146 THE JAGUAR. 



difficulty in picking up a peccary than in knocking down a monkey. For the little, active, 

 sharp-tusked peccary is even more swinishly dull than is usual with its swinish relatives, and, 

 being too thick-headed to understand danger, is a very terrible antagonist to man or beast. It 

 seems to care nothing for size, weapons, or strength, but launches itself as fearlessly on a 

 Jaguar or an armed man as on a rabbit or a child. So, unless the Jaguar can manage quietly 

 to snap up a straggler, he has small chance with a herd of these war-like little pigs, which, if 

 they caught a Jaguar among them, would cut him so severely with their lancet-like teeth, 

 that he would ever repent his temerity, even if he escaped with his life. 



One of the easiest animals to obtain is that huge and timid rodent, the capybara, which is 

 not sufficiently swift of foot to escape by flight, nor agile of limb to bound out of reach of its 

 enemy, nor furnished with natural arms with which to defend itself against his assaults. 

 Should it take to the water, and so endeavor to elude pursuit, the Jaguar is in nowise discon- 

 certed, for he is nearly as familiar with that element as the capybara itself, and thus seldom 

 fails in securing his prey. When the Jaguar strikes down a large animal, such as a horse or 

 a deer, it performs its deadly task in a very curious manner. Leaping from some elevated 

 spot upon the shoulders of the doomed animal, it places one paw on the back of the head and 

 another on the muzzle, and then, with a single tremendous wrench, dislocates the neck. With 

 smaller creatures, the Jaguar uses no such ceremony, but with a blow of the paw lays its prey 

 dead at its feet. 



With the exception of such ajiimals as the long-tailed lizards, the food of the Jaguar is of 

 a nature that human hunters would not disdain, and in many instances would meet the appro- 

 bation of a professed epicure. Of turtles and their eggs the Jaguar is particularly fond, and 

 displays great ingenuity and strength in the securing, killing, and eating such impracticable 

 animals as turtles. Any one who has handled a common land tortoise would be wofully 

 puzzled if he were ordered to kill that strong mailed creature without the aid of tools, and still 

 more bewildered, were his only meal that day to consist of the flesh that was locked in so hard 

 and impenetrable a covering. As to a huge turtle in the vigor of active health, scuttling over 

 the sandy shores, throwing up showers of blinding dust with its flippers, and ready to snap at 

 an intruder with its sharp-edged jaws, he must be a powerful man who would arrest the 

 unwieldy creature in its onward progress, and a very clever one who would make a dinner 

 upon the flesh of the reptile. 



Yet the Jaguar contrives to catch, kill, and eat the turtle, displaying in this feat equal 

 strength and ingenuity. 



Watching a turtle as she — for it is generally the female turtles that are made the Jaguar' s 

 prey — walks riverwards, or seawards, as the case may be, after depositing her eggs under a 

 slight covering of earth, there to be warmed into being by the genial rays of the sun, the 

 Jaguar springs upon the creature as it is slowly making its way to its familiar element, and 

 with a quick and adroit movement of the paws, turns the turtle on its back. There the poor 

 reptile lies, helpless, and waiting until its captor is pleased to consummate his work by killing 

 and eating the animal which he has thus ingeniously intercepted. The Jaguar needs no saw 

 to cut through the bony shell, nor lever to separate the upper from the lower portion, nor 

 knife to sever the flesh from the bones, for Ms paw stands him in the stead of these artificial 

 instruments, and serves his purpose right well. Tearing away as much as possible of the 

 softer parts that lie by the tail, the Jaguar inserts his supple paw, armed with its sharp talons, 

 and scoops out, as neatly as if cut by knives, the flesh, together with the vital organs of the 

 devoted chelonian. The difficulty of this task can only be rightly appreciated by those who 

 have undertaken a similar task, and have achieved the feat of removing the interior of a 

 tortoise or turtle without separating the upper and under shells. 



The eggs of the turtle are nearly as important to the Jaguar as is the flesh of the mother 

 turtle herself. After inverting the maternal turtle, the Jaguar will leave her in her impotent 

 position, and going to the shore, coolly scoop out and devour the soft leather-covered eggs 

 which she had deposited in the sandy beach in vain hopes of their seasonable development by 

 the warm sunbeams. 



Birds are simply struck down by a single blow of the Jaguar' s ready paw ; and so quick 



