Mother of God

by Paul Rosolie

  Another idiosyncrasy was her fondness for using other objects to scratch herself. Standing next to a tree or pillar on the deck, she would rub back and forth, careful to find the right spot—sometimes standing to get the hard-to-reach places on her back, like a bear. Or she would hold her head high and fully extend her ten-inch tongue until it could go no more, then shudder it violently and retract. It looked like an anteater’s yawn. She would also spend hours sucking on my finger while I read. Completely edentulous—having no teeth whatsoever—the anteater would entirely devour my ring finger inside her long snout, tongue lapping within. I think she liked the salt.

  Anteaters would most likely not make most people’s list of intelligent animals. We are familiar with primates, canines, dolphins, and other high-order mammals as intelligent, but still underestimate what they are capable of. Tigers, of course, are members of the cat family, a commonly known super-intelligent animal group. Yet many people don’t realize that they need to teach their young to hunt, and how to stalk, and find water, to survive in the wild. Without the guidance of its mother, a tiger cub would be dead in a matter of hours, and tigers raised in captivity can never adapt to conditions in the wild—they need the knowledge of their mother. This is a massive problem for conservationists as they try to rescue tigers from extinction; once the chain is broken it can never be repaired.

  Another example of obvious imparted knowledge in the animal world is the mother otters that teach their young to dive to the ocean floor, and retrieve rocks so that they can float on their back and crack oysters on them. This is a complex skill that, without instruction, an otter would not discover out of instinct. What’s more is that mother otters even show their young how to hold a good rock in their armpit while diving for more oysters, so that they don’t have to waste energy searching for another tool.

  The skills of many animals are often attributed to “instinct,” which in the case of otters and rocks, or tigers and their cubs, is just counterfactual. The reality is we still know very little about what animals think or how they feel and communicate. Lulu was an animal that showed an incredible range of feelings, from fear to unbridled happiness. She was affectionate and attuned to my actions in a way similar to a dog (which is saying a lot). A wild animal, profoundly bonded to a human.

  Lulu depended on me emotionally and physically for survival, and I was determined to do everything I could to protect her. Even as a young naturalist I knew that the cards were stacked against her. I could never teach her the things her mother would have. It was doubtful that she would be able to survive on her own, but I had hope. At least at the research station and surrounding preserve she would be safe from hunters. She’d also have access to a vibrant ecosystem that had not been compromised by the guns and chain saws that had pillaged the rest of Las Piedras. Here JJ and Emma’s work over the last decade had protected the animals and the ecosystem. She would be safe from my species, her greatest threat. Each time I’d feed her I would fit that old spark-plug protector-nipple onto the bottle. And each time I felt a fierce warmth at the thought that a piece from a dismantled chain saw, the object most lethal to forests, was being used to nurture the young life.

  As our two weeks together ended I made a decision. It was a bright sunny day when Lulu and I were walking on a trail on the opposite side of the river. I looked around me and realized that there was no way I could leave. Damn the semester that would be starting in a week—how could I part with my anteater? This was a once-in-a-lifetime event. To anyone else it might seem pedestrian, but at nineteen I was still learning to take control of my world. Blowing off a semester was a big deal. As I walked, talking gently to Lulu, daydreams filled my head. I imagined what staying in the jungle for months on end would be like; I imagined watching Lulu grow. It would also mean that JJ and I would have a lot more time together, which I was eager for.

  I had walked a small distance ahead of Lulu, who had stopped to sniff in the foliage. Turning to wait for her, I observed as she was surprised by a large yellow-footed tortoise that emerged from the brush beside her. The massive domed carapace of the reptile stood easily a foot from the ground and surely measured double in length, by far the largest of its species I had ever seen.

  The huge tortoise startled Lulu, and, acting in defense, the anteater exhibited the signature retaliation of her species. Rearing up on her hind legs and spreading her hooked arms, she slashed at the tortoise, releasing a long and powerful trumpet sound. The unsuspecting and ancient tortoise rapidly altered course and retreated as Lulu laid siege to its shell. Again and again she whacked him, and the turtle started running for its life. Lulu was not satisfied and gave pursuit, smashing at the thick shell with surprising ferocity.

  Given their peculiar anatomies, neither animal was in any real danger, and both emerged from the encounter unscathed. Lulu remained standing for a short time after the tortoise’s retreat, still grunting and trumpeting with arms outstretched and chest puffed out, like a teenager who has just won a fight spreads his arms and dares any other challengers to step forward. Replacing her trumpet sound with an aggravated “who wants some!” would have fit the image to perfection.

  After determining that the situation no longer called for aggression, Lulu dropped back down onto all fours and came trotting toward me, flaunting her new swagger about the jungle. It was a spectacular day, spent in the sun and warmth of the Amazon. After returning across the river that night, Pedro and I cooked dinner and enjoyed a wild knife-throwing competition on the moving targets of the large jungle cockroaches that scurried across the kitchen wall. The night ended in numerous cockroach fatalities and much laughter.

  But the next day something strange happened. Pedro and I were walking along a stream in the afternoon, fishing, when I threw up and fainted. There was no warning. One second I was fine; the next everything went black and white and my legs collapsed. Later that night I felt horrible and weak in the knees, and retired early to my bed instead of a hammock. Before sleeping I noticed that my arm had several pus-filled bubbles on it, and that my face, where I had shaved earlier in the day, was throbbing.

  That night my dreams were a deranged and torturous eternity. I was lost in the blackness of the jungle. This was no ordinary nightmare. The sensation of terror was so grave I wondered how I could survive. I prayed for light, begging my mind to wake, tossing and turning in my bed, while the force of some inner tide dragged me toward darkness.

  7

  The Descent

  Roosevelt was in grave danger. The skin around his wound had become red, swollen, hot, and hard, and a deep, pus-filled abscess had formed on the soft inner portion of his lower thigh. . . .

  —CANDICE MILLARD, DESCRIBING FORMER PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN THE RIVER OF DOUBT

  Something was horribly wrong. I was awake but couldn’t open my eyes. I tried to sit up, but pulling my face from the pillow caused pain so devastating that tears welled in my closed eyes. I blindly felt my way to the bathroom, where I used water to emulsify the powerful crust that held my face to the fabric of the pillow. Nearly fifteen minutes passed before I was free. As I laid the pillow down I saw that it was covered in the red and yellow streaks of pus and blood. In grim curiosity I lurched toward the bathroom to the sink and stepped back a few paces to where the morning sun illuminated my face in the mirror.

  What I saw was a face indeed streaked in flowing blood and festering yellow-green pus. Deep recesses in the skin had been hollowed out during the night and now changed the landscape of my face completely. Where I had shaved above my lip the night before, a field of numerous fluorescent bubbles was now growing. Several mosquito bites had become volcanoes of pus as well. And it wasn’t just my face; much of my body was covered in the painful, red, yellow, and green bull’s-eyes.

  The following days are a feverish haze in memory. I stayed in bed and could barely eat. With a temperature peaking at over 104.5 at times, I thought I was dying. I was living in abject fear that I would never see my family again.
The illness poisoned my dreams, turning them into horrible nightmares that lingered even in consciousness. Suddenly the remoteness of Las Piedras felt altered; jungle stretching for unbroken miles in every direction had turned from freedom to grim finality.

  Pedro appeared after two days and was shocked by my condition. The moment he saw my face he set up camp at the station. It scared me that he was trying to hide his emotions, and would sneak glances at me, in disbelief at how ravaged my skin had become. He cared for me as best he could and provided numerous jungle remedies. Nothing worked. We listened for boats on the river, my only way to help, but heard nothing for days.

  The thought of leaving my anteater made my throat tighten, but it seemed inevitable. She was restless and frustrated that I wouldn’t allow her to lie on me or lick my face, but I was adamant for fear that she could catch the infection. I tried making her sleep in a spare room by herself but she hated it.

  During my last night at the station she came to find me, poking her head under the mosquito net and purring. I woke and walked to the bathroom and Lulu followed, bumping tiredly along the deck in the moonlit night, just wanting to stay close. Together we returned to the main deck and then to the room, where her sleeping box lay. With front paws on the rim of the wooden side, she turned and delivered an affectionate nuzzle, which I accepted despite the pain. Climbing inside the box she paced tight circles, as was her custom, continuing around for several laps before falling into position with her tail over her nose. Scratching her belly and talking gently, I let her nibble a finger and hug my arm with her claws, before tucking her in with her own bushy tail. It was the last time I saw her.

  When the faint sound of an approaching boat finally did come it was at 5:20 A.M. Pedro sprinted down to the river and begged them to take a sick passenger. After they agreed he sprinted back up to the station to grab my pack and disappeared, shouting over his shoulder on the way back down to the boat that it was now or never.

  I stumbled through the chilly morning, making for Lulu’s room to wake her and say goodbye. But she wasn’t there. No amount of hoping, praying, or pleading changed that fact. Heartbroken and bitterly crushed, I made my way down to the river and piled onto the boat. Pedro smiled as he waved me off, and I tried to smile back.

  Once again I was traveling alone on the Las Piedras, but this time I was not surrounded by a family. Barely able to lift my head, I looked around to see the unflinching scowls of the roughest men I had ever seen. One was emaciated, one fat, one had a thick mustache like a black squirrel’s tail, one was old with prickly white stubble, and another was young, maybe in his mid-twenties. They were dressed in camouflage from head to foot and armed to the teeth; it took me a moment to realize what about them made my insides churn.

  As we sped with the current I looked around. Piled under the bow of the boat were seven or eight massive yellow-footed tortoises, like the one Lulu had battled, bound in their shells by balsa bark restraints. To my left was a blanket roll that encased the feathers of several freshly killed macaws. The rolled skin and decapitated head of a monster black caiman baked in the sun amid a cloud of black flies. In a shadowed box a live infant macaw was captive. The men had cut down the tree, killed the parents, and taken the chick. Two live pale-winged trumpeters were fastened to a beam, and in the shadows of the bow tied by its ankle was a baby spider monkey. Around the boat were bags of Brazil nuts, buckets of butchered meat, bags of charcoal, and other loot unidentifiable from my position. They were poachers.

  Throughout the world there are various kinds of poachers, ranging from the poor farmer who sneaks into a protected area trying to nab some extra meat for the family pot, up to the highly organized and well-funded war criminals who shoot elephants with rocket launchers. These guys were a grade below the baddest, but they were definitely professionals.

  The sun crucified my wrecked skin in the open-topped canoe. Winding through the jungle, we sped down the rapid waters of the swollen river. During this time I drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point, moving to the bow, I offered water to the baby spider monkey that was taking refuge in the shade below. With wide, jet-black eyes the tiny primate denied the offer, instead grabbing my finger and making desperate distress calls. Its mother lay crumpled and charred, stuffed into a pot in the front of the boat.

  I knew that what these guys were doing was threatening the entire Madre de Dios. At one point the oldest of the men unwrapped the body of a blue-and-yellow macaw, which he held by the joint of the wings, glistening blue jade in the sun. Even in death the bird was so massive and flawlessly brilliant that it barely looked real. It wouldn’t take very many crews like this one to wipe out macaws in the Madre de Dios; in fact the birds are an easy shot when feeding on the riverside clay licks. If the macaws disappeared the tourism industry would be hurt, and as a result employment would go down. Without jobs in conservation, many locals would return to extraction of resources like gold, timber, and wildlife. It’s a simplistic example but illustrates how effects can snowball and repeat. This was the front lines of the extinction crisis.

  I had grown up seeing photos and reading stories about the elephants in Africa massacred for their tusks, or rhinos blown away for their horns; tigers being exterminated for their bones. I had read of the North American bison and how before the late 1800s it had dominated the continent, in numbers that have been estimated as high as a billion. In each case there were the hunters and the buyers. Elephant tusks make luxury ornaments; rhino horns make fake medicine, as do tiger parts. Macaws make exotic pets; their feathers make exquisite decorations. Mahogany makes nice furniture. If people who bought these things oceans away only knew what they were funding . . .

  These and so many other stories were the stuff of my childhood nightmares. It rattled me to the core to imagine a world without the creatures that make it colorful. Now, on board with the poachers, I was living the nightmare. Around me the species I had tracked in the forest, photographed, and wondered over with such appreciation were cruelly butchered.

  We had traveled for three hours when one of the party said he smelled peccary, and the motorista cut the engine. We drifted to shore, where a deluge of insects began attacking both the dead wildlife aboard the boat and my razed skin. I would have remained on the boat while the men disembarked in search of the pigs but the bugs were too bad. They were laying siege to my open sores, and the pain combined with the visual of pus-filled craters swarming with feasting flies made me even sicker.

  Feebly hobbling behind them as they energetically stalked the herd, I felt my brain once again preparing to faint; the fever was unbearable. I don’t remember much from the hunt. Through the fever my mind recorded events much like it does when blackout drunk, in brief images. It must not have taken us long to find the herd, but I remember there being boar everywhere around us, perhaps seventy of them. I remember two guns roaring in tandem, transforming the jungle into a war zone. The herd of black pigs erupted in frantic terror and stampeded in every direction. Deaf except for the loud ringing of ears, I watched as two fell to the ground. Again the guns fired. More pigs fell.

  One confused boar ran toward us and fell. Peppered across his face and chest were numerous impact points where the buckshot had made contact. He fell to one side, legs running in the air as bodies everywhere writhed on the ground. Another peccary, a female, ran into the forest screaming as blood dripped from her face: the pellets had broken her skull but not enough to kill her. A piglet searched desperately for its mother nearby. The man with white stubble kicked the orphan with all his strength, sending it through the air and into a tree. In the wake of chaos came a terrible silence. The sound of the large wounded boar dying filled the air.

  Stepping over one of the injured pigs, the gnarled-looking motorista gave a rude poke to the animal’s stomach with his machete. It was still very much alive, gasping through the holes in its lungs, suffocating slowly. Shifting position and using the blunt edge of the machete’s blade, he tried to break the animal’
s skull. Crack! Each time, the blade hit the impassibly thick crown of the skull. As the blows fell, skin and blood began to fly and the impacts echoed against the dismal silence of the forest. My hand went to my forehead; the thought of what those blows must feel like brought tears to my eyes. I prayed that the hog had gone into shock long ago and wouldn’t feel its violent death.

  While the other men were skinning the pigs, the youngest one slung a gun over my shoulder and told me to follow. He wanted to go fishing. Beside a small lake, he shot a monkey for bait. The primate struggled in the vine as the life drained from her body; the poacher sat beneath a tree to roll a cigarette. Unable to control my rage, I spoke. “Esta viva—she is still alive!” I spat at him. But he only shrugged.

  Pulling the .22 from my own shoulder, I checked to see that it was loaded, drew a round into the chamber, and took aim. Fixing the sights on the monkey’s chin, I exhaled before pulling the trigger. The shot traveled upward through the center of the tiny horseshoe-shaped lower jaw of the monkey’s skull and out the top of the cranium in a spray of pink. She fell to the ground. I had never shot anything before.

  By shooting the monkey I had overstepped my welcome, and from then on the poachers grew hostile toward me. Thirty minutes later we were back on the boat with four butchered pigs and two dozen piranhas. The remainder of the day stretched on into eternity while I continued to fade in and out. Most of it was unremarkable, save for when I was awakened by gunfire. Throwing aside the tarp I was under, I rose to see the men staring at an empty beach. They explained that they had shot at a large anaconda. Thankfully, they missed. Regardless of the circumstances, my heartbeat hastened in wonder: an anaconda. My mind was too weak to dwell on it, though. Instead I descended into a deranged state, an endless ticker of random images and sound bites.