Look
APRIL 20, MAY 4, 1954
As you most probably know, the night in Africa is completely different from the day. Very few people see the night without the benefit of the headlights of a car which distort it since the headlights terrify or occasionally anger the animals. After the sun has set and the fire is built in camp, the usual thing is for you to sit for a time and with your white hunter and companions discuss the events of the day and the plans for the following day.
You have a moderate amount of drinks and then bathe in a canvas tub with water which has been warmed at the cook fire. After that, you put on pajamas and mosquito boots and over them a dressing gown and go out to the fire where you have one more drink and wait for dinner to be served. After dinner, you go to bed which is covered by a mosquito net, and sleep or lie awake listening to the sound of the animals until half an hour before first light when you are roused by your personal boy bringing tea, known locally as chai. If you have no white hunter and consequently no need to observe rituals nor to be under anyone’s discipline except your own, you are at liberty to do what you wish with the night, which is the loveliest time in Africa.
In the night, the animals are quite transformed. The lion, who is nearly always silent in the daytime, hunts by himself and from time to time coughs, grunts or roars. I have not been able yet to discover if he is communicating with his mates who are also hunting, or whether he is trying to make the game which sleeps quietly at night move and thus disclose its position. It may be that he roars much as Irishmen do in public drinking places occasionally. It may also be that he coughs from dyspepsia and grunts from irascibility due to the difficulty of procuring a meal.
The hyenas follow the lion and when he kills or when his women folk kill you can hear the talking of the hyenas among themselves. This is the time when you hear the so-called laughter of the hyena. His normal note at night is quite pleasant and I believe he gives it as communication to the other hyenas.
In hunting at night with a spear, you hear many other sounds. The wildebeest, which is a big antelope which was designed to try to look like a buffalo or bison, gives off terrifying noises in the effort to seem a dangerous beast. You can in the night, if you sight the silhouette on the ground and approach the wildebeest, or gnu, with extreme caution, tap him on the rump with the butt end of your spear. He will spring to his feet and emit this terrifying sound. At this point, you may say, “Had you there, wildebeest, old boy.”
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In the night, you will see many bat-eared foxes. These are lovely animals which live in burrows and are almost never seen in broad daylight and live on insects and other small deer. This does not refer to actual deer but to the animals on which Poor Tom in King Lear existed. Mr. Gene Tunney, the Shakespearean scholar, can provide the quotation. The bat-eared fox looks like a real fox except for his ears, which are at least three times the size of those of Clark Gable, the actor, but are in no way to be compared to those of the elephant.
You will probably hear the voice of Mr. Chui, the leopard. He is about on his beat giving short coughing grunts. These are given in such a deep bass voice that they cannot be confused with the voice of the other beasts. At night if you hear Mr. Chui on your left, you make a smart right turn. Mr. Chui is a very serious beast. He has his defects but he has great and terrible qualities as a beast.
If you hear Mr. Chui and he is working along a stream or wooded area you may mark his progress by the speech of the baboons who respond to his grunts with what I take in baboon to be imprecations, insults and warnings to all other baboons to seek the highest part of the treetops. At daylight, coming home from the night out with the spear, I have noted the tops of the fig trees along the creek loaded as though these trees bore fruit of baboons rather than figs. They had been placed in this difficult position by the passage of Mr. Chui.
Thinking about these times and about how fine the night could be when you were allowed to roam freely, I skipped further dreams and decided to think about the past.
This past was never my past life which truly bores me to think about and is often very distasteful due to the mistakes that I have made and the casualties to various human beings involved in that sad affair. I tried to think instead of other people, of the fine deeds of people and animals I have known, and I thought a long time about my dog Black Dog and what the two winters must have been when he had no master in Ketchum, Idaho, having been lost or abandoned by some summer motorist. Any small hardships we had encountered seemed to me to be dwarfed by Blackie’s odyssey.
We encountered Blackie when we were living in a log cabin in Ketchum and had two deer, killed, respectively, by Mary and Patrick, hung up in the open door of the barn. There was also a string of mallard ducks hung out of the reach of cats and there were also hung up Hungarian partridges, different varieties of quail and other fine eating birds. It seeming that we were people of such evident solidarity, Blackie abandoned promiscuous begging and attached himself to us as our permanent dog. His devotion was exemplary and his appetite enormous. He slept by the fireplace and he had perfect manners.