The next morning, together with some natives, we went down to the river and began to work out a plan for getting the huge reptile out of the water and up the steep bank to the top, where he could be picked up by a jeep. The natives had brought along with them a long, thick plank, and this we tried to slide under the reptile so that he would be lying lengthways upon it. However, he was in such shallow water that we could not manoeuvre the plank under him, for his belly was buried in the mud. The only thing to do was to loosen the rope and float him out a yard or two into deeper water where we could push the plank under him with greater ease. This we did, and bound him to the plank with coil after coil of rope round his nose, his tail and his short powerful legs.
The next job was to get him out of the water and up the bank. It took twelve of us an hour and a half to accomplish this, for we were working on sticky clay, and every time we managed to haul the great bulk of the cayman up a few inches, we would have to pause and then, to our dismay, he would slide back again to his original position. It was hard work, but we succeeded in pushing him right up to the top of the cliff and over on to the short, green grass where we surrounded him, covered with clay from head to foot and dripping wet, and very pleased with ourselves.
Another river creature which created quite a spot of bother was the electric eel. This occurred when I was collecting down in the creek lands. My friend and I had been out all day in a big canoe, paddling up and down the remote waterways, visiting various Amerindian villages and buying whatever pets they had for sale. We bought, among other things, a tame tree porcupine and, at the last village, had discovered a wicker basket containing a half-grown electric eel. This, too, I bought and was very pleased at the addition to my collection, since it was the first of these creatures that I had obtained.
We settled ourselves in the canoe and started homewards, tired but pleased at having had such a successful day. I was sitting up in the bows with the tree porcupine curled up asleep between my feet. Farther along, in the bows, was the electric eel wriggling hopefully round and round in his wicker basket. Beside me sat my companion and behind him the two paddlers in the stern of our rather unsafe craft.
My attention was first drawn to the escape of the eel by the tree porcupine who, in a complete panic, endeavoured to climb up my leg and would, if allowed, have continued right up to my head. Wondering what on earth was the matter, I handed him to my companion while I had a look round in the bows of the canoe to see what had frightened him. Peering down I saw the electric eel coming towards my feet in a very determined manner. It gave me such a fright that I jumped straight up in the air and the eel passed under me, and I landed once more in the canoe, fortunately without overturning it.
The creature meanwhile wriggled towards my friend. I shouted to him to watch out, and he, holding the porcupine in his arms, tried to stand up and get out of its way, failed, and fell flat on his back in the bottom of the canoe. The electric eel slid past my friend’s struggling body and headed for the first paddler. He, too, when faced with the eel, was no braver than we; he dropped his paddle and prepared to abandon ship.
The situation was saved by the very last occupant, the second paddler. He was apparently quite used to finding electric eels in canoes in mid-stream, for he simply leant forward and pinned the creature to the bottom of the craft with his paddle. I threw him the basket, and with a few quick movements he had managed to scoop the eel back inside it.
We all felt very relieved and even started to make jokes about it. The rescuer handed the basket with the eel in it to his fellow paddler, who in turn, handed it to my friend. As he was about to pass it to me, the bottom fell out and the eel was once more among us. This time, luckily, it fell draped over the side of the canoe like a croquet hoop. It gave a quick, convulsive wriggle, there was a splash, and our electric eel had disappeared into the dark waters of the creek.
It was a disappointing end to what had been an exciting quarter of an hour, but later on we were able to obtain several more of these creatures, so we did not regret its loss. A big electric eel is capable of producing quite a considerable amount of current, and has been known to kill even horses and men while they were crossing rivers in various parts of South America. The organs for producing the electricity are situated along each side of the creature’s body; in fact, almost its entire length is a gigantic battery. The eel swims along, looking rather like a large, thick black snake, and when it suddenly comes upon a fish it stops short, its whole body seems to shudder, and you see the fish twitch and curl up and then float gently down, either paralysed or completely dead, while the eel darts forward and sucks it into his mouth whole and always head first. Sinking to the bottom of the creek, he will lie there meditating for a few minutes, and then shoot upwards, stick his nose above the water and take a lungful of air before continuing his search for another victim.
PART THREE
Perambulations in Paraguay
In which I hunt with the gauchos
Now I should like to tell you about my most recent collecting trip. I returned recently from a six months’ expedition to the Argentine and Paraguay. Argentina is a country that has an absolutely fascinating animal life, totally different from that found anywhere else in South America. As nearly the whole country is composed of the vast grasslands called the pampas, naturally all the creatures are adapted to life on these open plains. The pampas in the Argentine are remarkably flat; standing at one point, you can see the great grassland stretching away as smooth as a billiard table until it mingles with the sky on the horizon. In the long grass grow the giant thistles that resemble the English thistle, except in size. Here they grow to a height of six to seven feet, and to see large areas of the pampas covered with them in bloom is a wonderful sight, the green grass appearing to be covered with a sort of purple mist.
Hunting for animals in this open grassland is not quite as easy as it might at first appear. To begin with, most of them live in holes and only venture out at night. Secondly, there is very little cover in the way of bushes or trees, and so the quarry can generally spot the hunter some way off. Even if he does not, he will probably be warned by the spur-winged plover who, from the collector’s point of view, is quite the most irritating bird of the pampas. They are very handsome-looking, somewhat like the English plover with their black and white plumage, and are always seen in pairs. They have remarkably good eyesight and are extremely suspicious, so that when anything unusual comes within their range, they rise off the ground and wheel round and round, giving the shrill warning cry of tero . . . tero . . . tero, which puts every animal for miles around on its guard.
One of the commonest creatures found in these great grassy areas is the hairy armadillo. These animals live in burrows which they dig for themselves, and which may extend anything up to thirty or forty feet beneath the surface; and, when they venture forth at night, if anything disturbs or alarms them, they make a bee-line for their burrows and dive down to safety. Naturally, the best time to hunt for them is at night, and preferably a night when there is little or no moon. We would go out from the ranch-house, in which we were staying, and ride our horses to a suitably remote spot. From then on we would go on foot, armed with torches, following the two hunting dogs who were experts in finding these little beasts. You have to be able to run very fast when hunting armadillos, for the dogs generally scamper off some distance ahead, zigzagging about with their noses to the ground. As soon as they find one, they give tongue, and the quarry is off, racing back to the safety of his burrow. If this is close by, there is little chance of catching him. On our first night out hunting armadillos, we managed to catch some other members of the pampas fauna at the same time.
We had walked about two miles, wending our way carefully among the giant thistles, which could prick like the spikes of a porcupine if brushing too close to them, when, suddenly, the dogs could be heard barking ahead of us and we all broke into a run, scrambling and jumping over the tussocks of grass and dodging in and out of the thist
les. It was so dark that on more than one occasion I ran straight into a clump of thistles, and so by the time I reached the place where the dogs were sniffing around their quarry, I was thoroughly pricked all over. The dogs were clustered at a respectable distance around something in the grass, and upon switching on our torches we saw, standing there very defiantly, a creature about the size of a cat, neatly clad in black and white fur, and with a handsome black and white bushy tail that stuck up straight in the air: it was a white-backed skunk.
He watched us without the slightest trace of nervousness, obviously convinced that he was more than a match for us and the dogs. He would occasionally utter a little sniff and then give two or three small bounds towards us, bouncing on his front feet. If we ventured too close, he would turn round and present his bottom to us, peering over his shoulder in a warning manner.
The dogs, who were well aware that the skunk would spray them with his powerful, foul-smelling scent, had kept a discreet distance from him, but while the creature was showing off to us, one of the dogs, rather unwisely, seized the opportunity to rush in and try to bite him. The skunk jumped straight up into the air and, in the same movement, wheeled round, so that his back was towards the dog, and the next minute the dog was rolling over and over in the grass, whining and rubbing his face with his paws, while the cold night air was filled with the most pungent and disgusting odour imaginable. Even though we were some distance away, it made us reel back, coughing and gasping, with the tears running down our cheeks, rather as though we had taken a deep sniff at a bottle of ammonia.
After this exhibition of his powers, the skunk trotted towards the dogs and gave one or two little skips in their direction that sent them all scuttling out of his way. Then he turned about and did the same thing to us, and we scuttled just as fast as the dogs had done. Having broken the circle around him, the little animal flicked his handsome tail up and down a couple of times and then sauntered off through the grass with an air of smug satisfaction.
We decided that we had no particular desire to get on more intimate terms with him, so we called the dogs and went on our way. The dog that had been squirted by the skunk continued to smell horribly for three to four days after this encounter, although the odour gradually wore off; but as we proceeded on our way the strong scent of the skunk, clinging to his coat, followed us through the night.
Catching skunks to keep in captivity is a difficult job. If their scent glands are left in, every time they are frightened they are liable to squirt everyone indiscriminately. These glands can be removed by a very simple operation, but this can only be done really successfully with a young specimen.
Some little time later, the barking of the dogs once more set us off on a wild scamper among the grass and thistles, and now we found that our pack had discovered an armadillo who was scuttling along as fast as his short legs could carry him towards his burrow, while the dogs, yelping wildly with excitement, ran alongside, trying to bite his back, but making no impression on his armour-plated hide. He was easily captured, for we just simply ran up behind him, gripped him by the tail and hoisted him into the air, and we soon had him safely inside a sack. Greatly cheered with our first capture, we eagerly carried on, hoping to catch another one, but our next meeting was with a totally different creature.
We were close on the heels of the dogs, passing a small thicket of bushes, when a rather rat-shaped creature dashed out and disappeared among the thistles. The dogs set off in pursuit, and we were not far behind when we saw them catch up with the creature and snap at it, whereupon it fell down dead. The men called off the dogs and we approached the corpse. It proved to be a large opossum: an animal with a body about the size of a small cat, with a long rodent-like face. The body was covered with a brindled chocolate and cream coloured fur, the tail was long and resembled that of a rat, and the ears, like those of a miniature mule, were bare. When I complained to the men that the dogs had killed him, they all laughed uproariously and told me to look closer. Sure enough, when I shone my torch on him, I could see that he was still breathing, though doing it very quietly, so that it was almost imperceptible.
I found that I could move him about, even turn him upside down, and he still remained limp and, to all intents and purposes, as lifeless as could be, but in reality this was his method of defence, for he hoped that eventually, thinking him to be dead, we would go away and leave him to make good his escape. When we were putting our captive into a bag, however, he became alive to the fact that we had not been taken in by his trick, and wriggled and struggled, spitting through his open mouth like a cat and biting savagely at us. Later on we caught any number of these creatures and all of them, with the exception of the very young ones, who obviously hadn’t yet learnt the trick of feigning death, tried to deceive us in exactly the same way.
On our way back to the ranch the dogs found yet another hairy armadillo and, this time, I was treated to a display of the little animal’s great strength. He was not far from his burrow when the dogs found him, and we were fairly close, but by the time we had caught up with him he had reached the mouth of his tunnel. One of the men flung himself forward in a magnificent flying tackle and caught hold of the armadillo’s tail just as he disappeared into the earth. Another man and I threw ourselves, panting, alongside the first, and each of us grabbed one of the armadillo’s hind legs. Now, only the forequarters of the beast were inside the tunnel, yet by digging his claws into the earth and by hunching his back and wedging it against the top of the burrow, he prevented the three of us from pulling him out, although we tugged and struggled as hard as we could.
It wasn’t until the fourth member of our party arrived on the scene and with the aid of his hunting knife cut away some of the turf that we were able to haul out the little creature. Then out he came, like a cork out of a bottle and with such suddenness that we all fell on our backs and lost our grip on him, so that he nearly made his escape the second time.
These two armadillos which we had caught very soon settled down and grew remarkably tame. I kept them in a cage which had a separate sleeping compartment; and they would spend the whole day lying there on their backs side by side, their jaws twitching, and uttering strangled snores. It was amazing how deeply they slept, for one could bang on the cage, shout at them, and even prod their pink, wrinkled tummies, and still they would lie there as if dead. The only way to rouse them was to rattle a food pan and, however gently this was done, they would both be wide awake and on their feet within the blinking of an eye.
All the species of armadillo in South America are used as food. I never had the opportunity of trying one, but I believe that when carefully roasted inside their shells – naturally after having been killed first – they taste like roast sucking-pig and are quite delicious. Many of the gauchos (South American equivalent of the North American cowboys) catch these little animals and keep them in barrels full of earth as a sort of larder, so that on special occasions they will be able to have roast armadillo.
As we were making our way home with our first captives, in the still night air I heard the distant sound of hoofbeats on the turf, gradually coming nearer and nearer, and then stopping suddenly within a few feet of us. It was rather a weird sensation, and I wondered for a moment if it might be the ghost of some old gaucho forever galloping across the pampas. On asking my companions where the horse was that I thought I could hear, they all shrugged and in unison said ‘Tucotuco.’ It was then I realized what had caused the peculiar sound.
The tucotuco is a little animal about the size of a rat with a round, plump face and a short furry tail. He excavates enormous galleries just below the surface of the pampas and in these he lives, coming out only at night in search for the plants and roots on which he feeds. This strange little beast has very sensitive hearing and when he catches the vibration of footsteps on the turf above his home, he gives out his warning sound, to let all the other tucotucos in the district know that there is danger about. How he produces this excellent imitation of a
galloping horse is a mystery, but it may be his cry which, distorted by distance and echoes in his burrow, takes on the odd cropping quality of a galloping horse. Incidentally, tucotucos are very wary little beasts, and though we tried by many different methods to capture them, I was never successful in obtaining a specimen of this little creature which must be one of the commonest of the pampas fauna.
While we were staying in the Argentine, one of the things I particularly wanted to do was to make a cine-film of an old-fashioned gaucho hunt. The old style of gaucho hunting has nearly died out now, though many of the men still know how to do it. The animal, or bird, is pursued by men on horseback. Their weapons consist of the deadly boleadoras which are three balls attached to three lengths of string, all of which are joined together. These are whirled around the men’s heads and then thrown. As they strike the quarry’s legs, each ball on its cord swings round in a different direction, thus entangling the beast and bringing it to the ground.
There is a relative of the ostrich that lives in South America, called the rhea. It is not such a big bird as its African cousin, and its plumage is ash-grey instead of black and white, but the one thing that they both have in common is an ability to run extraordinarily fast. This bird used to be the chief quarry for this type of hunting in the days when rheas were found in vast flocks living on the pampas. On the ranch of a friend of mine there was still quite a large number of these birds living, and my friend offered to ask the gauchos if they would organize a rhea hunt, so that I could film it.