'
While the father and son are watching the peccary peeling the serpent
as adroitly as a fishmonger would skin an eel, another actor enters
upon the scene. This was the dreaded cougar, an animal of the size of
a calf, and with the head and general appearance of a cat. Creeping
stealthily round his victim, who is busy feasting on the quarry, he
at length attains the proper vantage-ground, and gathering himself up
like a cat, springs with a terrific scream upon the back of the
peccary, burying his claws in her neck, and clasping her all over in
his fatal embrace. 'The frightened animal uttered a shrill cry, and
struggled to free itself. Both rolled over the ground--the peccary all
the while gnashing its jaws, and continuing to send forth its strange
sharp cries, until the woods echoed again. Even the young ones ran
around, mixing in the combat--now flung sprawling upon the earth, now
springing up again, snapping their little jaws, and imitating the cry
of their mother. The cougar alone fought in silence. Since the first
wild scream not a sound had escaped him; but from that moment his
claws never relaxed their hold, and we could see that with his teeth
he was silently tearing the throat of his victim.
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