Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [82]
Knowledgeable people to whom I confessed this longing told me in no uncertain terms that in their professional opinion this was a Really Bad Idea. Not unlike scratching a cheetah between its front legs.
“A family group will almost always include one or two cubs, or at least juveniles, and they’re highly protective of their young,” one zoologist explained to me when I broached the possibility.
I nodded understandingly. “So if I just happened to find myself in the water in their vicinity, what would they be likely to do?”
The specialist considered. “One of three things. They’ll swim away, in which case you’re wasting your time. They’ll hang around briefly to satisfy their curiosity, barking and spy-hopping (lifting themselves vertically out of the water to get a better view of their immediate surroundings), in which case you’ll get a nice photo-op. Or they’ll attack, in which case you are frankly putting your life at risk.”
I smiled wanly. “Maybe they’d just give me a warning nip to drive me out of the water.”
My friend stared hard me. “Maybe. Or maybe they’ll snap an arm, or bite off part of your hand. They eat bones, you know. If you’re not close to land or a boat and they take a couple of good chunks out of you, that’ll put a lot of blood in the water real fast. Which alters the environment in ways you don’t want it to be altered.”
I knew where he was heading. “Piranha,” I said. He nodded solemnly.
This florid conversational caveat was at the forefront of my thoughts as I left my motel room and made my way to the small dock. Located on the side of the two-lane Transpantaneira highway that runs from the Brazilian city of Cuiabá to its terminus at the town of Porto Joffre in the heart of the Brazilian Pantanal, the Best Western Mato Grosso (yes, there really is such a place) was the only real hotel in the vast swampy region. The size of France, the Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland. While most of it lies within Brazil, significant portions extend into Bolivia and Paraguay. A paradise for wildlife of all kinds, it is under threat from expanding agricultural development and from proposals to alter the main river system into which it drains.
The portion of the Pixaim (“pee-zham”) River I was about to explore was human inhabited, but save for the occasional incursion by herds of cattle it had suffered relatively little degradation from commercial exploitation. White caimans lay like chevrons on both dusty brown banks, occasionally hauling themselves up onto the boat ramps to sun themselves. Jabirus, storks that can be as tall as people, wandered along the shore like so many hopeful undertakers, careful to stay just out of snapping range of the motionless but ever-watchful crocodilians. Southern caracaras marched up and down the dock area and the rest of the modest hotel grounds, looking for handouts.
These bold, handsome, chicken-size, land-loving predatory birds quickly lose their fear of humans and will allow you to approach quite close. While they will take live prey, they prefer carrion. They were also more than willing, I discovered, to sneak into the hotel’s restaurant via its unscreened windows to scour unguarded plates of everything from bacon scraps to scrambled eggs and toast. Striding purposefully about the grounds as if they own the place, they remind anyone with an interest in paleontology of the great carnivorous flightless birds such as Phororhacos and Diatryma that used to roam these very same savannas not so many millennia ago.
Making inquiries soon after our arrival, my friend and I had been told that one or two families of giant otters had recently been spotted upriver. Conditions for a search were perfect. Though humid as always, the weather was unusually cool, in the seventies, and the forecast called for continued clear skies.
Heading up the Pixaim at first light the following morning, we