GUAINIA: ¿Pon manó, apewe?

ZOO-INIRIDA

The Iniridense dogs are a half-street kind. Almost all the houses have a green lot in the backside, people close it with trunks, wood, spike wire or zinc cans. None of these are obstacle so that the dogs go out; there is always a hole just big enough for them to fit. One sees them everywhere, in coteries smelling their selves one to each other. If by pure chance there is a female dog in heat, it is formed an entire pack behind her. They can be seen fine dogs walking the street like anyone, amid the mangy ones.

Most of people let garbage accumulates outside, in an empty gasoline drum. The dogs are clever enough to be gone up in them, to dig, to knock them down and to take out what is of their interests. Wherever you sit down to eat it always appears a dog and it watches you until you end up. Any crumb that falls they catch it in seconds. People take care of them and they allow them to go. Only at night, when they sit down in front of the houses, some of them not well illuminated, it is time when they begin to make uproar. To go out at night in some sectors means to wake up all the dogs in town. Thanks to , the really irate ones can be count with the fingers. They are so many and so free that some people already began to think about shooting them to control the population. Most was scandalized in front of such a proposal. Anyway, they can transmit illnesses to bulk and control needs are felt.

Near to my trip back, in the Peasant's Day celebration I could meet a danta, live and in direct. They had brought it from Chaquita, a community nearing to Atabapo River, for sold it to the governor. The normal thing is that they are hunt pieces for the natives, together with the lapas (in the Pacific they call them guaguas). After acquiring it, the governor took it to the official house that is surrounded by green areas and a wall. Just I saw it I recognized as a tapir, such and as I had known them in the natural life books and magazines. It was easily frightened as a rabbit and big as a donkey. It had fat belly, anthill bear face and each helmet sectioned in three. The residents of Chaquita had tamed it, to tip of food and patience. They turned it part of the community and the children played with it. When they sold it, it no longer feared humans. If they were brought near to caress it, it began to lick its lips, as who waits a good mouthful.

Many Iniridenses has wild animals in their houses, or they allow them to pass on, because they are plentiful. In the roofs and the top of the trees, the parrots scream as loud. One step below, they are seen iguanas taking sun, or looking for it. They sometimes enter in the bathrooms, in the quarters or where they can and when they are discovered, they leave as roadrunners looking for the street. They are seen guacamayas, monkeys, one color parrots, another color parrots. In a hotel they had a small owl and a turkey of a species that I didn't know that it existed, with white feathers in the head and black in the rest of the body. By every street pass big and multicolored small lizards that run as arrows when they see you. When they are still, they lift two paws and they lean on in the other two, they do it for refresh them.

All the roosters in town seem crazy. They wake up to the dawn and they begin to sing. As they are not few, they join with all the other birds, domestic and wild, and they pop up mayhem. They stop in a while, there is a small silence and they begin again. At the first days they woke me up looking for the raised sun; but in less than a week I believe in them no longer.

This is a blind turkey that arrived to Safari Hotel. When they captured it they tossed it saliva in the head and it stayed forever. Its species was totally unknown to me, even in pictures.

Inírida is an entire zoo, where they are species of birds that are not seen probably in any other place, cohabiting with people, as hens. In the nearing indigenous communities I could see that they made them kind of a cage worked in wicker, in a design of triangles and polygons. They capture them, they feed them for about two months inside this fabric and then they loose them. Then the bird goes, it flies a while and it returns, because it knows that it will have food for sure; it is no longer so afraid of humans. For that reason the birds walk untied somewhere around, jumping in the table or in some wall, waiting for their given food. They also make little hammocks for monkeys, so they sleep and make nap, as any member of the family.

But not all the monkeys are so lucky. Most colonists have tried "mount meat" (danta, lapa, armadillo and all that has been hunted in the forest) and they attests that it is delicious. By the same way, they complain about the impression that caused them to see cooked monkeys, as another plate in the indigenous diet. To see a head, with eyes and everything, or a hand amid the rice and the potatoes, it was such an impression for several persons that it prevented them to eat. The natives were amazed when seeing that they didn't feel the same thing for cows or pigs.

In food divided opinions are not strange. It happens with the mañoco and the casabe. Some say that they are very flavorful to accompany foods, others that they are not able even to smell them. Personally, I believe that they have a very special flavor, as that of a box cereal, only with a sour touch. The casabe is almost the same thing that an unleavened bread. The natives love to toss powder of dry pepper in foods, and in alarming quantities. A typical plate is the ajisero, fish boiled with full pepper and well seasoned. Those that have tried it say that, if you tolerate the spicy, it is delicious.