Invisible Jaguars

This is a completely true story...

The tsenkú-tsenkú, invisible jaguar, black in color, is a mix of reality and legend. It is difficult to come upon him, because he knows how to be quiet, at a close distance, invisible the Shuar say, and he can follow his prey for kilometers, capable of attacking livestock and, in a few seconds, leaving it lifeless, then, the following day, appearing more than 20 kilometers away. He is very feared; the simple discovery of his footprints leaves a man perplexed and on his guard. (translated from a Shuar text)

MY STORY

The sound of rain continues long after the heavens have emptied all their tears for the day. Water collects in leaves, in branches, wavers for minutes or hours, then finally falls to the ground. A night of soft drip-drops follows each afternoon shower.

I sat on a large banana leaf, surrounded by the black night and the watery echoes of the day. The drip-drop from the trees mixed with the omnipresent buzz of insects and with the snores of the uwishin, who was slumped against my back, limp in his deep sleep.

We had hiked out to this place to meditate to the night sounds of the rainforest, so I tried to think of something profound or important, but the trivial details of life clouded over my thoughts. Should I go back to Baños in seven days or eight, I asked myself. God, I miss Coke, I thought, more than once.

Before sinking into slumber, he had warned me.

"Tell me if you hear loud sounds," he had advised.

The insects were loud but not troubling. I did not want to awaken him because of the normal drone of a living forest. I did not reflect much on his words, lulled into security by his presence. He will wake up if there are sounds, I thought.

To reassure myself, I cleared my throat softly, expecting him to jump up, awake. No response.

"Ahem," louder this time.

Nothing. Snores.

I wriggled my back against his, but he was firmly in the world of dreams.

So I must be his ears, I concluded, calmly. Perhaps large rodents will come by, and I will rouse him so he can teach me about them.

With the realization that I was truly alone, the unimportant distractions of my mind fled. I no longer thought; I listened, listened with all my being.

Drip. Drop. Hum. Buzz. Drip. Drop...

Twenty minutes of drip-drop-hum, then my companion woke suddenly.

"Shall we go on?" he asked, turning to me.

"Where shall we go?"

"Past the great tree."

"We shall go on," I decided.

The great tree. We had spent the afternoon helping the great tree, his favorite tree in the forest. We had arrived at the tree earlier, in the daylight hours when the clouds were thick and the rainstorm threatening. He had stopped, eyes filled with admiration at this caoba, with its solid trunk and lofty height, but it was covered in vines and half-obscured by brush.

"We will clean this tree," he had told me. We had hacked vines and small trees to pieces with a machete. We had dragged the waste far from the path. Even after I was attacked and stung by angry wasps, I continued to help the tree. When we had finallay finished, I beheld a beauty unblemished by strangling flora. We could now walk directly between the giant wings of its base and place our hands against the living trunk.

The narrow beam of my light illuminated the bottom of the caoba as we walked slowly past it in the night. We reached it, then continued on. On and on. The path ended.

He tore off more large leaves, placed them on the ground, and offered me a seat, cordially, as though we were at a tea party and would soon be eating crumpets. Imagine it´s a plush Victorian sofa, I encouraged myself, but the hard ground was unforgiving.

He settled against me, back to back, again, and repeated his warning.

"It is very important that you tell me if there are loud sounds."

His emphatic tone this time made me realize, suddenly, that perhaps I was not supposed to be listening for rodents.

"Why? What could there be?" I knew the answer. But they are so rare, I thought.

"Jaguars. And sometimes black jaguars."

My stomach began to flip-flop in time with the drip-drop of the forest.

"Do not be afraid," he whispered. "The jaguar knows when you are afraid; it attacks, and it kills. But if you are not afraid, he respects you, and he does not attack. As long as you are not afraid, you have nothing to fear."

I don´t want to see a jaguar, I don´t want to see a jaguar, a voice in my head chanted, half-praying. We should go back, I thought. But at least they are very rare, we will be fine, I reasoned. I breathed normally, recovering from my original shock.

Then...

"Did you hear??!!"

"What?" I whispered back. I had been lost inside myself, listening to my thoughts, not my surroundings.

"Sounds," he responded, barely moving his lips.

"What kind of sounds?"

"There are two animals. Very close."

I listened and heard nothing. I swallowed and swallowed again, unable to ask my one-word question. I breathed deeply.

"Jaguars?"

He did not respond. And then, I heard. No breaking branches or animal calls but something changed. I heard them. The sound was muffled and indistinct in the cacophony of nature; it was like trying to hear someone tip-toeing on a pillow in the middle of a dance club. Slowly, slowly, the almost silent footsteps retreated.

"Farther away now," he finally spoke. "Perhaps twenty meters. If they go away, they are not jaguar; if they come back, they are jaguar."

"Why? Why would they come back?" We were whispering very quietly in each other´s ears, a Shuar man and an American woman, our Spanish murmurs dropping into the night like the rainwater dropping from the encircling trees.

"They would want to scare us, so if they come back, do not have any fear!"

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

Only the sounds of water remained. They were gone. They must not have been jaguars.

"¿Escuchaste?" A frightening word. It means, "Did you hear?"

I did. The soft sounds of giant animals, two of them, moving slowly toward us through th inky blackness. Coming back. I knew it, and he said it.

"They are jaguars."

Though he could not see me, I nodded, not wanting to speak. He sensed that I understood. I nodded, and then I was paralyzed, afraid.

"Listen to me very well. It´s very important. If they attack us, you must stay seated! When you are on the ground, I can protect you. If you stand up, I will not be able to protect you. Most importantly, tranquila, tranquila, stay calm, and have no fear!! or they certainly will attack us!"

He had a walking stick. I carried nothing. In a fight between us and two jaguars, we could not win by physical strength. He was relying on our will and our fearlessness to ward off the predatory cats.

"To the left. And to the right. Now in the front." The jaguars were circling us, moving closer. Their sounds seemed to come from all directions. I began to understand why these animals seemed like spirits to Amazonian people.

"These do not live here," he explained. "They are hungry. They come searching for food." He listened. "A mother. With a son. But the son is no baby; he is almost full-grown. They are waiting for us to move."

I was crouching on the ground with him crouching behind me. His arm crossed in front of me. With his left arm, he held his pointed walking stick like a spear, balancing it on my shoulder.

"We cannot leave," he whispered, explaining our status as prey like a middle-school teacher explaining a particularly nasty algebra problem. "The second we begin walking, they attack. Right now, when we do not run, they see we are not afraid. If we move, we are dinner. Do not be afraid."

And at some indistinct moment, crouching in the rainforest night, circled by hungry jaguars, fear left me. Time passed. The cats watched their prey, moving threateningly back and forth. And I was no longer afraid. My thoughts were clear, my mind alert. I was prepared. If they attack, we fight, I thought. If not, we wait. This is how it is, and fear will not change it.

"I think they are aggressive," he said after much time. "We must get to the caoba tree. There I can protect us better. Here, we are dinner if they attack, and they are not leaving. I see you have no fear. You are not like any other woman. Other women cry and tremble, even when there is no danger like this. But you make no sound."

We must get to the caoba tree, I knew.

He quickly explained his plan. He would move first, before they attacked. He would run straight for them. While they recovered from the shock of such aggressive prey, he and I might have time to retreat.

Suddenly, he stood and ran into the brush, toward the sounds, leaving me alone and defenseless. I knew if he chased one, the other could easily turn and attack me. I was prepared. I would stand and fight.

I could not see anything, but I heard him thundering toward the animals, grunting and growling at them. Then he came back to my side, minutes later.

"Give me your hand." Instinct said to run. Instinct would have killed me. "We walk slowly, then stop, slowly, then stop, so they do not think we run like scared prey. They are very intelligent, the jaguars."

We advanced slowly, then stopped to listen. Slowly. Stop and listen.

I knew the great caoba was close, when, suddenly he stopped, too abruptly this time.

"I forgot my bag!"

I opened my mouth in utter disbelief. Surely, he was not going to retrieve his bag! "Can´t you come back for it tomorrow?" I questioned hopefully.

"Come," he said, ignoring my suggestion.

He placed me deep in the base of the caoba, where I was protected on three sides. I thought about karma. If we had not toiled away to protect that tree earlier that same day, the brush would have been too thick for us to create a makeshift fortress. Cradled by the caoba, the jaguars could only attack us from one direction. I had reached the tree but I would be alone. He was going back for the bag!

He handed me his staff. "Trust in me; have no fear." And he was gone!

I held the staff in both hands, thinking quickly. Protect your neck; stand your ground, I thought. If they came, I would use the staff to throw them away from my neck. I listened, alert and prepared.

The crashing I heard five minutes later, though, was my companion.

"Señorita," he said gravely, "we have a problem. They are aggressive. Very aggressive. When I went for the bag, they were there, where we had been sitting. Now they come for us. More aggressive than most jaguars, these ones are. They will not leave."

I sank down behing him, and he stood over me, staff ready. And they come.

"One. Right in front of us. And two behing the tree."

The math clicked in an instant. One plus two... then...

"Yes," he read my silence. "Now, there are three. Perhaps mama, papa, and son."

I heard them clearly then, coughing and grunting feet from the tree. A standstill. The hunted were trapped as an escape would encourage an attack. The hunters were wary of their aggressive prey.

"They hesitate because they do not know why we have no fear."

Minutes passed. Hours. I felt dozens of mosquitoes sucking my blood but could not move to swat them away. Even the mortal danger became tedious. I was exhausted but had to remain prepared at every instant.

We began to talk, so softly, in scratchy whispers, passing the time.

"You cannot hear the footsteps of the jaguar," he tells me. "But listen, you hear how the drops of water fall more quickly just ahead? There is the jaguar. It makes no sound, but if brushes the branches ever so lightly, making the water fall faster from the leaves. In this way, you can hear the jaguar."

I heard it. The indescribable change in the sounds of the forest. Faster drip-drop there. Faster there. Moving back and forth. The mother jaguar.

"I do no understand something," he confided. "The first sound I heard, it was a sound I had never heard before." He made the sound, a low gravelly cough. "I have never heard a jaguar do this. Perhaps these are black jaguars, and those cats never leave."

"Well, have you heard a black jaguar make that sound?" I asked, logically.

"No, him neither," he admitted.

"Well, maybe this jaguar has a cold," I joked optimistically. Yes, I joked!

He stifled his surprised laughter. Though I could not see, I knew he was looking at me.

"There is always danger in the world," he said. "Living in the rainforest is like living anywhere else. There are dangers. But you must have no fear. I am sorry to have brought you out this night. I have not encountered jaguars such as these in many years. But perhaps this is the first lesson for your new life. You must never be afraid..." he broke off...

"¡Mierda!" A very bad word.

He saw increasing danger; the jaguars suddenly had become very restless.

"We definitely have a problem!" his voice was more serious than I had ever heard. "How strong is your heart?"

"What?" I asked, confused.

He grasped me firmly by the shoulders, shaking me. "How strong is your heart? We must try to escape. They are preparing to attack."

I was prepared. And there would be no caoba tree between us and the hut on the mountain.

"Wooooo," a far off sound, a human cry. The Shuar use it to locate each other. They were calling us back at the village. They were worried.

"Wooooo," from the distant hill.

"We cannot call back. It will draw more dangerous animals," he warned.

We had to make it to those voices, I knew. The noises were so far away. Then I heard a discouraging sound, a young jaguar cry up the path. The son was lying in wait for us.

Suddenly, my friend charged the two other jaguars, leaving me alone once more. Do not have fear, I told myself. He came back and pulled me out of the tree.

We scrambled briskly, sliding through deep mud and over tree roots in our rubber boot. We stopped. Listened. The fast drip-drops. We were being followed. On and on. Scrambling. Stopping. Listening.

And finally, finally, there were no sounds. We waited. Nothing

I felt his hand fall upon my shoulder. "I like your valor," he stated.

We panted in exhaustion as we climbed the final hill. He was deep in thought.

"They were very strange, very rare. They were invisible. We never saw them. Only sounds. Invisible jaguars."

His wife called out to us. We had been gone for over four hours! Stalked for four hours!

They tell me the invisible jaguars let me live because I had no fear.