Here is how, one day, I came to understand that I should never hunt again…
The story takes place around Les 2 Plateaux, district of Cocody in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), sometime around 1976 or 1977.We must have been 12 or 13 years old. During the Christmas or Easter holidays, when we weren’t busy organizing football matches against the 150 neighborhood or among ourselves in the parish grounds of Saint-Jacques, we would set off in small groups to hunt, roaming the empty lots that still spread wide in those days, separating our neighborhood from future extensions like Le Vallon. Dokui or Angré were probably still only camps, I wouldn’t know; in any case, our expeditions never carried us that far from base.
So we would go hunting for turtledoves or “doudous” (pagoda cocks), dreaming of an improvised barbecue.
Few among us owned pellet rifles… Pitou had two and Bob had one, a Diana 4.5 and a Diana 5.5. For the uninitiated, 4.5 and 5.5 are pellet sizes. The rest of us (myself included) had only slingshots. Of course, everyone longed to get their hands on the 5.5, that was the only real chance of dropping a doudou with a single shot. The trouble was, the bird was clever: never out in the open, unlike those foolish turtledoves that any silent-enough amateur could knock down from the treetops where they perched for a clearer view, or perhaps simply to show off their beauty to possible mates. The doudou stayed hidden in the canopy, still and soundless for as long as it would sense danger… Silent, until it let out the little call that betrayed it: “doudou! doudou!”
Naturally, it was up to the most seasoned among us to attempt the approach. You couldn’t risk missing, and watch the heavy, mouthwatering promise of a barbecue take flight…
Doudous weren’t found in every tree, of course — they were a “big catch.” Even turtledoves were already a prize worth taking. Usually, our friends who owned rifles were kind enough to let us practice on “uninteresting” targets, knowing that when the right moment came, they would treat us to a true hunting lesson.
But could one really kill those “uninteresting” targets — lizards basking in the sun — simply for the pleasure of it, simply because one was a child? That question had never once crossed my mind. Things were about to change…
One morning, our little troop of four or five hunters had enjoyed great success: a few worthy birds and many lizards. The cook at my parents’ house had even helped me craft a large slingshot, with a wide fork and strong rubber bands. I had mastered this weapon of death, and I had “worked” it well, until the time came to return home for lunch with my parents.
So we parted ways, promising to meet again around two o’clock, for the second wave of extermination.
After lunch, I was impatient to return, but I had to wait until my parents left for work. Heading out in the heat of the day was unusual, and would have seemed suspicious… And of course, I couldn’t exactly confess that I wanted to roast birds; wasn’t I already being fed at home?
To “kill” time, I decided to practice on the lizards warming themselves on the neighbor’s roughcast wall across the street.
One, two, three, four… nineteen, twenty, thirty… I no longer recall how many fell that day.
When, a little later, I reached the “bush” where we had agreed to meet, no one was there. I had missed the rendezvous.
After waiting a while, I set off alone, eyes sharpened to that hunter’s trance where one no longer looks at things directly, but instantly senses the sudden halt of a movement behind a leaf or in the grass…
I was lost in that strange, murderous bliss when I caught sight of a big red-headed lizard, then another, then several more gray ones, smaller ones too. The more I looked, the more there were. And soon it became clear: they were watching me.
They had all frozen, forming a wide circle around me.
I stood there, arms limp at my sides, stunned at the scene of which I was suddenly the center. And in that very moment, it seemed to me that an animal community was trying to make me understand something my child’s conscience had never before touched.
Did it last a second? A minute? I cannot say. But it was as if those lizards, by their sheer, silent presence, forced me to see the cruelty hidden inside my innocent acts.
I remember thinking, just for an instant: “Will they all leap on me? Do they have teeth?”
But instead, they vanished, leaving me there, dazed, unable to think rationally.
One thing was clear though: this realisation, perhaps their telepathic message to me: “I should never again hunt without need, for even the so-called uninteresting targets have a right to live”.
The slingshot was never used again.
Written by Diby Stéphane Kouamé, January 21, 2012
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