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National Geographic : 1941 Sep
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The National Geographic Magazine When the houses were new, we were an noyed by fat juicy worms dropping out of the green thatching. They seemed able to squeeze in any place, and we found them be tween our sheets, in the pockets of our clothes, in books, and, in general, everywhere. One night I took my washcloth off the side of the stand, dropped it in a basin of water. and when I picked it up to soap it, out fell a big black scorpion. Fortunately I did not squeeze him when I picked up the cloth, or he would have showed me how he uses his tail! The straw baskets of freshly washed sherds were also havens for scorpions, as they liked damp spots. We saw several tarantulas, some of good size, and one little coral snake made his home under the floor of our big house. After we had lived in our houses five or six weeks, some lizards moved in with us and took over the job of cleaning up the spiders, worms, and small insects. The last weeks in camp, we still folded over the tops of our boots and put them under a chair when we went to bed, but we didn't al ways shake them out before putting them on. The pinolillos were the source of our great est personal annoyance, and made boots and pants the only practical wearing apparel. These pests, a tiny variety of tick, gather in clusters on sticks or grass stems projecting over the trails. Here they detach themselves in a brown cloud on the first passer-by who contacts them. Let alone, they soon disperse themselves over the entire body, burrow under the skin, and there set up housekeeping. If these "little brothers under the skin" are not removed the day they attach themselves, a festering sore develops that lasts about six weeks, accompanied by an itching worse than that of a mosquito bite. The mosquitoes could have been worse. In our "bug house," we smiled at them in com fort. A Strip of "Purple Carpet" There were all sizes of ants, from the tiny sugar ants to the giant leaf cutters. In seemingly endless parade the leaf cut ters passed our front doorstep, carrying their burdens vertically, like ships with green or white sails, depending on whether they had stripped a tree or were salvaging bits of chewed sugar cane. Once, while walking through a dark section of jungle, we saw what appeared to be an endless undulating strip of purple carpet. Looking closer, we saw that it was a wide parade of leaf cutters, each bearing a purple blossom detached from a near-by flowering tree. One day, when we were sitting indoors working, we suddenly heard a sound like rain beating on the thatch of the north end of our house. Lizards and spiders scurried hastily across the floor, pursued by the advance guard of an army of ants. We rushed out with our Flit guns, and after a long and vigorous chemi cal-warfare engagement managed to turn the tide of battle. We set all our table legs in tins of creosote. but now and then ants would manage to crawl up. This was one reason why the natives prized tins. We hoarded them ourselves, after discovering we needed their double pro tection for our butter, sugar, jam, and pre cious leftover tidbits of canned goods. The flora and fauna changed continually during the four months we spent in camp. Several of our cultivated flowers grew wild. Ageratum and lantana grew seven and eight feet high. Zinnias, salvia, and marigolds were like weeds. There were several varieties of orchids, the most spectacular being the yellow butterfly kind, tiny sweetpealike flowers on sprays three to five feet long, which encircle a tree trunk and hang down from it like ferns. In the village the women cultivated roses, dahlias, jasmine, gardenias, tuberoses, petu nias, and tiger lilies. Every morning one or more of the girls would bring me a flower. They insisted I wear it in my hair, and I very willingly adopted this flattering habit. There were not so many animals at Cerro de las Mesas as at Tres Zapotes, where most kinds represented by the ancient figurines still live in the vicinity. Jaguars roamed in the jungle adjoining camp, and one was shot less than two miles away. Kinkajou, iguana, and turtle are still eaten. Monkeys were to be seen in the Tuxtla mountains not far distant. The coati-mondi, a raccoonlike animal, which can use its forefeet like hands, caused us considerable annoyance by depredations in our kitchen. They must have made an impression on the makers of our archeological figurines, too, because we found many repre senting this animal, shown in characteristic pose with the front paws over the nose and carrying a young one on the back. We saw several snakes, but usually had to look for them. The coral snakes and fer-de lance are the poisonous varieties of the vicinity. The Bird That "Walks on Water" In Tres Zapotes Dr. Alexander Wetmore spent six weeks with us collecting birds and brought in many that we would never have seen otherwise. Among the more colorful were 322
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