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THE GREAT ANTEATER

The Great Anteater is a bit on the odd side if you ask me. He lives in Central and South America and looks like something you wouldn’t believe. He has a long tubular snout containing a long sticky tongue which he uses in a most peculiar way, and his front claws are so large that he has to walk on the outer edges of his feet to keep from falling all over himself.¹ When the Great Anteater is hungry, he tears into an Ant hill with those huge claws and the Ants come running to the damaged parts of their dwelling to make repairs. Then he captures and swallows them by whipping his tongue in and out of his mouth with great rapidity, two or three times a second. Now really!² The Great Anteater’s bushy tail covers his whole body when he is asleep, so that he resembles a pile of old hay that has been left lying around. He looks a little better that way as you can’t see so much. It doesn’t seem possible that Great Anteaters would have children but they do. The mother carries Junior on her back for a while and teaches him to stick out his tongue. She throws him out as soon as he starts to look more like Father. The male Great Anteater never goes home to dinner because he knows exactly what he would get. Ants again. Besides, he doesn’t want to be tied down. He has a roving eye, so he goes barging around in the tall grass looking for trouble.³ Why does the Great Anteater look the way he does? Well, I’m afraid that is what comes of eating Ants. Long, long ago, before he had any name, he had begun to live exclusively on Ants and he wanted to become more efficient at it. His one aim through the ages was to be perfectly adapted to the eating of Ants.⁴ As Ants are perfectly adapted to being eaten by Anteaters, it all worked out nicely. But the Great Anteater kept right on adding improvements, such as a larger this and a more powerful that, until in my opinion he went too far. There is too much of a build-up. You don’t have to be eight feet long in order to eat an Ant and don’t try to tell me different. The Tamandua, or Lesser Anteater, is only two feet long and he has no difficulty whatever in eating Ants.⁵ The Least Anteater is about the size of a Rat. He would have been enough.

1 The best animals do not do this.

2 Great Anteaters eat Termites, too. Personally, I hate Termites.

3 Young Anteaters never know their own father — which is just as well, maybe. He’s strictly no good.

4 I don’t call that much of an ambition. There’s no future in it.

5 He can hang by his tail. That makes sense, anyway.