Venezuelan Tapir

On our fabulous, mind boggling power boat trips on several tributaries of the Orinoco River in the Amazon region of Venezuela, Muriel and I were often within yards of more wild life than we could count. We photographed the world’s largest (and grumpiest) otters, pairs and quads of dolphins who played like otters, eagle sized parrots, caymans and crocs, cormies, piranha, tiger fish, and way up in the sky tipping trees howler monkeys, plus weird creatures our powerboat guide named in his own incomprehensible language. Except for some pushy parrots, we rarely encountered even mosquitoes around the dining area.  Creatures kept their distance....well, mostly.

When even jungle widgets can only see a few feet into the green webbing, not seeing them doesn't mean they aren't there. They just hide better than we do. And there are some significant exceptions. We needed to tolerate the bats that swooshed over the pool evenings and jungle things that screamed, either in terrible pain, or simply to drown out other things that screamed. There's lots of screaming in the jungle, especially as dusk sets in. Roaring and burping and even just grumbling signals the dimming of the day.

Breakfasts under the outdoor shelter were quiet (well, compared with dusk).  The camp staff had managed to keep most creatures outside some sort of unmarked, but definite boundary of the dining and tenderfoot  area.

Most jungle creatures appear to have been created  by Quasimodo. Yes, some are indescribably, delicately beautiful but most seem sort of extruded.

One early evening we were seated in the outdoor dining area waiting for the salad to begin our dinner. We were looking over our day's notes when Muriel  said, “Hey!” turning toward an intruder at her shoulder. I mean she TRIED  to turn.

Pushing its over-ample nose against her was a huge head.  Connected to the head was the world's largest pig, or something.... definitely a Quasimodo invention.  Its nose had a flap sticking out that looked like a child's impression of an elephant.

Muriel placed both hands on the beast's  head and shoved. The animal totally ignored her shove. SHE was the one who moved backward.

We heard laughter over by the camp director’s  table. They were all chuckling and pointing.

 “Don’t feed her,” one of them cautioned.

 “FEED her!” Muriel exclaimed.  “Feed her what?”

Beyond the creature’s Brobdignagian head was what looked like six hundred pounds of pig, if a pig could have an elephant's nose and deer hooves and ears.

“She’s docile,” we were told.  “She comes to the kitchen to beg for greens and searches in the trash can for her babies.  We don’t dare let her have anything, or she’d be here all day, maybe all night, too.”

       

After a bit, the hippo-pig-horse-deer gave up. She wandered over to the pool, where she began to look more like a gray hippo. The bats charged her but she was as good at ignoring them as she had been us.

“Can’t you chase her away?” Muriel asked.

“How?” somebody asked.

 “Yes, how?” another offered.  With a bulldozer, maybe?”

The director finally reassured us that Miss Super Piggy wouldn’t be around much longer.  Soon her two little ones -- each a two hundred pound blob “little” -- would be stomping through the jungle, making crocodiles and snakes nervous. The young pair would keep mama much too busy for her to be shoving her massive head and wiggly nose against  Muriel at our dinner time.

Somebody called her Minnie the Moocher.  Maxie the Moocher seemed more like it.