[Jerome Betts]

Wot? No takers for this one?

A hot tip had brought Charlie Carruthers to this faded former colonial settlement with its rebarbative ex-pats and uncommunicative locals. Carruthers had a dream, a dream embodied in the furry huge-eyed shape of the hitherto unfilmed Giant Gibbous or Hump-Backed Lemur.

‘Today’s the day!’, he thought, as his 4WD headed out past the consequential monuments of the old regime with their lapidary lies and boasts. An end to his almost solipsistic obsession with the great beast . . .

Several hours later, his guide grew tense as they slipped cautiously through the forest’s dangling fronds, trying not to trigger plangent alarm-calls from Wrzl’s Ouzel high in the canopy. Was this the grove said to be the last refuge of the elusive giant? There was a flash of white – a first glimpse of a lemur silverback? – and a distant drone . . . the ubiquitous Attenborough had got there first!