In Which I Hunt with the Gauchos

 

 

Now I should like to tell you about my most recent collecting trip. I returned recently from a six months’ expedition to the Argentine and Paraguay. Argentina is a country that has an absolutely fascinating animal life, totally different from that found anywhere else in South America. As nearly the whole country is composed of the vast grasslands called the pampas, naturally all the creatures are adapted to life on these open plains. The pampas in the Argentine are remarkably flat; standing at one point, you can see the great grassland stretching away as smooth as a billiard table until it mingles with the sky on the horizon. In the long grass grow the giant thistles that resemble the English thistle, except in size. Here they grow to a height of six to seven feet, and to see large areas of the pampas covered with them in bloom is a wonderful sight, the green grass appearing to be covered with a sort of purple mist.

Hunting for animals in this open grassland is not quite as easy as it might at first appear. To begin with, most of them live in holes and venture out only at night. Secondly, there is very little cover in the way of bushes or trees, and so the quarry can generally spot the hunter some way off. Even if he does not, he will probably be warned by the spur-winged plover who, from the collector’s point of view, is quite the most irritating bird of the pampas. They are very handsome-looking, somewhat like the English plover, with their black and white plumage, and are always seen in pairs. They have remarkably good eyesight and are extremely suspicious, so that when anything unusual comes within their range, they rise off the ground and wheel around and around, giving the shrill warning cry of “tero... tero... tero, ” which puts every animal for miles around on its guard.

One of the commonest creatures found in these great grassy areas is the Hairy Armadillo. These animals live in burrows which they dig for themselves, and which may extend anything up to thirty or forty feet beneath the surface; and, when they venture forth at night, if anything disturbs or alarms them, they make a beeline for their burrows and dive down to safety. Naturally, the best time to hunt for them is at night, and preferably a night when there is little or no moon. We would go out from the ranch house, in which we were staying, and ride our horses to a suitably remote spot. From then on we would go on foot, armed with torches, following the two hunting dogs who were experts in finding these little beasts. You have to be able to run very fast when hunting armadillos, for the dogs generally scamper off some distance ahead, zig-zagging about with their noses to the ground. As soon as they find one, they give tongue, and the quarry is off, racing back to the safety of his burrow. If this is close by, there is little chance of catching him. On our first night out hunting armadillos, we managed to catch some other members of the pampas fauna at the same time.

We had walked about two miles, wending our way carefully among the giant thistles, which could prick like the spikes of a porcupine if we brushed too close to them, when, suddenly, the dogs could be heard barking ahead of us and we all broke into a run, scrambling and jumping over the tussocks of grass and dodging in and out of the thistles. It was so dark that on more than one occasion I ran straight into a clump of thistles, and so by the time I reached the place where the dogs were sniffing around their quarry, I was thoroughly pricked all over. The dogs were clustered at a respectable distance around something in the grass, and upon switching on our torches we saw, standing there very defiantly, a creature about the size of a cat, neatly clad in black and white fur, and with a handsome black and white bushy tail that stuck up straight in the air: it was a white-backed skunk.

He watched us without the slightest trace of nervousness, obviously convinced that he was more than a match for us and the dogs. He would occasionally utter a little sniff and then give two or three small bounds towards us, bouncing on his front feet. If we ventured too close, he would turn around and present his bottom to us, peering over his shoulder in a warning manner. The dogs, who were well aware that the skunk would spray them with his powerful, foul-smelling scent, had kept a discreet distance from him, but while the creature was showing off to us, one of the dogs, rather unwisely, seized the opportunity to rush in and try to bite him. The skunk jumped straight up into the air and, in the same movement, wheeled round, so that his back was toward the dog, and the next minute the dog was rolling over and over in the grass, whining and rubbing his face with his paws, while the cold night air was filled with the most pungent and disgusting odor imaginable. Even though we were some distance away, it made us reel back, coughing and gasping, with tears running down our cheeks, rather as though we had taken a deep sniff at a bottle of ammonia. After this exhibition of his powers, the skunk trotted towards the dogs and gave one or two little skips in their direction that sent them all scuttling out of his way. Then he turned about and did the same thing to us, and we scuttled just as fast as the dogs had done. Having broken the circle around him, the little animal flicked his handsome tail up and down a couple of times and then sauntered off through the grass with an air of smug satisfaction.

We decided that we had no particular desire to get on more intimate terms with him, so we called the dogs and went on our way. The dog that had been squirted by the skunk continued to smell horribly for three to four days after this encounter, although the odor gradually wore off; but as we proceeded on our way the strong scent of the skunk, clinging to his coat, followed us through the night. Catching skunks to keep in captivity is a difficult job. If their scent glands are left in, every time they are frightened they are liable to squirt everyone indiscriminately. These glands can be removed by a very simple operation, but this can only be done really successfully with a young specimen.

Some little time later, the barking of the dogs once more set us off on a wild scamper among the grass and thistles, and now we found that our pack had discovered an armadillo who was scuttling along as fast as his short legs could carry him toward his burrow, while the dogs, yelping wildly with excitement, ran alongside, trying to bite his back, but making no impression upon his armor-plated hide. He was easily captured, for we just simply ran up behind him, gripped him by the tail and hoisted him into the air, and we soon had him safely inside a sack. Greatly cheered with our first capture, we eagerly carried on, hoping to catch another one, but our next meeting was with a totally different creature.

We were close on the heels of the dogs, passing a small thicket of bushes, when a rather rat-shaped creature dashed out and disappeared among the thistles. The dogs set off in pursuit, and we were not far behind when we saw them catch up with the creature and snap at it, whereupon it fell down dead. The men called off the dogs and we approached the corpse. It proved to be a large opossum: an animal with a body about the size of a small cat, with a long rodent-like face. The body was covered with a brindled chocolate and cream colored fur, the tail was long and resembled that of a rat, and the ears, like those of a miniature mule, were bare. When I complained to the men that the dogs had killed him, they all laughed uproariously and told me to look closer. Sure enough, when I shone my torch on him, I could see that he was still breathing, though doing it very quietly, so that it was almost imperceptible. I found that I could move him about, even turn him upside down, and he still remained limp and, to all intents and purposes, as lifeless as could be, but in reality this was his method of defence, for he hoped that eventually, thinking him to be dead, we would go away and leave him to make good his escape. When we were putting our captive into a bag, however, he became alive to the fact that I had not been taken in by his trick, and wriggled and struggled, spitting through his open mouth like a cat and biting savagely at us. Later on we caught any number of these creatures and all of them, with the exception of the very young ones, who obviously hadn’t yet learned the trick of feigning death, tried to deceive us in exactly the same way.

On our way back to the ranch the dogs found yet another Hairy Armadillo and, this time, I was treated to a display of the little animal’s great strength. He was not far from his burrow when the dogs found him, and we were fairly close, but by the time we had caught up with him he had reached the mouth of his tunnel. One of the men flung himself forward in a magnificent flying tackle and caught hold of the armadillo’s tail just as he disappeared into the earth. Another man and I threw ourselves, panting, alongside the first, and each of us grabbed one of the armadillo’s hind legs. Now, only the forequarters of the beast were inside the tunnel, yet by digging his claws into the earth and by hunching his back and wedging it against the top of the burrow, he prevented the three of us from pulling him out, although we tugged and struggled as hard as we could. It wasn’t until the fourth member of our party arrived on the scene and with the aid of his hunting knife cut away some of the turf that we were able to haul out the little creature. Then out he came, like a cork out of a bottle and with such suddenness that we all fell on our backs and lost our grip on him, so that he nearly made his escape the second time.

These two armadillos, which we had caught, very soon settled down and grew remarkably tame. I kept them in a cage which had a separate sleeping compartment; and they would spend the whole day lying there on their backs side by side, their jaws twitching, and uttering strangled snores. It was amazing how deeply they slept, for one could bang on the cage, shout at them, and even prod their pink, wrinkled tummies, and still they would lie there as if dead. The only way to rouse them was to rattle a food pan and, however gently this was done, they would both be wide awake and on their feet within the blinking of an eye.

All the species of armadillo in South America are used as food. I never had the opportunity of trying one, but I believe that when carefully roasted inside their shells – naturally after having been killed first – they taste like roast suckling pig and are quite delicious. Many of the gauchos (South American equivalent of the North American cowboys) catch these little animals and keep them in barrels full of earth as a sort of larder, so that on special occasions they will be able to have roast armadillo.

As we were making our way home with our first captives, in the still night air I heard the distant sound of hoofbeats on the turf, gradually coming nearer and nearer, and then stopping suddenly within a few feet of us. It was rather a weird sensation, and I wondered for a moment if it might be the ghost of some old gaucho forever galloping across the pampas. On asking my companions where the horse was that I thought I could hear, they all shrugged and in unison said “Tucotuco.” It was then I realized what had caused the peculiar sound. The tucotuco is a little animal about the size of a rat with a round, plump face and a short furry tail. He excavates enormous galleries just below the surface of the pampas and in these he lives, coming out only at night in search for the plants and roots on which he feeds. This strange little beast has very sensitive hearing, and when he catches the vibration of footsteps on the turf above his home, he gives out his warning sound, to let all the other tucotucos in the district know that there is danger about. How he produces this excellent imitation of a galloping horse is a mystery, but it may be his cry which, distorted by distance and echoes in his burrow, takes on the odd clop-ping quality of a galloping horse. Incidentally, tucotucos are very wary little beasts, and though we tried by many different methods to capture them, I was never successful in obtaining a specimen of this little creature which must be one of the most common of the pampas fauna.

 

 

While we were staying in the Argentine, one of the things I particularly wanted to do was to make a film of an old-fashioned gaucho hunt. The old style of gaucho hunting has nearly died out now, though many of the men still know how to do it. The animal, or bird, is pursued by men on horseback. Their weapons consist of the deadly boleadoras which are three balls attached to three lengths of string, all of which are joined together. These are whirled around the men’s heads and then thrown. As they strike the quarry’s legs, each ball on its cord swings round in a different direction, thus entangling the beast and bringing it to the ground.

There is a relative of the ostrich that lives in South America called the rhea. It is not such a big bird as its African cousin, and its plumage is ash-gray instead of black and white, but the one thing that they both have in common is an ability to run extraordinarily fast. This bird used to be the chief quarry for this type of hunting in the days when rheas were found in vast flocks living on the pampas. On the ranch of a friend of mine there was still quite a large number of these birds living, and my friend offered to ask the gauchos if they would organize a rhea hunt, so that I could film it.

We set off early one morning; I in a small cart with a camera and other photographic apparatus, the gauchos riding on their magnificent horses. We made our way out across the pampas for some miles, weaving in and out of the thickets of the giant thistle. Presently, we disturbed a pair of spur-winged plovers who leaped into the air and flew around us, giving their alarm call, and, to our annoyance, warning every living creature for miles around of our approach. They accompanied us as we made our way forward, keeping an eye on us and keeping the pampas informed of our progress. We had reached a large thicket of thistle plants when we were suddenly warned by ear-splitting cries from one of the gauchos that our quarry was at hand. Standing up in the cart, I could see a grayish shape dodging quickly among the thistles, and then, quite suddenly, the first rhea leapt out on to the open grass. He came bounding like a ballet dancer out of the thistles, stopped for one brief moment to look at us and then streaked off, his head and neck stretched out, his large feet almost touching his chin with each step. Quickly, one of the gauchos galloped out of the thistles and endeavored to cut him off. The rhea seemed to stop in mid-stride, twirled around like a top and dashed off in the opposite direction, taking huge bounding strides, which made it look as though he were on springs. He was very soon lost to sight, with the gauchos in hot pursuit. Before we had time to follow, another bird made its appearance out of the thistles. I could see this was a female, because she was much smaller than the previous one and a much lighter gray. To my surprise, she did not rush off in pursuit of her mate, but stood on the grass, dithering anxiously from one foot to the other. There was a crackling among the thistles and I saw the reason for her delayed flight. Out of the thistles scrambled her babies, ten of them, each standing about eighteen inches high and with round fat bodies, half the size of a football, balancing on thin stumpy legs and great splayed feet. They were covered with fluffy down and neatly striped with fawn and cream. They all clustered round their mother’s feet, and she glanced at them lovingly. Then she trotted off across the pampas, running almost in slow motion, so that her babies strung out in a line behind her could keep up with her. As we had no wish to chase and frighten her, we turned the cart around and made our way in the opposite direction.

It was not long before one of the gauchos came galloping up to the cart, his eyes shining, to tell us that not far ahead he could see quite a large flock of rheas crouching in the thistles. He explained that if we went in the cart in a certain direction and I set up the camera, he and the other gauchos would surround the birds and drive them towards me, so that I could film them. We set off, the cart bouncing and swaying over the tussocks of grass and eventually came to the edge of the huge batch of thistles in which the rheas were hiding. Here I could get a clear and uninterrupted view of the grassland, and it was a suitable place to set up the camera. While I took light readings and got everything ready for the filming, my Argentinian friend had to stand holding a Japanese paper parasol over me and the camera, as the sun was so fierce that a few minutes’ exposure to it would make the camera terribly hot, which would ruin the color film.

When all was ready I gave the signal, and in the distance we could hear the loud whoops of the gauchos as they urged their horses into the prickly thistles, and the scrunch and crackle of the horses’ hooves treading the brittle plants underfoot. Suddenly an extra loud chorus of yells warned us that the rheas had jumped up and had started to bolt for it, and within a few seconds five of them crashed out of the thistles and started to run across the grass. They ran as the first one had, with their chins almost touching their shins, and seemed to be traveling as fast as they were able, but I was soon to learn differently. No sooner had the gauchos thundered out on to the turf in pursuit, whirling their boleadoras around their heads with a shrill whistling sound, than all the rheas suddenly seemed to tuck in their bottoms and shoot forward as though they were jet-propelled, nearly doubling their speed within two or three paces. They very soon vanished across the pampas, and the cries of the huntsmen and the beating of the horses’ hooves faded into the distance.

I knew that the gauchos would finally catch up with them, surrounding the birds and driving them back toward me again, and within a quarter of an hour I was once again treated to the sight of the flying rheas speeding across the turf, their feet thumping on the hard ground, while the hunters galloped close behind, uttering shrill cries which mingled with the swishing of the boleadoras. The birds were still running in a bunch, spread out roughly in V-formation. When they were about a hundred yards away, however, one of them swerved and started running straight toward the cart where I was standing with the camera. One of the gauchos galloped in pursuit to try to round him up and get him back to the flock. He urged his horse closer and closer to the flying bird, and the closer he got the more worried the rhea became, in fact, he was so concerned with his pursuer that he failed to notice the cart, myself, and the camera. I was looking through the viewfinder and beginning to get a little worried, for he still had not appeared to notice me. It was such a wonderful scene that I did not dare stop filming, but at the same time I had no particular desire to be hit amidships by several hundred pounds of rhea traveling at about twenty miles an hour. At the very last moment, when I felt sure the bird, camera, tripod, and myself were going to go down in a tangled heap in the grass, the rhea caught sight of me. He gave a horrified look and twirled around skillfully and dashed off at right angles.

When I measured the distance later, I found that the hunted bird had been within six feet of the camera, but this swerving that he had been forced to do lost him the short lead that he had on the gaucho. The boleadoras whistled and swooped through the air, twined themselves round the rhea’s powerful legs and he collapsed in a heap in the grass, flapping and kicking. The gaucho was off his horse in an instant and, rushing forward, grabbed the threshing legs. He had to do this very skillfully and, once having obtained a grip on them, had to hold on tight, for one well-aimed kick of those large feet could quite easily have disembowelled him. After having examined and obtained close-ups of our catch we unwound the boleadoras from his neck and legs, and for a few seconds he lay limply in the grass, but then bounded to his feet and trotted off into the thistles in an unhurried manner, joining his companions.

On our way back from the ranch, well pleased with our filming, we came across a rhea’s nest: it was just a slight depression in the earth, with ten large bluish-white eggs in it. They were still warm, so the male, who does the work of hatching them out, could only just have left, maybe on hearing our approach although they are usually very fierce and dangerous during the nesting period. The gauchos told me that two or three females may use one of these nests in which to lay their eggs, so that you may find up to twenty or twenty-five eggs in a nest belonging to several mothers. The father rhea does all the incubating, so all the mothers have to do is to deposit their eggs in the nest and from then on father takes over and sits on them until they hatch out, whereupon the mother takes charge of the babies to give them their schooling.

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

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