Which Describes the Giant Caiman and the Shocking Electric Eel

 

 

Keeping my animals in Georgetown was very good from a number of points of view: it was an excellent source from which to obtain food for my collection and also, by going down to the market, some nice new specimens brought in by traders from outlying districts could be picked up. There, too, I was also within fairly easy reach of the airport, and this meant that consignments of delicate creatures could be sent off regularly to England by air. The creatures that travel best by airplane are the reptiles, and so every two weeks or so, I would pack up several big boxes full of a mixed assortment of frogs, toads, tortoises, lizards, and snakes, and get them driven down to the airport.

Sending reptiles by air is very different from sending them by sea. To begin with, they are packed in another way. To send off, say, a consignment of snakes, you need a large, light wooden box; you place each snake in a small cotton bag, tying up the opening firmly with string; then, drive nails into the sides of the crate and hang the bags from these. In this way, you do not have to worry if one kind of snake is going to eat another, for they are all separated and yet can be sent in the same box. The air trip from Guiana to England took about three days, and all the snakes had to have during that time was water, for these reptiles can go for long periods without food and come to no harm. My snakes were given a good feed the day before their departure, and they would lie curled up in the little cotton bags, digesting the meal; by the time they had finished it, England would have been reached.

Frogs and toads and the smaller lizards were also sent in bags, and much the same rules applied to them. But for the larger lizards, such as the green iguana, special crates were necessary, and into each one we put five or six iguanas and gave them a lot of branches, wedged inside the box, so that they would have a plentiful supply of footholds on which to cling. Baby caiman, I found, travel very successfully by air, but the bigger ones did not take to it at all, and, quite apart from this, they weighed so heavily in their wooden crates that the freight charges were enormous: so most of the big caiman came back with me on board the ship.

The smallest caiman I caught in Guiana measured a little over six inches in length, and he must have been quite newly hatched. The largest one measured over twelve feet and was not nearly so tractable. He was caught in a big river up in the northern savannas, a river full of enormous electric eels and hundreds of caiman. Upon hearing that a zoo in England wanted a particularly large caiman, I decided that this was the spot to try to catch one. Just below the place where I was staying, the river had hollowed out a small bay in the bank, and opposite to this bay, about a hundred and fifty yards away, was an island, and it was there that these creatures spent their time.

The trap that I used to catch them in was very primitive but most effective: two long, heavy native canoes were pulled up on to the little beach of the bay, so that they were halfway out of the water and about a yard apart from each other, leaving a channel between them: in this channel I fitted up a noose attached to a bent sapling. Also attached to the bent sapling was a big hook with a dead and extremely smelly fish on it. To get at the fish, the caiman would have to stick his head through the noose, and as soon as he attacked the fish the small sapling would be released and, springing upward, would draw the noose tightly round him. The other end of the rope was made fast to a big, strong tree on the bank some six feet above. I set my trap late one evening, but thought it very unlikely to make a catch much before the next day.

That night, just before going to bed, I felt it might be a good idea to go down and make sure that the trap was still set and ready, and, my friend joining me, we walked together down to the river bank, through the dark strip of woodland. Drawing near to the place where the trap was set, we could hear the most peculiar noise, a dull thudding sound, but could not make out what it might be. On reaching the bank, though, we soon saw what was causing it. An enormous caiman had crawled up the channel between the two boats, and, just as I had hoped, had stuck his head through the noose and pulled at the fish, and the rope had fastened tightly round his neck. Looking over the bank and shining our torches downward, we could see the gigantic reptile writhing and splashing between the two boats which he had pushed far apart in his struggles. His great mouth was opening and closing with a thud, like a chopper on a block, and his thick tail was lashing from side to side, churning the waters to foam and thumping against the sides of the two boats so that it was a wonder he had not smashed them in. The rope round his neck was fastened to a tree on the top of the bank, near where we were standing, and it was stretched taut, and each time his great weight pulled on it we could hear it humming with the strain. The tree itself was shaking and quivering with the caiman’s efforts to free himself, and continued to shudder when the caiman unexpectedly lay still in the foaming water, as if he had exhausted himself; and then I did an extremely silly thing.

Leaning over the bank, I took hold of the rope with both hands and started to haul it toward me. As soon as he felt the movement on the rope, the caiman renewed his efforts with the utmost vigor. The rope twanged taut again, and I found myself jerked over the edge of the cliff, hanging there more or less in mid-air with my toes on the extreme edge and my hands grabbing the rope. I realized that if I let go and fell, it would mean crashing straight down on to the reptile’s scaly back, where, if not bitten by his huge jaws, I would most certainly be brained by a blow from his mightily muscular tail. All I could do was to cling to the rope, and presently my companion managed to lay hold of it too. This enabled me to get a foothold on the bank and haul myself back to safety, and we both let go of the rope. At once, the caiman lay still again, and we decided that the best thing to do would be to return to the house and collect more rope to tie him up with, since we felt that if we left him all night with just that one rope round his neck, he would eventually, in his struggles, break it and escape. We hastened back and collected all the things we needed. Then, carrying two lanterns and several torches, we went again to the river. The caiman was lying still, blinking up at us with his large eyes, each of which was the size of a walnut. The first thing to do was to put his great toothed jaws out of action, and for that purpose a noose was gently lowered, flipped over his snout, pulled tight and fastened to the tree. While my companion held the lights, I crawled down into one of the boats, and after a certain amount of trouble, managed to get another noose over the caiman’s tail and work it down to the very base near the hind legs, where I worked it tight. This rope was also fastened to the tree. Thus, having three ropes on him, and feeling that the caiman was reasonably safe to be left, we retired to bed.

The next morning, together with some natives, we went down to the river and began to work out a plan for getting the huge reptile out of the water and up the steep bank to the top, where he could be picked up by a jeep. The natives had brought along with them a long, thick plank, and this we tried to slide under the reptile so that he would be lying lengthways upon it. However, he was in such shallow water that we could not maneuver the plank under him, for his belly was buried in the mud. The only thing to do was to loosen the rope and float him out a yard or two into deeper water where we could push the plank under him with greater ease. This we did, and bound him to the plank with coil after coil of rope round his nose, his tail and his short powerful legs. The next job was to get him out of the water and up the bank. It took twelve of us an hour and a half to accomplish this, for we were working on sticky clay, and every time we managed to haul the great bulk of the caiman up a few inches, we would have to pause and, then to our dismay, he would slide back again to his original position. It was hard work, but we succeeded in pushing him right up to the top of the cliff and over on to the short, green grass where we surrounded him, covered with clay from head to foot and dripping wet, and very pleased with ourselves.

 

 

Another river creature which created quite a lot of bother was the electric eel. This occurred when I was collecting down in the creek lands. My friend and I had been out all day in a big canoe, paddling up and down the remote waterways, visiting various Amerindian villages and buying whatever pets they had for sale. We bought, among other things, a tame tree porcupine and, at the last village, had discovered a wicker basket containing a half-grown electric eel. This, too, I bought and was very pleased at the addition to my collection, since it was the first of these creatures that I had obtained. We settled ourselves in the canoe and started homewards, tired but pleased at having had such a successful day. I was sitting up in the bow with the tree porcupine curled up asleep between my feet. Farther along in the bow was the electric eel wriggling hopefully round and round his wicker basket. Behind me sat my companion and behind him, the two paddlers in the stern of our rather unsafe craft.

My attention was first drawn to the escape of the eel by the tree porcupine, who in a complete panic, endeavored to climb up my leg and would, if allowed, have continued right up to my head. Wondering what on earth was the matter, I handed him to my companion while I had a look round in the bow of the canoe to see what had frightened him. Peering down I saw the electric eel coming toward my feet in a very determined manner. It gave me such a fright that I jumped straight up in the air and the eel passed under me, and I landed once more in the canoe, fortunately without overturning it.

The creature meanwhile wriggled toward my friend. I shouted to him to watch out, and he, holding the porcupine in his arms, tried to stand up and get out of its way, failed, and fell flat on his back in the bottom of the canoe. The electric eel slid past my friend’s struggling body and headed for the first paddler. He, too, when faced with the eel, was no braver than we; he dropped his paddle and prepared to abandon ship. The situation was saved by the very last occupant, the second paddler. He was apparently quite used to finding electric eels in canoes in midstream, for he simply leaned forward and pinned the creature to the bottom of the craft with his paddle. I threw him the basket, and with a few quick movements he had managed to scoop the eel back inside it. We all felt very relieved and even started to make jokes about it. The rescuer handed the basket with the eel in it to his fellow paddler, who in turn, handed it to my friend. As he was about to pass it to me, the bottom fell out and the eel was once more among us. This time, luckily, it fell draped over the side of the canoe like a croquet hoop. It gave a quick, convulsive wriggle, there was a splash and our electric eel had disappeared into the dark waters of the creek.

It was a disappointing end to what had been an exciting quarter of an hour, but later on we were able to obtain several more of these creatures, so we did not regret its loss. A big electric eel is capable of producing quite a considerable amount of current, and has been known to kill even horses and men while they were crossing rivers in various parts of South America. The organs for producing the electricity are situated along each side of the creature’s body; in fact, almost its entire length is a gigantic battery. The eel swims along, looking rather like a large, thick black snake, and when it suddenly comes upon a fish it stops short, its whole body seems to shudder, and you see the fish twitch and curl up and then float gently down, either paralyzed or dead, while the eel darts forward and sucks it into his mouth whole and always head first. Sinking to the bottom of the creek, he will lie there meditating for a few minutes, and then shoot upward, stick his nose above the water and take a lungful of air before continuing his search for another victim.

 

 

 

Part Three

 

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