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Ondas del Lago
Contributed Content
Steve Sleightholm
Steve's Venezuela Memoirs
Red Howlers And Other Critters
Steve Sleightholm's Venezuela Memoirs
Red Howlers And Other Critters
Age 5 & 6
In the early 50's when the Tia Juana camp was mostly houses on stilts and there
were few homes and there was no large pumping station to pump out the camp when
the rainy season came and the camp would flood regularly and there was no fence
dividing the Shell camp from the Creole camp -- the streets ran the full length
of the two camps -- there was abundant wild life. You see, over the generations
during the annual droughts the wild animals would come to the lake to drink and
the camp was built in their way.
At one time a tigre with a cub was found by its roaring in the top of one of the
coconut palms. Parrots would flock into the trees in the evenings and everyone
had pet parrots or cages of parakeets or an occasional ocelot or a “cuchi-cuchi”
or pet pythons. It also was not unusual to find deadly snakes - Corals in
particular were common -- in your yard or in the carport in the early mornings.
Dad and Mom went hunting almost every weekend and even weekdays after work
taking my brother and I along. We used to find large land tortoises - almost two
feet long and 1˝ wide and take an occasional one home as a pet. We even caught
armadillos to make as pets, but the things could dig their way out of anything.
Dad would drill a small hole in the shell edge at the rear of a tortoise and tie
a cord to it and a tree in the yard where we would keep it until we became bored
and let it go and once we caught an armadillo behind Tia Juana and put it into
the chicken coop where it dug itself free over night – that’s when I learned how
they could dig. When we caught it, Mom, held onto its tail in the passenger seat
of the jeep as Dad drove home, but the tail slipped out of Mom’s hand and all
hell broke lose as the poor armadillo scrambled to escape and Mom lifted her
legs and hollered at Dad to stop the jeep and Dad laughed and laughed as he
finally caught the beast and we drove home with it.
In the afternoons behind Tia Juana you could hear the Red Howlers hollering in
the jungle. At this time there were few Paisanos in the back country. We came
upon a tribe of Red Howlers crossing one of the Shell Oil exploratory roads and
Dad decided to interrupt the crossing by driving into the path way.
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