76 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
official collector to the British Museum. This meant retracing our 
steps by rail towards the east coast as far as Moramanga and then 
taking the branch line north to the lake. We occupied some sta- 
tion buildings on the lakeside at Ambatosoratra, the terminus, as 
the last few miles from Andréba had not then been opened. 
My first duty was to make a comfortable wooden cage for my 
boa. This done, I managed to catch a live rat, which was intro- 
duced as food; but feeding boas is not as simple as all that. They 
may go for weeks or even months without food. The day after 
being introduced, the rat was still there apparently quite un- 
concerned about the large coils of snake which he sat on or hid 
behind. I gave him food and water and the pair lived happily 
together for weeks, the rat using the center of the boa’s coils as a 
sleeping place, and sitting up on the reptile’s back to clean his 
face and whiskers with his paws. I was quite prepared to encour- 
age a continuance of this apparent friendship, but the rat could 
not resist gnawing the sides of the wooden box, doing consider- 
able damage, especially at night. Reluctantly I was compelled to 
destroy him, and left his body there to see what the boa’s reaction 
would be. When I next looked in the box, the rat had gone. After 
this I always offered my boa dead rats, which he accepted readily 
when hungry. The end of this story is that this reptile became 
perfectly tame, and lived for eleven years in the London Zoo. 
My mission was, in the main, to collect waterfowl, and Lake 
Alaotra, with its shallow waters covering an area of twenty-five 
miles by seven miles, and supporting a deep fringe of reeds on the 
west side of several miles, appeared to be the ideal place. The lake 
is subject to inundations in the rainy season, October to May, and 
then it covers a considerably larger area, often flooding the native 
villages on the west side. The waters are teeming with edible fish, 
some, such as paratilapia, which is a blackish perch-like fish, are 
indigenous, while others, such as carp, have been introduced. The 
latter are exceedingly plentiful and are caught and smoked by 
the professional native fishermen. 
Waterfowl abound, but they are well dispersed during the rainy 
period. It is when the lake starts to shrink rapidly in July and 
August that one sees great gatherings of Hottentot Teal feeding 
on the shallow foreshores, and equally large numbers of Fulvous 
