THE TATOU-POYOU AND THE DEER CARCASS.
Doña Isidora and Leona had watched all the manoeuvres of the ant-lion
with great interest, and Leona, after the bite she had had, was not in
any mood to sympathise with the ants. Indeed, she felt rather grateful
to the ant-lion, ugly as he was, for killing them.
Presently Leon returned from the woods, and was shown the trap in full
operation; but Leon, upon this day, was full of adventures that had
occurred upon the hills to himself, Guapo, and Don Pablo. In fact, he
had hastened home before the others to tell his mamma of the odd
incidents to which he had been a witness.
That morning they had discovered a new _mancha_ of cinchona trees. When
proceeding towards them they came upon the dead carcass of a deer. It
was a large species, the _Cervus antisensis_, but, as it had evidently
been dead several days, it was swollen out to twice its original size,
as is always the case with carcasses of animals left exposed in a warm
climate. It was odd that some preying animals had not eaten it up. A
clump of tall trees, that shaded it, had, no doubt, concealed it from
the sharp sight of the vultures, and these birds, contrary to what has
so often been alleged, can find no dead body by the smell. Neither ants
nor animals that prey upon carrion had chanced to come that way, and
there lay the deer intact.
So thought Don Pablo and Leon. Guapo, however, was of a different
opinion, and, going up to the body, he struck it a blow with his axe. To
the surprise of the others, instead of the dead sound which they
expected to hear, a dry crash followed the blow, and a dark hole
appeared where a piece of thin shell-like substance had fallen off.
Another blow from Guapo's axe, and the whole side went in. Not a bit of
carcass was there; there were bones--clean bones--and dry hard skin, but
no flesh, not an atom of flesh!
"Tatou-poyou!" quietly remarked Guapo.
"What!" said Don Pablo, "an armadillo, you think?" recognising, in
Guapo's words, the Indian name for one of the large species of
armadillos.
"Yes," replied Guapo. "All eaten by the tatou-poyou. See! there's his
hole."
Don Pablo and Leon bent over the sham carcass, and, sure enough, under
where its body had been they could see a large hole in the ground.
Outside the carcass, also, at the distance of several feet was another.
"This is where he entered," said Guapo, pointing to the second. "He's
not about here now," continued he, "no, no,--ate all the meat, and gone
long ago."
This was evident, as the hollow skeleton was quite dry, and had
evidently been empty for a good while.
Don Pablo was pleased at this incident, as it gave him an opportunity of
verifying a curious habit of the armadillos. These creatures are among
the finest burrowers in the world, and can bury themselves in the earth
in a few seconds time; but, being badly toothed,--some of them
altogether without teeth,--they can only feed upon very soft substances.
Putrid flesh is with them a favourite "dish," and in order to get at
the softest side of a carcass, they burrow under, and enter it from
below, rarely leaving their horrid cave until they have thoroughly
cleared it out.
The bark-hunters now passed on, Don Pablo making many inquiries about
the armadillos, and Guapo giving replies, while Leon listened with
interest. Guapo knew a good deal about these curious creatures, for he
had eaten many a dozen of them in his time, and as many different kinds
of them too. Their feeding upon carrion had no effect on Guapo's
stomach, and, indeed, white people in South America relish them as much
as Indians. The white people, however, make a distinction in the
species, as they suppose some kinds to be more disposed to a vegetable
diet than others.
There are some in the neighbourhood of the settlements, that
_occasionally pay a visit to the graveyards or cemeteries_, and these
kinds do not go down well. All of them will devour almost any sort of
trash that is soft and pulpy, and they are more destructive to the ant
than even the ant-eaters themselves. How so? Because, instead of making
a nice little hole in the side of the ant-hill, as the tamanoirs do, and
through this hole eating the ants themselves, the armadillos break down
a large part of the structure and devour the _larvæ_. Now the ants love
these _larvæ_ more than their own lives, and when these are destroyed,
they yield themselves up to despair, refuse to patch up the building,
the rain gets in, and the colony is ruined and breaks up.
It does not follow, however, that the flesh of the armadillo should be
"queer" because the animal itself eats queer substances. Among
carnivorous creatures the very opposite is sometimes the truth; and some
animals--as the tapir, for instance--that feed exclusively on sweet and
succulent vegetables, produce a most bitter flesh for themselves. About
this there is no standing law either way.
The flesh of the armadillo is excellent eating, not unlike young pork,
and, when "roasted in the shell" (the Indian mode of cooking it), it is
quite equal, if not superior, to a baked "pig," a dish very much eaten
in our own country.
Guapo did not call them armadillos--he had several Indian names for
different kinds of them. "Armadillo" is the Spanish name, and signifies
the "little armed one," the diminutive of "armado" or "armed." This name
is peculiarly appropriate to these animals, as the hard bony casing
which covers the whole upper parts of their bodies, bears an exceeding
resemblance to the suits of plate armour worn in the days of Cortez and
chivalry.
On the head there is the helmet, the back is shielded by a corslet, and
even the limbs are covered with greaves. Of course, this armour is
arranged differently in the different species, and there is more or less
hair upon all, between the joinings of the plates.
These points were not touched upon by Guapo, but others of equal
interest were. He went on to say that he knew many different kinds of
them;--some not bigger than a rat, and some as large as a full-grown
sheep; some that were slow in their paces, and others that could outrun
a man; some that were flat, and could squat so close as hardly to be
seen against the ground,--(these were _tatou-poyous_, the sort that had
hollowed out the deer); and some again that were high-backed and nearly
globe-shaped. Such was Guapo's account of these curious animals which
are found only in the warmer regions of North and South America.