Tragavenado – The Pull Of The Land

This post is mostly fact — the description of the Chigüire and the Tragavenado — and some imagination — the scene of the snake trapping the rodent. With a true bit of Alexander von Humboldt thrown in for good measure.

————————–

Chigüires (known as Capybaras in the US) are rarely seen alone. Their two principal enemies are the crocodile and the jaguar, followed closely by a third: the tragavenado (“deer swallower”), Venezuela’s version of a python or a boa constrictor. Despite these enemies, they reproduce with amazing rapidity.

The Chigüire thrives abundantly in Venezuela, living fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of rivers, of which the principal is the grand Orinoco. They also congregate along the Apure and Caroní, other major rivers which happen to be tributaries of the Orinoco. These animals grow to about the size of pigs in Midwestern farms and even look a bit like them, but with yellowish-brown bristly fur.

They swim better than they run, often gracelessly diving precipitately when feeling the least alarm, squealing sharply and loudly. Their eyes are large and protruding, a characteristic of nocturnal animals. They defend themselves only at the last extremity, by then usually too late, although, according to some naturalists, their grinding teeth, especially the rear ones, can tear the paw of a jaguar or even the leg of a horse.

In the colonial era, inland, Chigüires were considered appropriate food, including hams in time of lent. In this, the monks and the Indians were agreed. It is not clear what the monks’ reaction was when Chigüires were determined to be not swine, but the world’s largest rodents — serious, persistent biological study of these mammals did not occur until the twentieth century.

Humboldt, the great 19th and early 19th Century explorer and naturalist, tells of having captured two by simply outrunning them. When Chigüires run, their gait seems like a slight gallop (their hind legs being longer than their fore legs) and not very swift. When he brought them to his host out in the great llanos of Venezuela, expecting to have them slaughtered and roasted that night, the proprietor assured him that such “Indian game” was not food fit for “us white gentlemen”. He, accordingly, offered his guests venison instead.

Their natural habitat is near the river. In fact, they can remain under the water for eight or ten minutes. However, during the rainy season, they might be seen up to 20 miles from the banks of the nearest major river, but that is rare.

And this was a rare occasion.

Five Chigüires had wandered off, rooting for herbs and wild weeds, deep into the jungles south of the Orinoco and east of the Caroní, rivers whose banks during the rainy season expand for many miles. And beyond those banks, the rains create expansive swamps, rivulets, creeks, lakes, and ponds … far, far beyond.

The Tragavenado may be found on the ground. However, it is primarily arboreal, spending most of its time wrapped around low hanging branches waiting for quarry to pass below. For good reason, she is known as an ambush predator. She can capture and eat animals exceeding three times the size of her head, making the young chiguire an ideal prey.

The Tragavenado does not consider herself to be in the company of white gentlemen. For her dinner, the Chigüire’s greasy meat is satisfactory.

This Tragavenado was a large snake. Her body was coiled atop a thick, low hanging bough below which ran a small creek which appeared only during the rainy season. It was an hour before midnight; but that wasn’t an impediment since she recognized her prey by smell, not sight. She flicked her tongue in and out, picking up the Chiguire scent particles in the air, noting their approach. Chiguire flesh is possessed of a strong, musky smell, easily discernible to a predator such as the Tragavenado. Soon the nerve endings lodged in the scales around her mouth sensed the heat of the Chiguires, indicating her prey was near.

The Chigüires grazed under the large tropical oak tree overhanging the small creek. One of them was in the creek, directly beneath a large bough from which shot, at lightning speed, the head of the Tragavenado. She bit the top of the Chiguire’s neck with her sharp teeth and held on with her powerful jaws as she quickly dropped from the bough and wrapped her body entirely around the hapless Chiguire, whose companions had scattered off in different directions into the forest.

The Tragavenado has specialized scales, called scoots, on the belly to feel when the prey releases a breath, and then she squeezes tighter and tighter until her prey either suffocates or dies by cardiac arrest. The Chiguire soon stopped breathing and died and her conqueror began swallowing it whole, beginning with the head. Soon the dead Chiguire’s legs folded up and the carcass began going down smoothly into the body of the snake, whose muscles have wave-like contractions, sucking it even further and surging it downward with each bite.

She wouldn’t need to eat again for a very long time.

Chigüire, the world’s larges rodent.

Tragavenado

Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, circa 1799

She moved slowly, as if tentatively feeling her way up the massive mahogany in the jungle to the left of that road which formed the boundary to the outlying wilderness.

Had I seen her, as she slid up the great trunk, I would have called her a tragavenado. All boas in Venezuela were known by that name. Even the ones along the Orinoco River, more properly identified as anacondas, were invariably called tragavenados: deer swallowers. Both boas and anacondas were plentiful in the regions around El Pao during my childhood. The anacondas especially in the wet jungle areas around the rapids of the Caroní River near its confluence with the Orinoco River.

The boas are smaller than the anacondas, which have been known to grow up to 30 feet and more. Tragavenados measure between 5 and 15 feet. The largest tragavenado seen in that part of Venezuela, for which there is record, measured just under 20 feet. That was considered exceptional.

Living in the damp jungle maze for up to 25 years and even more, this one grew undisturbed, never venturing very far from that area west of the road limning the west of the mining camp. Since her habitat had not changed much in a man’s generation, she remained therein where she fed on abundant wildlife of wild pigs, stray goats, tapir, deer, chiguires (capybaras), monkeys, and large fowl. Had she wandered closer to the Orinoco, her diet would have been augmented by small caimans.

The tragavenado can act as a very quick coil. She rests midst the brambles or branches for several days. Eventually, large birds, such as jungle parrots, settle nearby, oblivious to the danger. The tragavenado slips slowly, imperceptibly towards the resting prey. She does this by sliding the upper part of her long body towards the bird in an almost circuitous route. The tail end rests on a branch at the lower left side of the tree, seemingly to dangle, like a thick vine, two feet to the lower left and up to the upper left of the bird.

The massive middle section runs along, one or two feet away, further up and then curves along the higher branches so that it rests directly above and to the upper right of the bird. The snake completes as it were an expansive frame around the bird, so that eventually the snake’s head is beneath the bird, mere inches away.

The power of this reptile is embedded in muscles all along her 20-foot length, covering her entire body.

The head acts as a guided missile. The muscles along the 2 or 3 feet below the head are designed not only to cut off her prey’s blood circulation, but also to “launch” the head. This they do, and the bird never knew what hit him. Within minutes it is inside the snake’s jaws and beginning its final, unwilling journey into the entrails of its killer.

Other prey, such as a pig or goat, or especially a deer, requires accommodation. This the serpent does by biting and, while keeping the fangs sunk into her quarry, coiling herself around the quickly immobile body and squeezing it. This is done by degrees. When the victim struggles, it creates small spaces which the snake’s muscles exploit by taking those spaces over, thereby slowly reducing all room for maneuver, until the animal ceases to breathe, has cardiac arrest, dies, and, finally, it is slowly but relentlessly swallowed whole into the laboratory whose acids work on it, preparing it for absorption and transforming it into nutrition.

All this activity, occurring mere yards from the camp, my friends and I mostly ignored. Everyone in the camp ignored. But we knew it went on.

Once, during a game of war around our makeshift “forts” in the jungle, I had wandered off alone and stood in what appeared to be a natural, heavily forested culvert. Unexpectedly, I sensed as if the earth were opening or sliding under me. I looked down and saw a boa pulling herself, carrying me along like a jelly legged marionette. I, bravely, sprang like a jack-in-the-box, tumbled like a rag doll, and scampered like a hysterical baboon out of there, running on pure adrenaline till I reached the edge of the jungle. Only then did I catch my breath enough to call out. We all fearlessly marched to the scene of the scare. But, boas being very good at camouflage, we failed to find it.

The above is true.

Except for the “bravely” and “fearlessly”.