into the snake pit summary by gerald durrell
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The pit was about twenty-five feet long, four feet wide and twelve feet deep . . . It was simply crawling with Gaboon vipers – one of the most deadly snakes in West Africa.’
Gerald Durrell BBC Home Service 12 July, 1953.
Standing on the quay at Tiko, on the west coast of Africa, Gerald Durrell glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. The Arakaka was sailing for England in the morning, and the wild animals he had collected were to be loaded on to the ship before dawn.
For five months, Gerald Durrell, naturalist and broadcaster, had been living and working in the rain forests of West Africa, watching the forest creatures, studying their habits and capturing them on behalf of various zoos in Britain.
“I’d collected about 200 specimens,” he told me, as we talked at his home in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, where he runs the zoo he founded. “These ranged from red river hogs to chimpanzees, from hairy frogs to bush babies and squirrels – and a few snakes.”
Now, as the naturalist moved away to begin the task of loading, a small van appeared and, with a screeching of brakes, shuddered to a stop beside him. Out of it jumped John MacTootle, a young Irishman whom Durrell had met on the voyage out to Africa.
“John had promised me,” Durrell said, “that he would try to find me some rare specimens of snakes. But I hadn’t heard from him, and had practically forgotten all about it.”
But MacTootle had come now to tell Durrell that, on the banana plantation where he worked, he had discovered a large pit which had been used as a drainage sump, and that this pit was full of snakes. If Durrell cared to catch them – well, they were his for the taking.
Durrell’s heart sank.
“For one thing,” he told me, “time was short. It meant doing it that night, and the keenest naturalist would hardly relish the prospect of crawling round a pit full of snakes in the dark.”
However, reluctantly, he agreed to go. He picked up his stick, which had a Y-shaped fork of brass at one end, and a canvas snake-bag, and climbed into the van with several of MacTootle’s friends who had come along to watch the ‘fun’.