All manner of little rodents—and some South American rodents are not so little—came in the night to forage. One was the anuje, about the size of a rabbit, which our Indians hunted with bow and arrow, and which we made into a stew when they were successful. This was to be prized, as the meat was delicate, rather like a cross between chicken and rabbit. There are several species of middle-sized rodents, and also the ronsoco, which grows to be bigger than a very big pig, and is hunted for its skin, which now replaces chamois. Ronsoco makes excellent steaks, chops, and roasts.
And there were little wildcats that liked our food … the tigrillos, small, but exceeding brave, and there were bats—vampires and otherwise. When the vampires couldn’t find fresh victims, they ate whatever fruit we might have. Sandoval came back once from a distant village with a little red hen tied in the pack on his back; and as it was near Thanksgiving, I thought she would make a fine feast. To protect the precious bird, I tethered her that night to the leg of my camp cot in the cane-walled hut. However, the house was innocent of doors; and when I woke in the morning the little red hen was limp on the floor, victim of a vampire, her poor little body having been almost drained of blood.
Sandoval and I promptly administered aguardiente, which revived her, and afterward, as she gained strength, fed her liberally on whatever we had. She survived, but as a member of the household, for after her harrowing experience an dbrave struggle for existence in the jungle, we thought she deserved the Purple Heart rather than the cooking pot.
But it was really the insect life against which we wage the bitterest and most cunning of the battles. The wire from which hung the bags of food was my answer to the fascist ants. I tied little bits of cotton soaked in kerosene at each end to stop their long lines of marching armies. Apparently the commanding general sat down and thought that one over, for the next night they ascended the thatch and dropped down on our precious food supplies. Although I didn't see them, I suspect they used parachutes made of leaves with spider web strands instead of nylon ropes.
So, surveying the line of food bags, I said to Sandoval, “For breakfast we can have beans.” There always seemed to be beans. “Or rice. Or spaghetti.” (It's astonishing what you can do with spaghetti when there's nothing else in the larder.) One of the bags had a little flour left in it, and another, two eggs.
“We might,” I said, “have pancakes.” When Sandoval had brought the little red hen, he had in his pack another item almost as exciting … a tin of baking powder which he had discovered in the village bodega. It was very ancient and rusty, and apparently the only one they’d ever had; it had been there for years, since no one knew just what it was for. I had used it sparingly a few times, and decided this was the morning we might use a little more.
Of course, anything you say about the rapid growth an decay of life below the equator is bound to be cliché, or platitude; but if man bit vampire bat, I'm sure the news would have been no more startling to me than what was revealed when I opened the baking powder tin in the process of making pancakes. For the powder had grown. Instead of just half a tin, it was so full that the lettering on the top of the can was in reverse on the powder.
Sandoval courteously tried to explain what had happened chemically, but the technical Spanish was too hard to follow; so I went to the bench to get our frying pan, which I knew would have to be washed before I could use it. This was because I never cared to go to the Stream in the dark to wash the supper dishes. The little green snake may have been friendly in daytime, but. …
“Oh,”I said,“I think you'll have to take care of this.”
“Of what?”he asked.
In the frying pan was a rather large centipede which had committed suicide in cold fat. Sandoval obligingly took the pan to the stream where he washed it and thoroughly scoured it with sand.
It must have been about mid-morning that we finished the last mugs of black coffee. Our painted Indians had consumed enormous quantities of yuca an green bananas roasted in ashes; now they tucked up their long skirts about their knees and, taking bows and arrows, went off with Sandoval on expedition business. Sandoval was just then making a collection of rare butterflies and insects (in an entomologist's paradise), as well as keeping an eye open for the unknown species of silver-grey bear which was my particular interest.
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