‘Look what I’ve got; I said gleefully, and rolled the creature on to her bed.
In my delight at receiving such an unusual specimen I had forgotten that my wife was, as yet, not quite used to the delights of collecting. She emerged from her cocoon of bedclothes and landed on the opposite side of the room with a leap that any ballerina might have envied. From this safe vantage point she glared at my offering.
‘What is it?’ she inquired.
‘Good Lord, darling, what are you leaping about like that for? It’s an armadillo . . . it’s perfectly harmless.’
‘And how was I supposed to know?’ she inquired; ‘you rush in here and hurl the thing at me like that. And do you mind taking it off my bed?’
‘But it won’t hurt you,’ I explained. ‘It’s quite harmless, honestly’
‘Yes. I’m sure it is, darling, but I don’t want to romp about in bed with it at five in the morning. Why can’t you put it on your bed?’
I placed the offending animal tenderly on my bed, and then went out to pay the Indian. Rafael and I returned to the house to find Jacquie sitting in her bed, wearing a martyred expression. I glanced at my bed, and, to my horror, saw that the armadillo had disappeared.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jacquie sweetly; ‘the dear little thing’s only buried itself.’
I dug down among the bed-clothes and felt the armadillo scrabbling frantically in a tangle of sheets. I hauled him out, and he immediately rolled into a tight ball again. Sitting down on the bed, I examined him. Rolled up, he was about the size and shape of a small melon; on one side of the ball were the three bands from which he got his name, horny stripes which were separated from each other by a thin line of pinkish-grey skin that acted as a hinge; on the other side of the ball you could see how his head and tail fitted into the general scheme of armour-plating. Both these extremities were guarded on top by a section of armour-plate, very gnarled and carunculated, shaped like an acute isosceles triangle. When the head and tail were folded into the ball, these two pieces of armour lay side by side, base to point, together forming a broad triangle which effectively blocked the vulnerable entrance that led to the armadillo’s soft undersides. Seen in the light, this armour-plating was a pale amber colour, and appeared as though it had been constructed from a delicate mosaic work. When I had pointed out to my audience the marvels of the creature’s external anatomy, I put him on the floor, and we sat in silence, waiting for him to unroll. For some minutes the ball lay immobile; then it started to twitch and jerk slightly I saw a crack appear between the triangle of head and tail and, as it widened, a small pig-like snout was pushed out. Then, with speed and vigour, the armadillo proceeded to unroll himself. He just split open like some weird bud unfolding, and we had a quick glimpse of a pink, wrinkled tummy covered with dirty white hair, small pink legs, and a sad little face like a miniature pig’s, with circular protuberant black eyes. Then he rolled over and righted himself, and all that was visible beneath the shell were the tips of his feet and a few wisps of hair. From the back of his humped shell his tail protruded like one of those ancient war-clubs, covered with spikes and lumps. At the other end his head stuck out, decorated with its triangular cap of knobbed plating, on either side of which had blossomed two tiny, mule-like ears. Beneath this cap of horn I could see the bare cheeks, pink nose, and the small, suspicious eyes gleaming like drops of tar. His hind-feet were circular, with short blunt nails, and looked rather like the feet of a miniature rhinoceros. His fore-feet were so completely different that they might have belonged to another species of animal: they were armed with three curved nails, the centre one of which was the largest, and resembled the curving talon of some bird of prey. The weight of his hind-quarters rested on his flat hind-feet, but that of his fore-quarters rested on this large nail, so the sole of the foot was raised off the ground, making it seem as though he were standing on tip-toe.
For a moment or so he stood motionless, his nose and ears twitching nervously; then he decided to move. His little legs leapt into motion, moving so fast that they were only a blur beneath his shell, and his claws hit the cement with a steady clickity-clickity-click sound. The complete absence of body movement, combined with the rhythmic clicking of his nails, made him appear more like some weird clockwork toy than an animal, a resemblance which was even more marked when he ran straight into the wall, which he apparently had not noticed. Our burst of laughter made him pause for a moment and hunch himself defensively, in readiness to roll up; then, when we were silent again, he sniffed at the wall and spent a fruitless five minutes scrabbling at it with his claws in an effort to dig his way through. Finding this an impossibility, he swung round and clickity-clicked his way busily across the room, disappearing beneath my bed.
‘He looks just like a gigantic wood-louse,’ whispered Jacquie.
‘I like this bicho, Gerry,’ said Rafael, in a stage whisper, beaming through his spectacles; ‘he walks just like a tank, no?’
The armadillo, having clicked about under my bed for some time, suddenly reappeared and scuttled off in the direction of the door. It was unfortunate that Paula chose that precise moment to waft massively into the room, bearing a tray on which was our morning tea. Her entrance, with bare feet, was silent, and so the armadillo (whose sight apparently left much to be desired) was unaware of her presence. Paula, her vision of the floor impeded by a combination of bosom and tray, paused in the doorway to beam at us.
‘Buenos dias,’ she said to Jacquie, ‘el té señora.’
The armadillo bustled up to Paula’s feet, stopped, and sniffed at this new obstacle, and then decided, since it appeared to be soft, that he would dig his way through. Before any of us could do any-thing, he stuck an experimental claw into Paula’s big toe.
‘Madre de Dios!’ screamed Paula, surpassing in that short exclamation all her previous vocal efforts of the morning.
She sprang backwards through the door, miraculously keeping hold of the tray, but as she disappeared into the darkened living-room the tray tilted and a jug crashed to the floor, spreading a great pool of milk in front of the animal. He sniffed at it suspiciously, sneezed, sniffed again, and then started to lap it up quickly. Rafael and I, weak with laughter, hurried into the living-room to soothe our palpitating housekeeper and relieve her of the tray. When I carried the tray into the bedroom I found that the armadillo, uneasy at the noise, had pattered off and sought refuge behind a pile of suitcases. Some idea of his strength may be gathered from the fact that the pile of cases was filled with film, batteries, and other equipment, and were so heavy that it took me all my time to lift one of them. Yet the little creature, having decided that sanctuary lay behind them, stuck his nose into the crack between the cases and the wall and proceeded to push them to one side as easily as though they had been cardboard boxes. He disappeared from view, scrabbling wildly, and then lay still. I decided to leave him there until we had finished tea. Rafael reappeared, mopping his spectacles and tittering.
‘That woman,’ he said, ‘she makes much noise.’
‘Is she bringing some more milk?’
‘Yes, I tell her. You know, Gerry, she not understand why you want bichos. No one tell her we come here for bichos.’
‘Well, did you explain?’
‘Oh, yes, I tell her that we come to the Chaco special for bichos for zoologicos.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
‘She said that all gringos were mad and hoped God would protect her,’ said Rafael, grinning.
After breakfast, served by a still-trembling Paula, we set to work and made a cage for the armadillo, optimistically making it big enough to contain several others, should we be lucky enough to get them. Then I went and dug the little beast from his sanctuary behind the suitcases; it was quite a job, for he was wedged between the cases and the wall as snugly as a nail in wood. As soon as I had extracted him, he half rolled himself,
and uttered a few faint hissing sounds; each time I touched his nose or tail he would hunch himself and give a tiny irritable snort. I yelled for Jacquie to bring the recording machine, and when it was placed in position, and the microphone was hovering only a few inches from the animal, I touched him gently on the nose. He promptly and silently rolled himself into a tight ball and lay there immobile; no amount of cajoling, tapping, or scratching would induce him to repeat the sound. Eventually, in disgust, we pushed him into his cage and left him to his own devices; it was not until the next day that we managed to record his Lilliputian snorts of annoyance.
That afternoon the Indian reappeared, leading three depressed looking horses, and, arming ourselves with bags, string, and other impedimenta of the collector, we set out on the hunt for more orange armadillos. We rode through the village, and for some two miles followed a track that ran alongside the railway line; then our guide’s horse plunged down the side of the embankment, and made its way along a narrow, twisting path through the dense, thorny scrub and sprawling cacti. A humming-bird, glittering green-gold through a misty blur of wings, hung feeding from a white convolvulus flower some three feet above my head; I reached up my hand as we passed beneath it, there was a sudden purring sound and the bird vanished, leaving the trumpet-shaped flower dipping in the breeze caused by its wings. The heat at this hour of the afternoon was intense: a dry, prickly sort of heat that seemed to suck the moisture out of you; even under the broad brim of my hat I had to screw up my eyes against the ferocious glare. All around, the cicadas sun-worshipped with such a penetrating shrillness that it seemed as though the noise did not come from outside, but was manufactured in the echoing recesses of your own skull.
Presently the dense, thorny growth ended abruptly, and we rode out into a great grass-field decorated with row after row of enormous palms, shock-headed and still in the sun, the shadows of their trunks tiger-striping the golden grass. A pair of black-faced ibis, with neat black moustaches and cinnamon, grey-and-black bodies, paced through the grass, probing the water-filled earth below with their long, sickle-shaped beaks. When they saw us, they flapped up between the palm trunks, crying ‘Cronk . . . cronk . . . arcronk,’ in deep, harsh voices. Half-way across the grass-field we found that it was divided in two by a wide, meandering strip of wonderful misty blue flowers which stretched away in either direction like a stream; as we got close to it I discovered that it was really a stream, but a stream so thickly overgrown with these blue water-plants that the water was invisible. There was the haze of blue flowers and, underneath, the glint of glossy green leaves growing interlocked. The blue was so clear and delicate that it looked as though a tattered piece of the sky had floated down and settled between the ranks of brown palm-trunks. We took our horses across the river, and their hooves crushed the plants and flowers and left a narrow lane of glittering water. Black-and-scarlet dragon-flies droned smoothly around us, their transparent wings winking in the sun. When we reached the other side and entered the shade of the palm-forest again, I turned in my saddle and looked back at the magnificent lane of blue flowers, across which was marked our path in a stripe of flickering water, like a lightning flash across a summer sky.
We passed through the hot shadow of the palms and reentered the thorny scrub, startling a solitary toucan. With its monstrous marigold-yellow beak, the blue patch round the eye, and the neat black plumage and white shirt-front, it looked like a down who, having put on a dress-suit, has forgotten to remove his make-up. It watched our approach, turning its head from side to side, uttering soft wheezing and churring noises, reminding me of an ancient, unoiled clock about to strike. One of the horses gave a loud snort, the toucan took fright and, clicking its great beak and giving strange yelping cries of alarm, it dived into the tangle of branches.
Gradually the thorn scrub became less and less thick, and soon it was broken up into clumps and patches, interspersed with areas of whitish, sandy soil, dotted with clumps of grass and cacti. The grass was bleached almost white by the sun, and the soil had a hard crust baked over it, through which the horses’ hooves broke with a soft scrunch. Only the cacti were green in that area of sun-white grass and sand, for they, with the curious alchemy of their family, could capture the dews and infrequent rain, store it in the flesh of their prickly limbs and live on it, as a hibernating animal lives in the winter off the autumn’s accumulated layer of fat. This region was not flooded and soggy as the other parts of the country had been, for it was raised a few inches above the surrounding area; the contour was almost imperceptible, but sufficient to make it a dry island in the swampy lands around. Any piece of land that raised itself six inches above the surrounding territory could almost be classified as a mountain in the vast uniform flatness of the Chaco. Rafael and our guide had a rapid conversation, and then Rafael pushed his horse up alongside mine.
‘Here we find the tatu, Gerry,’ he explained, his eyes gleaming through his spectacles in anticipation; ‘we no ride close together, eh? We make a line, no? When you see the taw, make your horse go fast, and the tatu she will make a ball.’
‘You mean it won’t run away?’
‘No, the Indian he say she stop and make a ball.’
‘That sounds very unlikely to me,’ I said sceptically.
‘No, it is true, Gerry.’
‘Well, it must be a damn stupid animal, then.’
‘Yes, the Indian he say it is muy estúpido.’
We rode in silence, fifty yards apart, manoeuvring our horses in, and out of the clumps of thorn-bushes. The only sounds were the brain-probing cries of the cicadas, the soft scrunch of the horses’ hooves, and the gentle creak and clink of leather and metal. My eyes ached with searching the heat-shimmering undergrowth ahead. A flock of ten guira cuckoos burst from a thorn-bush and flew off, cackling harshly, looking like small fawn-and-brown magpies, with their long and handsome tails.
Suddenly, fifty yards to my right, I saw the hunched shape of an armadillo, clock-working his way between the clumps of grass. With a yell of triumph, I dug my heels into my mount’s sides, and he responded with such vigour that I only saved myself from a fall among the cacti by an undignified clutch at the saddle; the horse broke into a lumbering canter, the white sand spurting spray-like beneath his hooves as we bore down upon the quarry. We were within about fifty feet of him when the creature heard us; he swivelled round, sniffed briefly, and then with astonishing rapidity rolled himself into a ball and lay there. I was rather disappointed that the beast had lived up to his reputation for stupidity, for I felt he should have had the sense to try to make a dash for a clump of thorns. I stopped within twenty-five feet of him, dismounted, tied my horse to a clump of grass and then walked forward to collect my prize. To my surprise, I discovered the grass, which had appeared quite short when I was up on my horse, was really quite high, and I could not see the armadillo at all; however, I knew he was not far and in which direction he lay, so I walked forward. Presently I stopped walking and looked around: my horse was now a good distance away – certainly more than twenty-five feet. I decided that I must have walked in the wrong direction, and, cursing myself for my carelessness, I retraced my steps, zig-zagging through the undergrowth and reaching my horse without seeing the armadillo. I felt rather crestfallen and annoyed, for I decided that the little animal must have made a dash for it when I walked past him. Muttering angrily to myself, I remounted and sat there transfixed with surprise, for in the same position, about twenty-five feet away, lay the armadillo. I dismounted again and walked forward, stopping every now and then to look carefully around me. When I reached the area in which I knew he must be, I paced slowly backwards and forwards, and even then I passed him twice before I noticed him. As I picked up the creature, heavy and warm from the sun, I mentally apologized to him for having thought that his tactics were stupid. I rode after Rafael and the Indian, and for the next two hours we worked our way carefully over the island of dry soil, and by the same
simple means we managed to catch three more of them. Then, as it was getting late, we set off homewards, through the shadowy trees. Crossing the river of blue flowers, the mosquitoes rose in a shrill cloud and settled on us and the horses, gorging themselves so that their transparent abdomens, swollen with our blood, looked like scarlet Japanese lanterns. It was dark when we reached the village and our horses clopped their way tiredly down the muddy road, past bushes alive with the green lights of fireflies, and the bats flicked across our path, uttering their microscopic squeaks of amusement.
In our house, we found Jacquie sitting at the table, writing, while our first armadillo trotted importantly round and round the room. It turned out that he had spent an exhilarating afternoon tearing the wire front from his cage and was just disappearing into the hibiscus bushes when Jacquie discovered him. Having recaptured him, she had let him loose in the living-room to await our return. While we had our evening meal, we turned all the armadillos out on to the floor, where they clattered and clicked their way about like a flock of castanets. Rafael and I spent the rest of the evening stripping the wire from the cage-front and replacing it with wooden bars. Then we left the cage in the living-room all night, just to make sure that it could hold the animals. In the morning the bars looked a bit battered, but they still held firm, and the armadillos were all curled up asleep in their bedroom.
Having solved the caging problem, I felt that the three-banded armadillos ought to be plain sailing, for, normally, armadillos are the easiest of creatures to keep in captivity. They will live happily on a diet of meat and fruit, and they are not particular about the freshness of the offerings, for in the wild state they will eat meat that is suppurating and maggot-ridden. According to the textbooks, the three-banded armadillo, in the wild state, lives on a diet of insects and grubs; I thought that if we first offered our specimens their natural diet we could then get them on to some substitute food. So we spent hours collecting a revolting assortment of the local insect life and presenting it to the armadillos. Instead of falling on it with joy, as we had expected, the beasts seemed positively afraid of the worms, caterpillars, and beetles that we had taken such pains to collect. In fact, they backed away from them hurriedly, displaying every symptom of disgust and revulsion. After this failure, I tried them on the usual, armadillo’s diet in captivity: minced meat mixed with milk but though they drank some of the milk, they refused the meat. They carried on in this irritating manner for three days, until I was sure that they would become so weak with lack of food that I should have to release them. Our lives were a misery, for on and off through-out the day one or other of us would have an idea and rush with some fresh offering to the cage, to try to tempt the armadillos, only to have, them treat it with disgust. At last, more by chance than anything else, I invented a mixture that met with their approval. It consisted of mashed banana, milk, minced meat, and raw egg mixed up with raw brain. The result looked like a particularly revolting street accident, but the armadillos adored it. They would rush for the plate at feeding time and stand round the edge, jostling each other, their noses buried deep in the slush, snorting and snuffling, and occasionally sneezing violently and spraying each other with the mixture.
The Drunken Forest Page 7
