Animal Activities #60

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Suri was a very evasive pangolin who lived in the periphery of a shabby village where the forest bordered almost on the farms. Suri slept all day cuddled on a fallen log and her scales were as thick as scales of overlaps. She used to walk about at night with her nose down, and would hear the crackling of ants in the ground.

Suri thought that the earth was speaking in low tones. Rapped termites were distantly rain. The beetles were itching like a covert. Each sound directed her delicate feet and she excavated a nice hole to eat. She never hurried. It was wide and hedonistic and so was she.

Some time during the dry season one evening there was a strange quiet in the wind. No insects stirred. No termites hummed. Even the owls kept away. Suri had never been farther out over the cassava fields and alone to the black row of trees along the river.

And there she found the ground, bitterly torn asunder in savage rugged lines. The smell of the tobacco lingered round the earth. Suri was unaware of what the marks were but the terror of the forest was not on her side. She waited till the moon rose high and then she lay down in a ball.

As the silver light scattered on the clearing there grew out of the wounded soil one line of ants. Suri slowly uncurled. The ants were making their strong march, and gathering grain, grain, and mending it.

Suri gradually commenced to excavate to the edge of the hard ground in order to make it soft enough to be carried away by the ants. All night she worked, and then only listened. The insects returned about and their music so sweet made another ecstatic song in the darkness.

The first thing the next day Suri sneaked into the middle of a new log in front of the new hill of the ants. The silence of the forest no longer existed. It had to stoop to clicks and scratches and small live action.

Suri slept, knowing that even the little ones could do what was broken, and that the godlike earth was never unmindful how to do it. And in the ground new holes were dug, and cool air and life were unnoticed in such, so that the next night would be as full of voices as before.

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