"Any one must be as simple as a new-born infant to squat on an anthill. This is the second time you have done it." Here the advice-giver was suddenly interrupted; he made a face, lifted up one of his legs, and walked away with long strides; then he sat down on the ground in order to catch the ants which had secreted themselves under his leathern shirt. I could not help laughing at him. "Look here, Gringalet's skin is all over lumps!" said Lucien, stroking the animal. "They are caused by parasitic insects," said Sumichrast, "called ticks. In future we must clear Gringalet every evening of these inconvenient visitors." "But they won't come off." "Pull them suddenly; their mouth is a kind of disk armed with two hooks, which, if once buried in an animal's skin, are difficult to extract." "How hideous they look with their little legs placed close to their heads; here is one which is quite round, like a pea." "It is because it has begun its meal." "Does the tick only attack dogs?" "The dog has his own peculiar species; other kinds lodge under birds' feathers, and some birds have two or three sorts of parasites. There is one belonging to the turkey, to the peacock, to the sparrow, to the vulture, to the magpie, etc. I don't think there is a bird or animal which does not, like Gringalet, possess its own peculiar parasite." We had started off again, and another glade led us towards a field extensively ploughed up by moles. Sumichrast led the way, and conducted us towards the lake I had mentioned to him the day before. L'Encuerado caught hold of my arm to call my attention to an enormous animal moving about in the midst of the foliage. The animal came down slowly, and we could only see it indistinctly. At last it reached the lower branches. It was an ant-eater (_Myrmecophaga jub[=a]t[=a]_). It remained motionless for an instant, moving its enormous muzzle, and darting out its flat tongue, which, being covered with a slimy coating, enabled it to catch up the ants with facility. At length the "bear," as it is called by the Indians, slid down the trunk, hanging on to it with its enormous claws, its prehensile tail strongly clinging to the sides of the tree. At the sight of this shapeless beast, only fifty paces from us, Lucien rushed to me in terror. Sumichrast had just cocked his gun, and the noise made the ant-eater turn tail and prepare to run off, when it found itself face to face with l'Encuerado. It stood up on its hind legs, with its snout in the air, and then stretched out its arms ready to strike any one who was imprudent enough to come within reach of them. Nothing could be more strange than the appearance of the animal in this defensive position. Suddenly a shot was fired, and the ant-eater crossed its fore legs and fell down dead. L'Encuerado had once been nearly throttled by an ant-eater, and hence it would have been of no use for me to have attempted to prevent his shooting it.