Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
Both Frank and I experienced that happiness which men feel who have been suddenly snatched from the jaws of death. `The peccaries, thought we, `will soon disperse and go off into the woods, now that their enemy has been destroyed. To our consternation, however, we soon found that we were mistaken; for, instead of retiring after they had glutted their vengeance upon the cougar, they again surrounded the tree, looking fiercely up at us, tearing the bark as before, and uttering their wild cries.
If we had not used crippling rifles the peccaries might have gotten away, for in the dark jungle, with the masses of intervening leaves and branches, it was impossible to be sure of placing each bullet properly in the half-seen moving beast. We found where the herd had wallowed in the mud. The stomachs of the peccaries we killed contained wild figs, palm nuts, and bundles of root fibres.
But at the same instant, on glancing back, I saw the whole herd of the peccaries rushing after me with shrill cries. I had barely time to shout to Harry and Cudjo, and swing myself up to a branch, when the animals were around me. The others, seeing me climb, and also perceiving the cause, made to a tree; and the next moment I had the satisfaction of seeing both of them mount into its branches.
The dead beasts were covered with ticks. They were at least twice the weight of the smaller peccaries. On the ride home we saw a buck of the small species of bush deer, not half the size of the kind I had already shot. It was only a patch of red in the bush, a good distance off, but I was lucky enough to hit it.
"When we had crawled beyond the blinding smoke, we could distinguish the peccaries, standing in a thick mass at some distance from the tree, and evidently somewhat terrified by the fire. `Now, thought I, `we shall be delivered from them.
Though the savage little peccaries, when caught singly, are quickly despatched by the jaguar, yet when meeting it collected in a herd, they so fiercely assault it with their sharp tusks, that it is either pierced to death, in spite of the blows of its claws, or compelled to take to flight.
So close had he been in passing, that his claws brushed my arm, and I could feel his warm breath upon my face! The peccaries had followed to the foot of the tree, and there stopped being unable to climb it. Some of them ran around, gazing upward. Others tore the bark with their teeth; and all of them uttered their shrill screams of fury and disappointment.
These suckling-pigs were really delicious, and Pencroft was devouring his share with great gusto, when all at once a cry and an oath escaped him. "What's the matter?" asked Cyrus Harding. "The matter? the matter is that I have just broken a tooth!" replied the sailor. "What, are there pebbles in your peccaries?" said Gideon Spilett.
On one occasion a party of hunters had brought a bear to bay, when, in the midst of the fierce contest, a herd of peccaries came charging over the ground, putting not only the bear, but the men and the dogs to flight. The peccary will, indeed, attack man or beast without hesitation, its assaults being not the less dangerous because it seems utterly ignorant of the danger it runs itself.
This placed them in a position where they could set the peccaries at defiance; for although the creatures could now spring up on the main trunk which several of them had already done the more slender limbs baffled all their efforts at climbing; and such of them as attempted it were seen to roll off and tumble back upon the sandbank.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking