‘How did that brute get out?’ he inquired.
‘Ripped the bars off. I’ll have the cage ready in a second, and then you can help me catch him.’
‘I must say you’ve done your best to make this trip a memorable one,’ said Bob bitterly. ‘Never a dull moment. Just like a Butlin’s Holiday Camp. First anacondas, then piranhas, and now sloths. . . .’
Cuthbert had greeted Bob’s appearance with joy and had cunningly worked his way round the room until he gained his objective, the feet. Having reached them he lay across them and prepared for sleep.
When I had finished the cage I got an empty sack and approached the sloth, who was still groping helplessly around with his arms. As soon as he saw me coming he rolled over on to his back and prepared to do battle, lashing out with his claws and hissing like a kettle through his open jaws. After several attempts to get the sack over his head I decided that Bob had better enter the fray.
‘Get that stick and attract his attention the other way,’ I directed. ‘Then I can get the sack over him.’
Bob shuffled the indignant Cuthbert off his feet and then reluctantly approached the sloth, armed with the stick. Cuthbert followed him. Bob made a pass at the sloth, and it immediately rolled over and made a pass at him. Bob stepped backwards and tripped over Cuthbert. I flung the sack while the beast’s attention was distracted, and to my surprise it landed neatly over his head. I leapt at him, and with one hand I grabbed at that part of the sack that I hoped concealed the scruff of his neck, while with the other I tried to seize his front legs. I only succeeded in getting one front leg, and unfortunately I grasped it too high up. Before I realised my mistake and could let go the massive claws had contracted, snapping down like the blade of a pocket-knife and trapping my fingers in a vice-like grip. To make matters worse I discovered that I had not got him by the scruff of the neck, and at any minute I expected to see his head come out from under the sack, and to feel those yellow teeth embedded in my arm. Judging by the hissings that were coming from inside the sack his temper had not been improved by my attack. Bob and Cuthbert had by now disentangled themselves, in a state of mutual hostility, and so I implored my companion to hand me the stick; thus armed I felt better.
‘If you can open the door of his cage I think I can lift him in,’ I said.
Bob did so, and just as I was trying to hoist the sloth up and carry him across the room, the sack fell off and his head came into view. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to thrust the stick across his jaws. His mouth snapped shut, and his teeth splintered the wood with the most bloodcurdling sound. I tried to lift him off the floor with my trapped hand, while keeping the stick in his mouth with the other. Just as I was succeeding in this very delicate juggling feat, Cuthbert came and lay down across my feet. I revolved slowly round, Cuthbert pursuing my ankles with delighted peetings, while the sloth dangled from one hand, chewing morosely at the stick and giving furious hisses at intervals.
‘Can’t you remove this damn bird?’ I said angrily to Bob, who was leaning against the wall and laughing hysterically. ‘If you don’t hurry up I shall get bitten.’
Tearfully, Bob chased Cuthbert away, and I staggered across the room and tried to get the sloth in through the door of the cage. But, during the struggle, he got his hind feet hooked round the bars, and no amount of pulling would make him let go.
‘Instead of standing there and laughing you might come and try to unhook this blasted animal,’ I said.
‘You’d laugh too, if you could see yourself,’ replied Bob. ‘I particularly liked that pirouette you did with Cuthbert. Very elegant.’
Eventually we got the sloth back into his cage, soothed Cuthbert and retired once more to our hammocks. The next day I got some wire netting, and by the time I had finished with it, the sloth’s cage was more difficult to break out of than Dartmoor.
The sloths have been subjected, since earliest times, to more gross misrepresentation than any other South American animals. They have been described as lazy, stupid, malformed, slow, ugly, in constant pain owing to their peculiar structure, and a host of other things. A fairly typical account is that given by one Gonzalo Ferdinando de Oviedo, quoted in Purchas Pilgrims:
There is another strange beast, which, by a name of contrary effect, the Spaniards call cagnuolo, that is, the Light Dogge, whereas it is one of the slowest beasts in the world, and so heavie and dull in moving, that it can scarcely goe fiftie pases in a whole day: they have foure subtill feete, and in every one of them foure clawes like unto birds, and joyned together: yet are neither their clawes or their feet able to susteine their bodies from the ground. . . their chiefe desire and delight is to cleave and sticke fast unto trees, or some other thing whereby they may climbe aloft. . . and whereas I my selfe have kept them in my house, I could never perceive other but that they live onely on aire: and of the same opinion are in like manner all men of those regions, because they have never seene them eate any thing, but ever turne their heads and mouthes towards that part where the wind bloweth most, whereby may be considered that they take most pleasure in the ayre. They bite not, or yet can bite, having very little mouthes: they are not venemous or noyous any way, but altogether brutish, and utterly unprofitable, and without commoditie yet knowne to man.
Thus does Oviedo, with an almost journalistic skill, give a most inaccurate picture of the sloth. Firstly, the sloth is not such a sluggard that it can only accomplish ‘fiftie pases’ in a day. Travelling at full speed I should imagine that it could cover several miles in a day, providing, of course, that its path from tree to tree was clear. But the truth of the matter is that the sloth has no burning ambition to go dashing madly about the forest; so long as he is in a tree that provides him with ample food he is quite content to stay there. Oviedo goes on to make those very disparaging remarks about the sloth’s arms and legs. He condemns these appendages because, as he points out, they are unable to ‘susteine’ the body from the ground. Now the sloth is not a terrestrial animal, but strictly arboreal; it will not descend from the trees unless it is absolutely necessary, and, when it does, it finds walking difficult or almost impossible because its legs are adapted for life in the trees. You cannot expect a sloth to run about the ground like a deer, any more than you would expect a deer to swing nimbly about in the branches of a tree. However, instead of praising the sloth for its wonderful adaptation to an arboreal existence, Oviedo busily points out that it cannot walk on the ground, a thing it has no desire to do and is quite unfitted for.
Having made the poor animal feel self-conscious about its legs and arms, Oviedo then goes on to say that it lives on air. One can only presume that he did not try to feed the one that he kept in his house, or else that he offered it the wrong things, for sloths as a rule have quite a hearty appetite. He then dismisses the whole sloth population on the grounds that because they are of no use to man they are no use at all. The belief that all animals were placed on earth purely for man’s convenience was, of course, usual in Oviedo’s time, and still lingers on today. There are still many arrogant bipeds who believe that an animal should be exterminated as quickly as possible if it is of no direct use to mankind as a whole, and themselves in particular.
The great Buffon launched a description of the sloth in his Natural History, and it was even worse than Oviedo’s. According to him sloths were nothing more nor less than a gigantic error on the part of nature; the sloth was without weapons of offence or defence, it was slow, in constant pain and extremely stupid. All these are the results, he says, of the ‘strange and bungling conformation of creatures to whom nature has been unkind, and who exhibit to us the picture of innate misery.’
Shortly after our night fight with the two-toed sloth we procured a specimen of the second species of sloth found in Guiana, the three-toed sloth. The two animals were so totally different in appearance that at first sight they did not appear to be related at all. They
were about the same size, but the three-toed had a remarkably small, rounded head with tiny eyes, nose, and mouth in comparison to its body. Instead of the sparse, shaggy brown fur of the two-toed, this sloth was clad in a coat of thick ash-grey hair, which was of a curious texture, like dry moss. On its legs this hair was so thick that it made them look twice as strong as the two-toed’s legs, whereas in reality they were much weaker. On its back, lying across the shoulder blades, was an area of dark hair shaped like a figure of eight.
Having both these species together gave me an ideal opportunity to compare their habits, and I found that they differed as much in these as in their appearance. The two-toed, for example, would sleep hanging beneath a branch, in the proper sloth manner, its head tucked between its forelegs and resting on its chest; the three-toed preferred to find a forked branch, and it would then fit itself into the fork, clinging to one branch with its feet and resting its back against the other. The two-toed, as I have described, was more or less helpless on the ground, but the three-toed, on the other hand, could hoist itself up on to its legs and crawl about, walking with the massive claws turned in and the legs bent, looking like a very old man suffering from acute rheumatism. Its progress was slow and quivering, it is true, but it could get from one place to another. Up in the trees, however, the situation was reversed, the two-toed being quick and agile, whereas the three-toed was slow and hesitant, and tested each new branch carefully before trusting its weight to it. As it had demonstrated on the night of its escape, the two-toed had a savage and untrustworthy nature, whereas its relation could be handled with complete safety, even when freshly caught.
Finding the three-toed so tame I removed it from its cage the day after its arrival to examine it for a phenomenon, which I very much wanted to study at first hand. Bob, finding me with the animal in my lap, assiduously searching its fur, not unnaturally wanted to know what I was doing. When I told him quite truthfully that I was looking for vegetation he refused to believe me. I explained at great length that I was not joking, but it was only long afterwards when we had another sloth brought in that I could convince him of the truth of my explanation. The hair of a sloth has a fluted or roughened surface, upon which flourishes a vegetable – a form of algae – that gives the hair a distinctly green tinge. It is the same type of plant that one sees growing on rotten fences in England, and, of course, in the warm, damp atmosphere of the tropics it grows luxuriantly on the sloth’s fur and gives him a wonderful protective colouring. This association between a vegetable and a mammal is quite unique.
I found that the bad-tempered two-toed sloth was the easier to keep in captivity, for it lived quite happily on a diet of pawpaw, banana, sliced mango, as well as several varieties of leaves, including the ever-present hibiscus. But the three-toed would only feed on one kind of leaf and stubbornly refused all others, so that feeding was quite a problem. Being very primitive creatures sloths are able to go for long periods without food if they want to; the record appears to belong to a three-toed specimen in a zoo that once fasted for a month without any ill-effects. They can also survive injuries, which would prove fatal in any other animal, and can even take large doses of poison without apparently suffering any harm. This ability to survive injuries, as well as their slow and deliberate movements, makes them strangely reptilian creatures.
Oviedo, in his discourse on sloths, makes the following statement regarding their cries:
Their voice is much differing from other beasts, for they sing onely in the night, and that continually from time to time, singing ever sixe notes one higher than another, so falling with the same, that the first note is the highest, and the other in a baser tune, as if a man should say, La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, Ut, so this beast saith, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.... even so the first invention of musicke might seeme by the hearing of this beast, to have the first principles of that science, rather than by any other thing in the world.
Now I can say nothing regarding the operatic achievements of Oviedo’s sloths, but I know that my specimens did not make any noise that tallied with his description. I spent many long hours in my hammock at night, refraining from sleep, in the hopes that they would start practising scales, but they were as silent as giraffes. The two-toed made the loud hissing noise already referred to when it was annoyed, and the three-toed made a similar, though fainter, sound, supplementing it occasionally with a dull moaning grunt, as though it was in agony. Judging from these sounds alone I would hesitate to conjecture with Oviedo that the art of music was derived from the song of the sloth.
In my absorption with the Bradypodidae family I had completely forgotten about the moonshine uwarie. When Bob reminded me that in three days we were due to return to Georgetown to deposit our cargo, I suddenly realised that it might be my last chance of getting one of these opossums, so I hastily raised its market price once again and dashed up and down the main street of Adventure interviewing anyone who seemed to have any sort of hunting qualifications, imploring them to get me a moonshine uwarie. But when the day of our departure arrived no one had brought me a specimen, and I was sunk in the deepest gloom.
To get our collection down to the steamer jetty we had hired a massive, elongated cart drawn by a dejected-looking horse. It drew up in the road outside our hut, and Bob and I proceeded to load it up with our cages of creatures. There were boxes full of teguxins and iguanas, small bags full of snakes and sacks full of anacondas, cages of rats and monkeys and sloths, Cuthbert peeting wildly from behind bars, cages of small birds and great tins of fish. Lastly, there was the pungent Didelphys opossums’ box. The cart, piled high with this cargo, creaked and rattled off down the road. We had sent Ivan on ahead so that he could arrange a place for the animals on the upper deck of the steamer.
Bob and I walked slowly alongside the cart as it rattled down the white dusty road, dappled with the shadows of the trees that grew alongside. We waved good-bye to the various inhabitants who had come out of their houses in order to wish us a good journey. Presently we passed the last houses of Adventure and started down the long stretch of road that led to the river bank and the jetty. We were halfway to the river when we heard someone shouting in the distance, and turning round I saw a small figure running down the road after us, frantically waving one hand.
‘Who’s that?’ inquired Bob.
‘I don’t know. Is he waving to us?’
‘Must be . . . there’s no one else on the road.’
The cart rumbled on its way, and we stood and waited. ‘He seems to be carrying something,’ said Bob. ‘Maybe we left something behind?’
‘Or something fell off the cart.’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
We could see now that it was a small East Indian boy who was pursuing us; he came down the road at a jog-trot, his long black hair flapping around his shoulders, and a broad grin on his face. In one hand he carried a length of string to which was attached something small and black.
‘I believe he’s got an animal,’ I said, starting up the road to meet him.
‘Good Heavens, not more animals,’ groaned Bob.
The boy came to a panting halt in front of me and held up the string. On the end dangled a small black animal with pink feet, a pink tail, and a pair of George Robey eyebrows in cream-coloured fur, elevated in permanent surprise above a pair of fine dark eyes. It was a moonshine uwarie.
When my enthusiasm had died down somewhat, Bob and I searched our pockets for money to pay for the opossum, and then we realised that Ivan had got all our small change. But the boy was quite willing to walk the odd half-mile to the jetty for his money, so we set off. We had not gone far when an awful thought struck me:
‘Bob, we’ve got nothing to put this in,’ I said, indicating the dangling opossum.
‘Won’t it be all right like that until we get to Georgetown?’
‘No, I’ll have to get a box for it. I can rig up a cage on board.’
And where are we going to get a box from?’
‘I’ll have to go back to the shop for one.’
‘What, go back all that way? The steamer’s due in any minute now; you’ll miss it if you go back.’
As if to add weight to his words there came the distant hootings of the steamer from down the river. But I had already started to run back to Adventure.
‘Hold it up till I get back,’ I yelled.
Bob gave a despairing gesture with his arms and then set off at a brisk trot towards the jetty.
I fled back to Adventure and staggered into the shop, imploring the startled shopkeeper for a box. With commendable presence of mind he asked no questions, but merely tipped a host of canned goods out on to the floor and handed me the box they had been in. I rushed out of the shop and was well down the road before I noticed that the East Indian boy had accompanied me. He padded up alongside me and grinned.
‘Give me the box, Chief,’ he said.
I was only too glad to let him carry it, for the opossum, annoyed by all this unaccustomed activity, was getting belligerent and trying to climb up the string and bite me. The boy carried the box on his head, while I ran along juggling wildly with the opossum. The road was hot and dusty, and I was pouring with sweat; several times I was tempted to stop and get my breath, but each time I was spurred on by a hoot from the steamer.
I rounded the last corner almost dead-beat, and saw the steamer lying alongside the jetty, a churning mass of foam around her, and a gesticulating crowd at the gangplank that included Bob, Ivan, and the captain of the vessel. I dashed up the gangplank, clutching the opossum and the box to my bosom, and leant against the rail, gasping for breath. The gangplank was drawn in, the steamer hooted and shuddered as she drew away from the jetty, Ivan hurled the necessary money across the gap to the little East Indian, and we were off up the river before I had fully recovered.
Three Singles to Adventure Page 6