Story of two coati puppies and two human puppies, by Horacio Quiroga

Historia de dos cachorros de coati y de dos cachorros de hombre – de Cuentos de la selva de Horacio Quiroga – 1918 – Translated from Spanish into English by Enzo Martinelli – Sotry of two coatti puppies and two human puppies – Jungle Tales

©️ Enzo Martinelli 2024

Once upon a time there was a coati who had three puppies. They lived in the bush eating fruits, roots and birds’ eggs. When they were up in the trees and felt a big noise, they would drop to the ground headfirst and run away with their tails up.

Once the puppies were a little older, their mother gathered them one day on top of an orange tree and spoke to them like this:

-She said, “Coatis, you are old enough to find food for yourselves. You must learn this, because when you are old you will always be alone, like all coatis.

The eldest of you, who is a great hunter of cockroaches, can find them among the rotten sticks, because there are many cockroaches and cockroaches there. The second, who is a great eater of fruits, can find them in this orange grove; until December there will be oranges. The third one, who wants to eat nothing but birds’ eggs, can go everywhere, because everywhere there are birds’ nests. But never go looking for nests in the field, because it is dangerous.

Coatis: there is only one thing they should be very afraid of. They are the dogs. I fought with them once, and I know what I am telling them; that is why I have a broken tooth. Behind the dogs always come men with a great noise, which kills. When you hear this noise nearby, throw yourself headlong to the ground, however high the tree may be. If they don’t do so, they will surely shoot them dead.

Thus spoke the mother. Then they all got down and separated, walking from right to left and from left to right, as if they had lost something, because that’s how coatis walk.

The eldest, who wanted to eat husks, searched among the rotten sticks and the leaves of the weeds, and found so many that he ate until he fell asleep. The second, who preferred fruit to anything else, ate as many oranges as he wanted, because that orange grove was in the bush, as it is in Paraguay and Misiones, and no living man could disturb it. The third one, who was crazy about birds’ eggs, had to walk all day to find only two nests: a toucan’s, which had three eggs, and a turtledove’s, which had only two. All in all, five small eggs, which was very little food; so that when evening came, the coati was as hungry as in the morning, and he sat down very sad on the edge of the mountain. From there he saw the field, and thought of his mother’s recommendation.

-Why doesn’t mother want me to go and look for nests in the field,” he said to himself, “why doesn’t she want me to go and look for nests in the field?

He was thinking like that, when he heard, far away, the song of a bird.

-What a loud song,” he said in admiration. -What big eggs that bird must have!

The song was repeated, and then the coati began to run through the bush, cutting across the path, for the song had sounded far to his right. The sun was already setting, but the coati flew with its tail raised. He reached the edge of the hill at last and looked out over the field. Far away he saw a house of men, and he saw a man in boots leading a horse by the rope. He also saw a very large bird singing, and then the coati slapped his forehead and said, “What a fool I am! Now I know what bird that is. It’s a rooster: mother showed it to me one day, from the top of a tree. The roosters have a very beautiful crowing and they have many hens that lay eggs. If I could only eat hens’ eggs!

It is well known that nothing pleases the little critters of the bush so much as hen’s eggs. For a while the little coati remembered his mother’s recommendation. But desire got the better of him, and he sat down on the edge of the hill, waiting for the night to close so he could go to the henhouse.

The night closed at last, and then, on tiptoe and step by step, he made his way to the house. He got there and listened attentively: there was not the slightest noise. The littl coati, mad with joy because he was going to eat a hundred, a thousand, two thousand chicken eggs, entered the henhouse, and the first thing he saw right at the entrance was a chicken egg, a splendid egg that was alone on the ground. He thought for a moment of leaving it for last, as a dessert, because it was such a big egg; but his mouth watered, and he sunk his teeth into the egg.

As soon as she bit him, THRAC, a terrible blow in the face and an immense pain in the muzzle.

-Mama, mama! – He cried out, mad with pain, jumping on all sides. But it was fastened, and at that moment he heard the hoarse barking of a dog.

……

While the coati waited on the edge of the hill for the night to close well to go to the chicken coop, the man of the house was playing on the grass with his children, two blond creatures of five and six years old, who ran laughing, fell down, got up laughing again, and fell down again. The father fell in too, to the great joy of the boys. They finally stopped playing because it was already dark, and the man said: “I’m going to set the trap to catch the weasel that comes to kill the chickens and steal the eggs.

And he went and set the trap. Then they ate and went to bed. But the creatures were not sleepy, and they jumped from one’s bed to the other’s and got tangled in each other’s nightgowns. The father, who was reading in the dining room, let them do it. But the boys suddenly stopped jumping and shouted: -Daddy, the weasel has fallen into the trap! Tuke is barking! We want to go too, daddy!

The father consented, but not without the children putting on their sandals, for he never let them go barefoot at night, for fear of vipers.

They went. What did they see there? They saw their father bending down, holding the dog in one hand, while with the other he lifted by the tail a coati, still a small coati, which screamed with a very fast and shrill screech, like a cricket.

-Dad, don’t kill him,” said the creatures. -It’s too small! Give it to us!

-Well, I’ll give him to you,” answered the father. -But take good care of him, and above all don’t forget that coatis drink water like you do.

He said this because the children had once had a wild kitten to which they brought meat from the lunch-box every now and then; but they never gave it any water, and it died.

So they put the coati in the same cage as the wildcat, which was near the henhouse, and they all went to bed again.

And when it was past midnight and there was a great silence, the coati, who was suffering greatly from the teeth of the trap, saw, in the moonlight, three shadows approaching with great stealth. The poor coati’s heart skipped a beat when he recognized his mother and his two brothers who were looking for him.

-Mother, mother,” murmured the prisoner in a very low voice so as not to make any noise.

-I’m here! Get me out of here! I don’t want to stay, mum! And he cried disconsolately.

But in spite of everything they were happy because they had found each other, and they were giving each other a thousand caresses with their snouts.

They immediately tried to get the prisoner out. They tried first to cut the woven wire, and the four of them started to work with their teeth, but they couldn’t get anything. Then the mother suddenly had an idea, and said: “Let’s go get the man’s tools! Men have tools to cut iron. They are called limes. They have three sides, like rattlesnakes. He pushed and withdrew. Let’s go get it!

They went to the man’s workshop and came back with the file. Believing that one man alone would not have enough strength, they held the file between the three of them and began the work. And they got so excited, that after a while the whole cage shook with the shaking and made a terrible noise. It made such a noise that the dog woke up, barking hoarsely. But the coatis didn’t wait for the dog to ask for an account of that scandal, and they shot into the bush, leaving the file behind.

The next day the boys went early to see their new guest, who was very sad.

-What name shall we give it,” asked the girl to her brother.

-I know,” answered the little boy. -We’re going to name him Seventeen! Why Seventeen? There has never been a bush critter with a stranger name. But the little boy was learning to count, and perhaps that number had caught his attention.

The fact is that he was called “Seventeen and Seven”.

They gave him bread, grapes, chocolate, meat, lobsters, eggs, delicious chicken eggs. They succeeded in getting him to let him scratch his head in a single day; and so great is the sincerity of the creatures’ affection, that by nightfall the coati was almost resigned to his captivity. He thought every moment of the good things there were to eat there, and he thought of those little blond puppies of a man, who were so cheerful and good.

For two nights in a row the dog slept so close to the cage that the prisoner’s family did not dare to approach, with great feeling. And when on the third night they came to fetch the lime again to set the little brother free, he said to them: “Mom, I don’t want to leave here anymore. They give me lots of eggs and they are very good to me. Today they told me that if I behaved well they would let me loose very soon. They are like us. They are puppies too, and we play together.

The wild coatis were very sad, but they resigned themselves, promising the little coati to come every night to visit him.

Indeed, every night, whether it rained or not, his mother and siblings went to spend some time with him. The coati gave them bread through the wire mesh, and the wild coatis sat down to eat in front of the cage.

After fifteen days the little coati was on the loose, and he himself went to his cage at night. Except for a few slaps on the wrist he got for being too close to the coop, everything went very well. He and the creatures loved each other very much, and the wild coatis themselves, seeing how good those little man cubs were, had concluded to take a liking to the two creatures.

Until one very dark night, when it was very hot and thundering, the wild coatis called out to the little coati, and nobody answered them. They approached very anxious and then saw, just as they almost stepped on it, a huge snake coiled at the entrance of the cage. The coatis immediately understood that the coati had been bitten on the way in, and had not responded to their call because he might already be dead. But they were going to avenge him well. In a second, between the three of them, they drove the rattlesnake crazy, jumping back and forth, and in another second they fell on it, biting its head off.

Then they ran inside, and there indeed was the coati, lying there, swollen, with its legs trembling and dying. In vain the wild coatis moved it; they licked it in vain all over its body for a quarter of an hour. The coati finally opened its mouth and stopped breathing, because it was dead.

Coatis are almost refractory, as they say, to snake venom. The venom does almost nothing to them, and there are other animals, like the mangusta, that resist very well the venom of the vipers. Surely the little coati had been bitten in an artery or a vein, because then the blood is poisoned at once, and the animal dies. This had happened to the coati.

Seeing him like that, his mother and siblings cried for a long time. Then, as they had nothing more to do there, they got out of the cage, turned around to look for the last time at the house where the coati had been so happy, and went back into the bush.

But the three coatis, however, were very worried, and their concern was this: what were the boys going to say when, the next day, they saw their beloved little coati dead? The boys loved him very much, and they, the coatis, also loved the little blond cubs. So the three coati had the same thought, and that was to spare the boys this great pain.

They talked for a long time, and at last decided the following: the second of the coatis, who was very much like the youngest, in body and manner, was to remain in the cage instead of the deceased. As they were aware of many secrets of the house, from the stories of the little coati, the boys would know nothing; they would miss a few things a little, but nothing more.

And so it happened, in fact. They returned to the house, and a new coati replaced the first one, while the mother and the other brother took the corpse of the youngest by the teeth. They carried him slowly into the bush, and the head hung down, swaying, and the tail was dragging on the ground.

The next day the boys missed some strange habits of the coati. But as this one was as good and affectionate as the other, the creatures had not the slightest suspicion. They formed the same family of cubs as before, and, as before, the wild coatis came night after night to visit the civilized coati and sat by his side to eat bits of hard-boiled eggs that he kept for them, while they told him about life in the jungle.