by Horacio Quiroga · 1918
Fantasy · Classics
Animal stories from the subtropical forests of northern Argentina and Uruguay, by the Uruguayan master of the short story, Horacio Quiroga. Alligators, flamingos, bees and wildcats live by their own rules in the forest.
In South America there is a river called the Yabebirì; and it flows through the city of Misiones. In this river there are many rays, a kind of mud fish like the salt-water skate; and the river, indeed, gets its name from them: “Yabebirì” means the “river of ray fish.” The ray is a wide, flat fish with a long, slender tail. The tail is very bony; and when it strikes you it cuts, and leaves poison in the wound.
There are so many rays in the river that it is dangerous even to put your foot into the water. I once knew a man who had his heel pricked by a ray. He had to walk more than two miles home, groaning with pain all the way and fainting several times from the poison. The pain from a ray bite is one of the sharpest pains one can feel.
But there are also other kinds of fish in the Yabebirì; and most of them are good to eat. That is why some evil men once began to fish for them with dynamite. They put the dynamite under water and set it off.
