the net. The Pink pigeon was ours.

Carefully, John eased his way back into the green depths of the cryptomeria where he transferred our capture from the net into one of the soft cloth bags with which he and the Sergeant had been provided. This safely done, he lowered the booty slowly down to the ground on a string. As the bag swung down out of the dark cryptomeria leaves, I received it reverently into my cupped hands. With great care, I opened it and extracted the pigeon for Dave to look at it. It lay quietly in my hands, without struggling, merely blinking its eyes in what appeared to be mild curiosity at this new experience. The colours seen so closely, even in an artificial light, were vivid and beautiful: the pale chocolates of the wings and the back, the rusty, almost fox-red of the tail and rump, and then the broad breast, neck and head, pale grey flushed with cyclamen-pink overtones. It was a remarkably handsome bird.

Gazing at it, feeling its silken feathering against my fingers and sensing the steady tremor of its heart-beat and its breathing, I was filled with a great sadness. This was one of the 33 individuals that survived; the shipwrecked remnants of their species, eking out a precarious existence on their cryptomeria raft. So, at one time, must a tiny group of Dodos, the last of their harmless, waddling kind, have faced the final onslaught of pigs, dogs, cats, monkeys and man, and disappeared for ever since there was no one to care and no one to offer them a breeding sanctuary, safe from their enemies. At least with our help, the Pink pigeons stood a better chance of survival, even though their numbers were down to such a dangerously low level.

We had taken so long over the capture of this pigeon that the moon had come out in strength and, to our annoyance, there was not a cloud in the sky. Any operation to capture more pigeons was doomed to failure, since there was more than enough light for them to see to fly by. Our first attempt to climb up to their roosts sent them flapping out of the cryptomeria branches and off down the valley. To try to track them down would have been a hopeless waste of time. As we tumbled and slipped and sweated our way out of the valley into a landscape brilliantly frosted by moonlight, we carried our precious burden, the Pink pigeon. We felt we could not complain. To have caught one bird out of the 33 in that sort of terrain and at the first attempt, struck me, in fact, as being little short of a miracle.

When we had got back to the hotel, showered, changed and anointed our mosquito bites, we assembled in the diningroom.

Why don’t we celebrate our capture,’ I suggested. ‘How about a dozen oysters and then some grilled lobster with green salad, followed by bananas flambeed in rum, washed down with a nice white wine?’

Both Ann and John said that, as a light snack, this met with their approval, and I gave the order accordingly. Presently, our waiter, who rejoiced in the name of Horace, came back. ‘Please, Sir,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry for the lobsters.’

Although English is the official language of Mauritius, I had run into trouble from time to time. The Mauritian habit of saying ‘mention’ as an abbreviation for ‘Don’t mention it’ when you thanked them, took a little getting used to. Now, I was faced with a new problem. Horace was sorry for the lobsters. Did this mean that, as a fully paid-up member of the RSPCA, the thought of the demise of these delectable crustaceans filled him with such remorse that he could not bring himself to serve them? Nothing in Horace’s demeanour led me to believe this was so, but, at the same time, I did not want to risk hurting his feelings.

Why are you sorry for the lobsters, Horace?’ I asked, prepared to be gentle and sympathetic.

‘Because there are no lobsters, Sir,’ said Horace.

We had fish instead.