The Story of Cai, Pooh, and Sarah Huggersack – the Only Anteater Film Star

 

 

There are not a great many different kinds of monkey found in Chaco, but while we were there we were fortunate enough to obtain a specimen of one of the rarer ones and what must be one of the strangest monkeys in the world. It is called the Douracouli and is the only nocturnal monkey known. It has enormous eyes, rather like an owl’s, and is colored silver-gray on its back with a lemon-colored tummy and chest. During the day, these monkeys sleep in hollow trees, or some other dark place, and as soon as it grows dusk in the evening they venture out and spend the whole night wandering in large parties through the forest, searching for food, such as fruit, insects, tree frogs, or birds’ eggs.

Now, when we first caught Cai, as we called her, she was very thin and miserable-looking, but a few weeks on a good diet with plenty of milk and cod-fiver oil soon put her right. Cai was a very charming little animal and though she was very tame, she was extremely nervous, and so you could not treat her in quite the same way as any other sort of monkey. I built her a nice cage, in the top of which was a square bedroom for her sleeping quarters. Cai, being like all monkeys very inquisitive, could not bear not to know all that was going on around her, so during the day she would lie half in and half out of her bedroom door, her head nodding as she dozed, but waking instantly and chirruping with curiosity should anything happen in the camp.

She refused all food except milk, hard-boiled eggs, and bananas, though she would occasionally take a lizard. She seemed, however, to be quite frightened of insects, and when I gave her a tree frog she took it in her hand, smelled it, dropped it with an expression of disgust, and then wiped her hand vigorously on the side of the cage. Toward evening, she would become very lively and be quite ready for a game, bounding up and down in her cage, her big eyes shining and reminding me of the galagos that I had collected in West Africa. She displayed a great deal of jealousy toward the other animals, if we took any notice of them, and particularly of a crab-eating racoon, called Pooh.

Pooh was a strange little creature with great flat paws and a black mark across his eyes that made him look not unlike a giant Panda. Pooh always wore a very dismal expression and looked as if everything depressed him, but it was his large hands with their long thin fingers that we had to watch, for he could push them between the bars of his cage and steal anything within reach with the greatest of ease, and he was so curious that he would do his very best to get hold of almost anything. He would lie for hours on his back in the corner of his cage, plucking in a thoughtful sort of way at the hairs on his large tummy. When he grew tame, we could put our hands inside the cage and play with him. He used to love these games, pretending to bite, rolling over and kicking his big paws in the air. When he grew very tame, we made him a little collar and used to let him out on a very long rope tied to a stick in the middle of the camp clearing. We had another stick farther along, to which Cai, the monkey was tied. The very first thing in the morning, when Pooh saw the food basket arriving, he would start uttering his loud complaining screams for food, and in sheer desperation we would have to give him something to keep him quiet. If we did this, Cai would become jealous, and when it came to her turn to be fed she would sulk, turning her back on us and refusing the food. Strangely enough, Cai was rather afraid of Pooh, though she would not at all mind a pair of baby deer whose little pen was near to her stick, and she would frequently go and lie quite close to the bars while the deer sniffed at her in an astonished sort of manner. Another thing that she was frightened of was snakes. When I brought back the anaconda, whose capture I mentioned in a previous chapter, and took him out of his sack to examine him, Cai, who was sitting in the bottom of her cage, took one look and fled up to her bedroom, much to our amusement, where she sat, peering timidly round the door and uttering horrified twittering noises.

 

 

One morning, as we were cleaning out the cages, a young Indian came into the camp and asked if we would like to buy an animal from him. We asked him what sort of an animal it was and he explained that it was a baby fox. We thought it might be interesting to take a look at it, so we told him to bring it along later in the day. As he did not turn up, we thought he had forgotten all about it, and that we wouldn’t get our baby fox after all. To our surprise though, just before luncheon the following day, he came into the camp, dragging some small creature behind him. This was our long-promised baby fox. In appearance he was very like an Alsatian puppy, and he was so frightened that he was inclined to snap. We put him into a cage and gave him a plateful of meat and milk, and left him to calm down. We then sat back and watched him very carefully. The thing that seemed to interest Foxey was to see which of our tamer animals, which came near to his cage, he could get hold of. Although he was bloated with food he was constantly on the lookout for an even tastier dish. We had a number of tame birds at that time which were allowed to wander freely round the camp, but we soon had to alter this as every now and then we would hear squawks and have to rush to the rescue of some bird which had approached too close to the fox’s cage. Later on, as he became even tamer, we also had him out on a lead with Pooh and Cai, but with large distances between them.

To our astonishment, he used to act in exactly the same way as a dog, for when we arrived in the morning he would whine excitedly until we went to talk to him, whereupon he would dance round and round our legs and wag his tail vigorously, a most unfox-like thing to do.

 

 

Among the specimens we brought back to camp from one of our trips were three large green parrots, all very talkative and full of mischief. At first, we put them all in one cage, thinking that they would be perfectly all right together. Almost immediately the three parrots began to fight, and the noise was so great that we were forced to take out the ringleader and put him in a separate cage. We thought this would create a better atmosphere in the camp once more. We had reckoned without one of the other two. He apparently spent all his spare time gnawing frantically at the wire on the front of his cage, and one day there was a terrific burst of chattering and the bird flew off. We made great efforts to capture it, but he was too quick for us and flapped away over the trees, screaming excitedly. That, we thought, was the end of our parrot. When we got up the following morning, we were amazed to see the parrot back again, sitting on top of his cage, talking to his companion through the wire. When we opened the door, he hurriedly went into the cage again. He had obviously decided that the amount of food he was getting with us made captivity a better proposition than living in the forest.

 

 

Shortly before we left Paraguay to return to England, an Indian brought in what turned out to be our most delightful specimen. It was a baby giant anteater which could only have been a few days old. We christened her Sarah Hugger-sack because at that age she would spend all her time clinging to her mother’s back, and so when she came to us she wanted to cling on to us all the time, or hug a sack. Sarah had to feel she was holding on to something, and if you put her on the ground she would stagger after you, making loud protesting honking noises, and as soon as you stopped she would scramble up until she was in her favorite position lying across your shoulders. Owing to the fact that she had such long sharp claws and also that she could grip so hard with them, this was a very painful procedure.

We had to feed Sarah on a bottle. She would take four bottles of milk during the day and very soon learned how to suck from it. While she was drinking, she would allow her long, sticky snakelike tongue to protrude, so that it dangled down alongside the bottle. She grew quite rapidly and soon looked upon us as her adopted parents and would have great games with us after taking her food. Sarah liked to be rolled on her back and have her stomach scratched. If you lifted her up and tickled her under the armpits, she would lift both her paws and clasp them over her head, like a boxer who has just won his fight. At other times, if you pulled her tail or tickled her ribs, she would rear up on to her hind legs and fall on you, uttering loud snuffling noises of pleasure.

When I eventually arrived back in England, Sarah was one of the first to go with Pooh and Cai to live at Paignton Zoo where she became a great character. The last time I saw Sarah was when I was giving a lecture at the Festival Hall on animal collecting and showing the colored film of the trip to Paraguay and Argentina. As Sarah was one of the stars of the film, I wrote to Paignton Zoo and asked if it would be possible for her to come up and appear with me on the stage. The authorities kindly consented to this, and so on the morning of the lecture Sarah Huggersack accompanied by her keeper traveled up on the train from Devon. When she arrived at the Festival Hall she was given a special dressing room all to herself, which had been kept nice and warm for her arrival. She behaved very well, and at the end of the lecture my wife carried her on to the stage. Sarah was a great success doing all her tricks on the stage, and ended up by walking over to the table and leaning against it to scratch herself. Afterward she received any number of admirers in her dressing room, and I think that her success rather went to her head, for I heard that when she got back to the zoo, the keeper could do nothing with her for several days, as she refused to be left and cried piteously if she was alone in her cage. I think I can safely say that Sarah is the only anteater film star in the world, and though perhaps not as beautiful as some, she certainly has a lot of personality.

 

 

So our collecting trip to Paraguay and Argentina ended, but a collector has no sooner finished one trip than he starts thinking about the next one, and, as I write, I am making plans for another expedition. This time I hope to go to the Far East. It is always a difficult thing to choose your next collecting ground, for there are so many wonderful places in the world to see and so many extraordinary animals to capture that you generally spend some weeks hesitating before you pick a spot on the map.

One thing a collector knows however, is that wherever he goes in the world he is sure to meet a great array of fascinating little creatures which are perhaps elusive to capture and difficult to keep. They may cause him much anxiety and sometimes a great deal of trouble, but they will always be interesting and amusing, and when he eventually returns to this country, he will look upon them not merely as a collection of rare specimens but more like a big family.

 

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