Horacio Quiroga

“ And up and down the river the shiners darted, streaking the surface with tiny black wakes, so fast did they move. The rays began coming out from the mud, from under the stones, from the mouths of the brooks, from all along the river. They assembled in solid masses, almost, around the island, bent on keeping the panthers back at whatever cost. And meanwhile the shiners came streaming up and down past the island, raising new recruits and ready to give the word when the panthers appeared. ”

“ The coral snakes all ran toward her with their lanterns, and held the lightning bugs up so close that they could see the feet of the flamingo as clearly as could be.
“Aha! Aha! Stockings, eh? Stockings, eh?” The coral snakes began to hiss so loudly that people could hear them on the other side of the Parana.
The cry was taken up by all the snakes: “They are not wearing stockings! We know what they have done! The flamingoes have been killing brothers of ours, and they are wearing their skins as stockings! Those pretty legs each stand for the murder of a coral snake!” ”

“ Whales are big fish, they shoot water up through their noses, and it falls down on them behind.”
At this news, the little alligators began to scream at the top of their lungs, “It’s a whale! It’s a whale! It’s a whale!” and they made for the water intending to duck out of sight.
But the big alligator cuffed with his tail a little alligator that was screaming nearby with his mouth open wide. “Dry up!” said he. “There’s nothing to be afraid of! I know all about whales! Whales are the afraidest people there are!” And the little alligators stopped their noise. ”

“ They did not sting because they had no stingers! There are bees like that, you know, in South America.
Not content with the few drops that were slowly oozing out of the cracks in the bags, the little deer now broke all the nests down and ate every bit of the honey in them; then, leaping and jumping with pride and delight, she hurried home to tell her mother all about it.
But the mother deer frowned severely:
“Look out for bees’ nests, my child!” she exclaimed earnestly. “Honey is very good to eat; but it is dangerous to get at it. Keep away from all the nests you see!” ”

“ Why shouldn’t I go looking for eggs down along those fences on the farm?”
And just as he was saying this all to himself, what should he hear but the song of a strange bird: “Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo”; coming from far, far away and from the direction of the farmhouse.
“My, did you ever hear a bird sing so loud?” said the cublet to himself. “What a big bird it must be! And its eggs must be the size of a cocoanut!”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo-oo-oo,” came the bird’s song again. The hungry little raccoon just couldn’t do without one of those eggs the size of a cocoanut. ”

“ He did not succeed in catching the bird but he did tear out every single feather in Pedrito’s tail.
“There!” said the jaguar, “go and get your bread-and-milk! Nice papa! Nice papa! Lucky for you I didn’t get my paws on you!”
Terrified and smarting from pain, the parrot took to his wings. He could not fly very well, however; for birds without a tail are much like ships without their rudders: they cannot keep to one direction. ”

“ HOW THE RAYS DEFENDED THE FORD In South America there is a river called the Yabebirì; and it flows through the city of Misiones. In this river there are many rays, a kind of mud fish like the salt-water skate; and the river, indeed, gets its name from them: “Yabebirì” means the “river of ray fish.” The ray is a wide, flat fish with a long, slender tail. The tail is very bony; and when it strikes you it cuts, and leaves poison in the wound.
There are so many rays in the river that it is dangerous even to put your foot into the water. I once knew a man who had his heel pricked by a ray. ”

“ The man gave a great cry of joy; for the river hog was quite a distance ahead of the panthers, and he would be ashore by the time they began to wade again. And the river hog did get there in no time. The man was too weak to move much; so the river hog pulled him around by the collar so that he lay facing the panthers. In this position the man loaded the rifle and took aim.
The rays, meanwhile, were heart broken. Crushed, scratched, bruised, bleeding, worn out from struggling, they saw that they had lost the battle. The panthers were almost over to the island. ”

“ Never before was there such a bee for working from morning till night, day in, day out, gathering pollen and honey from the flowers. When Autumn came she was the most respected bee in the hive and she was appointed teacher of the young bees who would do the work the following year. And her first lesson was something like this:
“It is not because bees are intelligent but because they work that makes them such wonderful little things. I used my intelligence only once—and that was to save my life. ”

“ Where have you been keeping yourself all these years,” said the Sturgeon, surprised and pleased to hear his old friend’s voice. “Sorry I didn’t know it was you! How goes it? What can I do for you?”
“We’ve come to ask you for that torpedo you found, remember? You see, there’s a warship keeps coming up and down our river scaring all the fish away. She’s a whopper, I’ll tell you, armor plate, guns, the whole thing! We made one dam and she knocked it down. We made another and she blew it up. The fish have all gone away and we haven’t had a bite to eat in near onto a week. ”

“ Thus the hunter lay for a week or more, struggling between life and death and kept alive only by the herbs the tortoise brought him. And then one day, to the joy of the faithful animal, the man sat up in his sleeping bag. The fever had left him and his mind was clear. He looked around in surprise to see the water and a bundle of grasses near him; for he was quite alone, save for the big turtle that still seemed to be sleeping in her corner.
“Alas, I am lost!” he moaned. “No one will ever come to me. The fever will return, and I cannot get any medicine nearer than Buenos Aires. ”

“ How can we let the rays down there know we must prevent the panther from crossing at any cost?”
But a little ray, who was a very bright and clever little fish, spoke up and said:
“Get the shiners to carry a message! Shiners can swim like lightning; and they too ought to be grateful to the man for stopping those bombs!”
“That’s it! That’s it! Let’s send the shiners!”
A school of shiners happened to be just going by; and the rays sent them off with a message to all the rays along the river:
“Sting the she-panther if she tries to cross! Hold the ford against the she-panther!” ”

“ It is true the Sturgeon has never liked us alligators; but I got along with him pretty well myself. He is a good fellow, at bottom, and surely he will not want to see us all starve!”
The fact was that some years before an alligator had eaten one of the Sturgeon’s favorite grandchildren; and for that reason the Sturgeon had refused ever since to call on the alligators or receive visits from them. Nevertheless, the alligators now trouped off in a body to the big cave under the bank of the river where they knew the Sturgeon stayed, with his torpedo beside him. ”

“ By that time the panthers were tired out and had gone back to the shore they came from, where they sat down to rest and to lick the stings on their paws.
Not one of them had been able to cross the ford, however. But the rays were in a terrible plight. Thousands of them had been killed; and those that still remained were about tired to death.
“We cannot stand a second attack like this one,” said the rays. “Hey, shiners! Go up and down the river again, and bring us reenforcements! ”

“ Besides, parrots are very good to eat when they are nicely broiled. At least the farmers of South America think so. That is why people hunt them a great deal with shotguns.
One day the hired man on this farm managed to shoot the sentinel of the flock of parrots. The parrot fell from the tree top with a broken wing. But he made a good fight of it on the ground, biting and scratching the man several times before he was made a prisoner. You see, the man noticed that the bird was not very badly injured; and he thought he would take it home as a present for the farmer’s children. ”

“ On that account, the flamingoes are always at war with the fishes. As they wade up and down, and a fish comes up too close in order to shout “Red legs” at them, they dip their long bills down and catch it if they can.
THE LAZY BEE In a beehive once there was a bee who would not work. She would go flying from blossom to blossom on the orange trees sucking out all the honey. But instead of taking it back to the hive she would eat it then and there.
She was a lazy bee. Every morning, the moment the sun had warmed the hive, she would come to the door and look out. ”

“ However, a wildcat ate one of them; and the second, a female, had to live her childhood without a playmate.
She was such a beautiful little creature, nevertheless, that all the mother deers in the forest wished she belonged to them; and to show their affection they were always nipping gently at her ribs with their lips.
Every morning when the little deer got up out of bed, her mother would make her say the catechism which all deers learn when they are babies:
I. I must smell of each green leaf before I eat it; because some green leaves are poisonous. ”

“ Some other animals are not hurt at all. But this snake had bitten “Seventeen” right through an artery; and he had died, not of the poison, but from loss of blood.
The mother raccoon and her two cublets wept over his body for a long time; then, since they could do nothing further for him, they left the cage where he had been so happy and went back to the woods. But they kept thinking all the time: “What will the two man cubs say when they find that their little playmate is dead? They will probably be very, very sad and cry a long time!” ”

“ Meantime the other bees would be working themselves to death trying to fill the hive full of honey; for honey is what they give the little bees to eat as soon as they are born. And these worker bees, very staid, respectable, earnest bees, began to scowl at the conduct of this shirker of a sister they had.
You must know that, at the door of every beehive, there are always a number of bees on watch, to see that no insects but bees get into the hive. These policemen, as a rule, are old bees, with a great deal of experience in life. ”

“ At each shot a panther fell dead on the sand or sank drowning under the water. The shooting did not last more than a minute and a half, however. After ten or a dozen panthers had been killed, the others swam back to the opposite shore and ran off into the woods.
The panthers that were killed in the water, sank to the bottom where the horn-pouts ate them. Others kept afloat, and the shiners went down the Yabebirì with them, all the way to the Parana, having a great feast off panther meat, and jumping and hopping along the top of the water to express their delight. ”

“ Tan!” of the little deer, who remained his loyal friend all her life.
THE ALLIGATOR WAR It was a very big river in a region of South America that had never been visited by white men; and in it lived many, many alligators—perhaps a hundred, perhaps a thousand. For dinner they ate fish, which they caught in the stream, and for supper they ate deer and other animals that came down to the water side to drink. On hot afternoons in summer they stretched out and sunned themselves on the bank. But they liked nights when the moon was shining best of all. ”

“ Cublets, there is one thing more you must all be afraid of: dogs! dogs! Never go near a dog! Once I had a fight with a dog. Do you see this broken tooth? Well, I broke it in a fight with a dog! And so I know what I am talking about! ”

“ You see, the rays had never been to school; and they said “not never” and “not nothing” the way children sometimes do and never ought to do, not never!
“Well, we’ll see!” said the panther, with another great roar; and he ran up the bank to get a start for one great jump. The panther understood that the rays were packed close in along the shore; and he figured that if he could jump away out into the stream he would get beyond them and their stingers, and finally reach the wounded man on the island. ”

“ One day a man from the Zoo met him on the street and said:
“You ought to go and live an out-of-door life for a while. Now, I have an idea. We need a collection of new specimens for our museum, and you are a good shot with a gun. Wouldn’t you like to go up into the Andes and hunt for us? I will pay for your outfit, and get a woman to look after your little brothers. It will not cost you very much, and there will be plenty of money left for the boys.” ”

“ All that time when the little raccoon had been waiting in the woods for night to come, so that he could go down to get his eggs in the hen coop, the man who owned the farmhouse had been playing with his children on the lawn in the yard. One of them was a little girl five years old; and the other was a little boy six years old. Both had golden hair. They were chasing their father about and falling down every so often on the grass. Then they would get up again and run some more. The man would also pretend to fall and the three of them were having a splendid time. ”

“ The children called him Pedrito; and Pedrito learned to hold out his claw to shake hands; he liked to perch on people’s shoulders, and to tweek their ears gently with his bill.
Pedrito did not have to be kept in a cage. He spent the whole day out in the orange and eucalyptus trees in the yard of the farmhouse. He had a great time making sport of the hens when they cackled. The people of the family had tea in the afternoon, and then Pedrito would always come into the dining room and climb up with his claws and beak over the tablecloth to get his bread-and-milk. ”