Arnold Klein
– ANT-EATER
And in these regions is ingendered certaine kindes of antes,
The which, in hillockes to the height of man, or somewhat more,
For they are as a hogshead, or a but, and hard, do seek themselves
A safeguard, so hath nature given them a sense, whereby they raise them
Farre from woods and trees, and make the saide hillockes
Of such highness, they may seeme as stones, set to limit endes
Of certaine lands, and of such hardness too
As Don Gonzalo de Oviedo, whose words I cite, could not beleeve,
Insomuch as they could scarce be broken with his iron pikes,
The which he proved; but moystened by the raine, and dried by sunne,
It breaketh, and hath certaine tiny rifts, as little and as subtill
As a knife, to which the Beare, when he resorteth to the hillocke,
Putteth in his tongue, which he hath very long, and thinne,
And disproportioned much, and therewith licking so inlargeth it
That at the length he hath himself a passage, at his pleasure
Thrusteth in and out, and waits, until a great quantitie of antes
Have laden it, and then he draweth in and eateth them.
For this beeste is fearful, vile, and unarmed, and only very famine,
Or necessitie, or the great desire they have to feed on antes,
Can bring them from the woods and trees, whereto they ever keepe,
To hunt for them; and thus they prove the common proverb,
There is none so free, as hath not his privie enemy, or prosecutor.
The pismire-eater, Nieuhof calls him, feeds on nothing but
Pismires; he stretches out his tongue upon the dunghills till they settle
There, and then he swallows them.
He lays his nose
Down flat upon the ground, says Dampier,
And puts his tongue athwart the path the army ants
(Whereof are many in this country) travel, and the ants,
When they approach the tongue, do make a stop; which he perceiving
Draws them in, and eats.
There is another beast
The baremo, we call him ant-bear, hath a mouth so small
And yet a tongue like unto a giant earth-worme,
Neere a quarter yard, wherewith he licketh up the ants;
Neither is he good for anything but to destroy their heapes.
They smell
Very strong of ants, and taste much stronger of them;
And only by the most extreme shifts, and by necessitie, when first they
Came, and were inforced to procure all things, did Christian men
Fall to eating of these filthy beestes, and most unsavorie; and when they found
More daintie meates, hated this, Oviedo says.
Animal realmente
Admirable, Eder tells us, y sin par; that is (to translate now myself)
Wholly uncorrelative and peerless; and worthiest of admiration
Is his head, for how can such a head (this priest demands)
No wider than a turkey’s at its widest place, and at the end
No wider than the finger of a child of only seven years,
Consort itself with such a bulk, as even dwarfs
The bears of Spain? Yet mark it, he derives his aliment from tiny ants,
Whose anger he invites by excavating through their nests with claws
Curving, long and keen, which his peculiar gait defends from dulling,
For he bears them back, and balances his bulk upon the points
Of his articulations. And those claws defend him from his foes as well:
No other creature offers such a threat to dogs
And even to the multicolored ounce, whose onslaughts he receives
Belly upwards, on his back, grappling him so close
That sometimes both are found together locked, dead of hunger
In each other’s grasp; which makes the oso hormiguero
The only creature in this land who dares encounter him.
De Azara
Laughs at this, however, and at both Buffon and de la Borde,
For thinking such a sleepy creature could contrive to get
The jaguar in its grasp; for it can neither run nor jump, he says,
Nor indeed do anything at all but grapple vainly with its foe
In front; may be captured, driven, baited or destroyed
With clubs, and he killed many so, running no more risk,
He says, than if he had been beating on the trunks of trees.
The club, the stave, the cudgel and the stick are everywhere and always
In these old accounts the instruments of choice to kill or guy if
For, as a medico declares, though sly enough to ambush ants and animals
To men he is no menace, merely cross and stubborn,
A thing, whose most portentous aspect cannot long conceal from us
A joke of nature.
Waterton, observing that the bear is harmless
Both to men and things, and that his haunts and wonts are so unlike
All other creatures’, they must never clash,
Declares, that though the ant-bear misses much in self-defence,
Able neither, with his awkward gait, to flee, nor burrow
In the ground with his impressive claws, and so conceal himself,
Nor with his sad and toothless mouth to bite, he quests about
In perfect safety nonetheless, going up and down for ants,
Which nature lavishes, and mostly through the swampy woods near creeks,
Where grows the troely tree; of all the animals the least offensive;
Would live a peaceful life and die an aged thing
At last, were it not that mankind finds his flesh good food.
To Bates, whose records of the tropic forests Darwin ranked
In second place, after Humboldt’s own, after days
Of eating rice and roast bananas, when “almost anything
“That had the shape of flesh” were welcome, ant-bear stewed
Turned out very good indeed, in flavor like a goose;
Thereafter, whenever he was short of meat he sent his Negro
With a dog, to get him one; but one day one reached out
And tore the dog to bits.
That only ants fed one so robust
Puzzled many; this, with the fact that he could find no ants
Where he was travelling, led T.P. Bigg-Wither to conclude
That one day soon the “so-called ant-bear”
Would reveal himself a honey-eater, to profit from the unclaimed bounty
Of the mirim bee. But only ants, adult and larval,
Termites chiefly, and some mouldy earth and leaves, which he believed
Only incidentally adherent to the viscid tongue,
Were found by President Theodore Roosevelt in the stomachs of the ones he shot,
Stomachs thick-walled, he says, and more like gizzards; but Cherrie,
To whose wanderings we owe the first photograph (before me now)
Of the giant ant-eater climbing up a tree,
Twenty feet above the ground, the sun behind, a soft
And subtle shaggy herald’s banner in the southern sky,
Declares them great destroyers too of nestling birds and eggs,
Whose juices, and whose liquid contents, they lap up or suck.
So well-protected by his close coat, we hear, is he, the ants
Abide their fate, possessing in their billions no defence against
His operations; nor, despite their zeal, can savage dogs
Find any purchase on it for their avid teeth or claws.
His hide beneath is said to be like plates of steel; for Cherrie tells
That when his largest, fiercest dog at last obliged
An ant-bear to defend itself, it turned and rose and reared,
And let the dog attack its throat; and while it vainly mumbled
Slowly closed the circle of its claws and crushed the dog to death,
“As one would crush an eggshell.” But that tail of his,
Although as shaggy coated, and indeed the first feature after
Head, and tongue, and claws, to recommend itself
To close consideration by the naturalists, remains, as to its function,
As obscure today, despite surmise and speculation,
As when a pilgrim styled it a Faire Great Tayle, and a friar,
A taile so full of haire, that when he harboureth himself
All under it, from heate, and raine, and cold, and winde, nothing
Of him can yee see. To Kidder, one asleep,
Curled up and covered with its tail, seemed so like a heap of hay
A careless passerby might be excused, who fancied him.
Exactly that; and Schomburgk adds, it serves to keep him warm
As well as hidden. Wallace claims that ant-bears
Always raise their tails against the rain, and calls it an umbrella;
And some say native hunters profit from this quirk,
Make pitter-patter cunningly upon the forest leaves,
As if it rained, until the ant-bear cocks his tail
And so betrays his presence. Bigg-Wither, in pursuit of his idea,
Calls the tail a bee-swatter; and one older
Traveller, who notes he heighteth like a horse, anticipates
An ultra-modern thought, that as his cousin sloths, despite
Their tree-top dwelling, still possess a proper nose
For grubbing in the earth, and as his brothers live in trees,
The lesser often seen curled up upon a branch, the least
Branch-abiding always, so might the giant ant-bear once have been
Himself arboreal; for he says he hath a great broad bushie tayle,
By help whereof he leapeth lightly, tree to tree,
And to the ground.
But one who saw him flee, on all fours first,
Then running upright, doubted nature even meant him
For terrestrial, so clumsy did each locomotive method seem.
Not nimble, Nieuhof calls him; to Cherrie, lumbering
And ungainly, though fast enough; to Roosevelt, lumbering and clumsy,
A black object moving slowly at a rocking canter
Through the vivid green -- out-of-date, and strange, and poignant,
And he was happy, having shot down two for science’ sake,
To leave the many ant-bears that he saw thereafter unmolested.
Maladapted to this later age, Gunther tells us,
His relatives extinct, and he an isolate. But Roosevelt lauds him too,
“For he has courage,” and despite his toothless mouth can be
A most unpleasant foe. To aggression never given,
As another says, but in his own defence extremely terrible.
And when Gardner’s party, passing through a wooded campo, came upon
A large one, which Mr. Walker followed with his gun,
But which they all pursued on foot, with sticks, the rifles having failed,
He showed himself a single thing, pacific, partly dexterous
And doomed, for he, as always, tried to flee, (and, with all my reading
On this subject, I have never found a record of successful flight,)
And it was Gardner himself, well-aware, he tells us,
Of the harmless nature of its toothless mouth, grabbing it
And hoping to hold on until the others came, who brought upon himself
The ant-eater’s quick embrace, the turning upriste grab,
That might have disembowelled him; and, despite the aftermath,
For truly almost always when this animal appears, it dies,
In which, after countless stunning blows, a pistol kills it,
I protest this is my favorite account of him,
As of a human being human face to strangest face,
Eye to lentil eye, and almost dying of it -- of surprise,
I think, and rather hope, of shame, and of its righteousness.
“Let’s go eat puca-fruit,” said an old woman;
And she and her grandchildren went off into the forest to look for it.
When they arrived at a puca-tree she ordered the children
Into the tree. “Now shake the branches,” she said to the children,
“Then come down and help me gather the fruit that has fallen,”
But they stayed in the branches, laughing and listening, eating the puca,
While the old woman ate the ripe fruit on the ground,
When the children were finished they started to throw green fruit on the ground.
The old woman scolded them, so they turned into parakeets.
The woman said “Don’t!” but they still wouldn’t listen: they turned into parakeets.
“What should I do?” said the old woman. She had very few teeth
So she turned into an ant-eater. She went digging for ants.
Soon she entered the forest.
Another old woman
Once went into the bush to pick berries. She refused to go home
And was turned into an ant-eater.
Then when the women
Saw that the men were all birds, they went back to the village and said,
“What should we do? Maybe we could turn into something ourselves.”
“I am old,” said one, “and I plan to turn myself into an ant-eater.”
So she put her grinder over her buttocks, and that was her tail.
She took an old wooden bowl she had used for a mortar and told them,
“This is my head.” She was an ant-eater then,
And no longer spoke to them; in fact all ant-eaters speak badly,
They speak softly and stutter somewhat, and mostly talk nonsense.
When the men turned into peccaries the women were ant-eaters;
That’s why the ant-eater has long nails:
Those women had long nails. He sleeps all day long, too,
Just like a woman. When a man sleeps all day
We say he is just like an ant-eater, and the name we give him
Is uklatijic.
All the animals were made from people,
And in some of them it’s still easy to see it. After the fire
When the world was ashes, and the people were waiting to leave the hole,
The very deep hole the chief had dug to protect them,
He gave them a warning to look down when they left it,
And not to look sideways or up until they had walked for a while.
But most disobeyed him, and for ignoring his order
Were turned into animals: ostrich and alligator, monkey and tapir,
And ant-eater too, he was an old inquisitive woman
Who had to look frontways and up when she came out of hiding.
That’s why he walks a bit bent -- that old woman was crooked.
Petura stole down from the owls, corn from the vultures,
From monkeys the madder, depriving him of it; and from the ant-eater,
Who made it to kill him, he took the art of the war-club;
And he punished him with it, thrusting it into his mouth and his anus.
Once in a village there lived an old man and his woman.
At the time of maturing burity fruits they left to live by a brook;
They erected a hut, and gathered the burity fruits by the basket.
When their daughter came to visit she was astonished
At all the fine burity fibre hanging about.
The old people gave her all of the fruits they had gathered,
For (as they explained) the fruit was too hard for their teeth.
When she came by to visit several days later, they were no longer there;
But suspiciously lying nearby, amid ruins of ant-hills,
Were two sleeping ant-eaters. She went back to the village
And asked her husband to go back to look for her parents.
He discovered the ant-eaters only, who trotted off to an island;
He followed and clubbed them to death, and his wife roasted their bodies.
That night the blood of those ant-eaters changed into ant-eaters,
Great numbers of ant-eaters who came close to the village.
Next day an old man conversant with just about everything
Explained that the harmless creatures the husband had beaten to death
Were really the old man and woman, who had turned into ant-eaters.
Buke the ant-eater was finishing making an arrow
When Adujo the jaguar came by, and made as if he was going to break it.
Said Buke the ant-eater: “If you break that arrow,
“First I’ll be sad, then I’ll be angry.” But Adujo ignored him;
He stepped on the arrow and broke it. So Buke gouged out his eyes.
(Some say he lost one eye first, and the ant-eater gouged out the other;
Some, that the jaguar proposed a juggling contest, using their eyes.
The eyes of the ant-eater fell back into their sockets,
But jaguar’s stuck on a branch.) So now Adujo was blind.
He went round to the other animals, but none of them offered to help him,
Till Kuo the tinamou made him new eyes from jotoba
(Some say the macuco bird made them from water;
That’s why the big cats hunt only at night):
That’s why the big cats have yellow eyes.
Meanwhile Buke had fled. When Adujo managed to find him
The ant-eater tried to conceal himself inside a rock.
But the crack in the rock was too small, and his legs were exposed.
“Nephew, come out!” said the jaguar (he called him nephew to taunt him);
“I’m fine where I am,” said the ant-eater. “I’m sleepy.”
The jaguar laid hold of his legs and tried to dislodge him,
But the ant-eater’s arms were too strong, and held him in place.
So Adujo the jaguar made do and devoured the flesh on his legs.
That’s why the ant-eater has such tiny hind legs, like a child’s.
That was the one time the ant-eater fled from the jaguar.
Another contest the two had was over their excrement,
Over which animals each was able to kill and eat.
Each closed his eyes and strained; but the ant-eater,
Finishing first, cunningly switched the piles and derided the jaguar.
Some class him with the capybara, whose great incisors
Furnish graving tools for which his tongue provides the file;
Some, with certain rodents, for the crescent claws of all
Are joined in half-moon ornaments, and worn in lip and bosom;
Also used as whistles during healing trances,
To summon kindly ant-bear spirits, who are sovereign doctors;
And into him, as into nose-bear, otter, dolphin,
Evil souls of sorcerors may migrate; and with the nose-bear he is
Very magic, both able with their long and pointed snouts
To dazzle men.
Once two children wandered into the forest;
The boy was called Joaquin, the girl was called Joaquina.
Joaquina wanted honey from a tree, but the entrance in the trunk was small,
She put her hand in but could not pull it out.
Then an ant-eater came along and with his claws enlarged the entrance,
And the girl was free.
Once when the men were out hunting
They saw an animal. “I think it is that ant-eater,” one of them said.
They set fire to the grass, and when the fire started to narrow
An ant-eater ran from the flames. “Cu-cu, cu-cu”
Was the sound it made when it came out into the open.
(But some say that after the rainbow snake had been killed by the birds
And all of the animals shared out its shimmering skin,
The ant-eater came along last, and the cry that they gave him
Was not “cu-cu” but “rr-rr.”) One of the hunters
Took up his club and ran after it, striking it once,
Striking it twice, and, when it turned in its flight and stood up,
Struck it again, striking and striking and striking until he had killed it.
It was very fat, and when he carried it home on his shoulders
All of the children saw him and shouted, “ant-eater, ant-eater, ant-eater!”
And a woman said, “Someone is coming with an ant-eater.”
Another said, “It must be the ant-eater the men were discussing,
“Who always succeeds in escaping the circle of fire.”
“How black its pelt is!” “Its life is over.” The man threw the ant-eater down.
“Go on, escape!” He was mocking the ant-eater. “Go on!”
They divided the animal up, cooked it and ate it, one ate the rump,
One took the shoulder, and the head went to the oldest among them;
But that creature was magic: he belonged to the U’u, and escaped from the fire
By going into the water, where the U’u abided.
And those who ate of him died.
When we hunt all day and get nothing
We call it suklatawo. The ant-eater himself we call
S’uklax; his excrement is uklatijic: we are afraid of it.
It is bad luck, and when we see it we say uklatawo.
And when we see the ant-eater himself we say uklatawo as well.
They say that all ant-eaters are female,
And that they impregnate each other using their snouts.
A bad man whom Chibute changed into an ant-eater
Lived without woman or wife and brought forth his young by himself.
And yet others believe that his member is enormous, and make him
A symbol of manhood and potency. But some, who look first at his tongue,
Take him as impotent; to others still, the size of his member
Stamps him a creature of very low status. And finally some say
That he defends all the other animals; that when he is cornered
He rises up, and with his great claws tries to castrate his tormentor.
Look to the southern sky: there you will see him,
For there he appears at night, a black outline in the Milky Way,
Which some call the world tree’s white ashes.
He is rearing, and his foe the jaguar is rearing too;
And so their fight goes on, even in those starless places,
The jaguar gaining the advantage when the sun just sets,
And his ancient counterpart, and sometimes friend, and foe,
The ant-eater, just before the dawn.
“Their enthusiasm for killing,”
Says Anthony Smith in his Mato Grosso, “was not necessarily
“Logical or relevant, in that the animal victim was either harmful
“Or good to eat, but it was virtually universal.
“If a giant ant-eater, rare, beautiful, and totally harmless,
“Happened to cross the road -- as it did on occasion --
“The vehicle would skid to a halt... and its Brazilian contingent pour out
“In pursuit. This animal shuffles about on its big claws
“With a meandering simplicity, but it can move faster when pursued
“By a whooping crowd of people collecting weapons as they run.
“Eventually, a mile or so from the road, they would catch up with it,
“Club at it, and continue clubbing long after it is dead.
“Still whooping they then return to carry on with the journey.”