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Updated: May 31, 2025
We've a couple of peacocks here, and Totty will get one of them ready sooner than the aard-vark." "As for that," rejoined Hans, "I don't care which. I'm just in the condition to eat anything even a steak of tough old quagga, if I had it; but I think it would be no harm if Swartboy that is, if you're not too tired, old Swart would just peel the skin off this gentleman."
It would have badly frightened me, had I not known what it was; but I recognised it at once as one of the most inoffensive creatures in the world the 'aard-vark. His appearance accounted for the retreat of the bull, and also explained why the ants had been crawling about on my first reaching their hill.
But the "aard-vark" is just as good an ant-eater as he, can "crack" as thick-walled a house, can rake up and devour as many termites as any "ant-bear" in the length and breadth of the Amazon Valley. He has got, moreover, as "tall" a tail as the tamanoir, very nearly as long a snout, a mouth equally small, and a tongue as extensive and extensile.
In claws he can compare with his American cousin any day, and can walk just as awkwardly upon the sides of his fore-paws with "toes turned in." Why, then, may I ask, do we hear so much talk of the "tamanoir," while not a word is said of the "aard-vark?" Every museum and menagerie is bragging about having a specimen of the former, while not one cares to acknowledge their possession of the latter!
Altogether a very odd animal was that which Hans had styled an "aard-vark," and which he desired should be cooked for supper. "Well, my boy," replied Von Bloom, "we'll excuse you, the more so that we are all of us about as hungry as yourself, I fancy. But I think we may as well leave the 'aard-vark' for to-morrow's dinner.
His long erect ears enable him to catch every sound that may be made in his neighbourhood, however slight. The "aard-vark" is not the only ant-eating quadruped of South Africa. There is another four-footed creature as fond of white ants as he; but this is an animal of very different appearance.
I did not reflect only that I liked aard-vark flesh and the blow was given. "Poor fellow! It did the job for him. With scarce a kick he dropped dead in the opening he had scraped with his own claws. "Well my day's adventures were not yet ended. They seemed as though they were never to end.
And, so saying, Swartboy out knife, and set to work upon the carcass. Although the colonists term it "aard-vark," which is the Dutch for "ground-hog," the animal has but little in common with the hog kind. It certainly bears some resemblance to a pig about the snout and cheeks; and that, with its bristly hair and burrowing habits, has no doubt given rise to the mistaken name.
It is a creature without hair; but instead, its body is covered all over with a regular coat of scales, each as large as a half-crown piece. These scales slightly overlie each other, and can be raised on end at the will of the animal. In form it resembles a large lizard, or a small crocodile, more than an ordinary quadruped, but its habits are almost exactly like those of the aard-vark.
Hans pointed to the "aard-vark." "And dress him so that he don't spoil," he continued; "for you know, Swartboy, that he's a tit-bit a regular bonne bouche and it would be a pity to let him go to waste in this hot weather. An aard-vark's not to be bagged every day." "You spreichen true, Mynheer Hans, Swartboy know all dat. Him skin and dress da goup."
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