CHAP. IV] COATIS 107 



up and down, at every step, for the trees were tangled 

 in a network of vines and creepers. Some of the vines 

 were as thick as a man's leg. Mosquitoes hummed 

 about us, the venomous fire-ants stung us, the sharp 

 spines of a small palm tore our hands — -afterward some 

 of the wounds festered. Hour after hour we thus 

 walked on through the Brazilian forest. We saw 

 monkeys, the common yellowish kind, a species of 

 cebus ; a couple were shot for the museum and the 

 others raced off among the upper branches of the trees. 

 Then we came on a party of coatis, which look like 

 reddish, long-snouted, long-tailed, lanky raccoons. They 

 were in the top of a big tree. One, when shot at and 

 missed, bounced down to the ground, and ran off through 

 the bushes ; Kermit ran after it and secured it. He 

 came back to find us peering hopelessly up into the 

 tree-top, trying to place where the other coatis were. 

 Kermit solved the difficulty by going up along some 

 huge twisted lianas for forty or fifty feet and exploring 

 the upper branches ; whereupon down came three other 

 coatis through the branches, one being caught by the 

 dogs and the other two escaping. Coatis fight savagely 

 with both teeth and claws. Miller told us that he once 

 saw one of them kiU a dog. They feed on all small 

 mammals, birds, and reptiles, and even on some large 

 ones ; they kill iguanas ; Cherrie saw a rattling chase 

 through the trees, a coati following an iguana at full 

 speed. We heard the rush of a couple of tapirs as they 

 broke away in the jungle in front of the dogs, and 

 headed, according to their custom, for the river ; but 

 we never saw them. One of the party shot a bush deer 

 — a very pretty, graceful creature, smaller than our 

 whitetail deer, but kin to it, and doubtless the southern- 

 most representative of the whitetail group. 



