On a forest path, a jaguar met a turtle. Just as he was about to devour her, she begged him not to do it right away, but to hit her on the back with a stick first: then her meat would be much tastier. While the jaguar was looking for a suitable stick, the turtle managed to jump into the water and dive to the bottom.
Next on the jaguar's path was an agouti hare. He was chewing something with great appetite. It turned out to be a piece of cheese. The jaguar became so interested that he tasted it and wanted more. Agouti suggested that he get a larger piece himself. To do this, he tied the jaguar with a vine and pushed it into the river, at the bottom of which, according to the agouti, there was supposedly a lot of cheese.
The jaguar, who couldn't swim, almost drowned. With great difficulty he got out onto the shore. And agouti is already gone. The enraged predator vowed to kill the scoundrel.
When he met the agouti again, he was calmly eating the taparo fruit. Agouti begged for mercy and offered to eat the delicious fruit. According to him, these fruits were obtained very simply: you just had to hit yourself very hard with a stone between your hind legs. The trusting jaguar took a larger stone and moved itself between its hind legs with all its might. After that, he could not come to his senses for a very long time. For several days he was between life and death.
When he recovered, he again went to look for his insolent offender. Having met him in the mountains, he was about to devour the agouti on the spot, but he again managed to fool the jaguar by promising him a big cow. Since the cow clearly had much more meat than the small agouti, the predator agreed.
When they arrived, the agouti threw a huge stone from the cliff onto the jaguar who was standing below. He knocked the predator down and inflicted such injuries on him that the poor fellow could not walk for four months and only lay and moaned under a bush.
Meanwhile, the insidious agouti continued to play pranks.
This time he promised the man he met to bring an ax from his house.
When he came to the village, he saw the wife and daughter of a man who needed an axe. They turned out to be so seductive that he told the women bluntly: “Your husband sent me to sleep with you.” Without asking the consent of the women who were dumbfounded by such impudence, the agouti did this first with the mother, then with the daughter, then changed the order and left without saying goodbye. Without waiting for the ax promised by the agouti, the man returned home and found out what the agouti had done to his household. The angry man decided to kill the scoundrel.
He searched for it for a long, long time before he found it. But even here the agouti managed to outwit his pursuer. He arranged everything so cleverly, used such cunning tricks that the man accidentally killed himself.
And the insidious agouti calmly moved on. In the village of ants he was almost eaten. But even here he managed to deceive everyone and get out of another scrape alive.
Then he crossed on the back of a caiman to the other side of a deep river: he could not swim across it himself.
But when he jumped from the caiman to the ground, he hit him on the head with an ax. Since then, the caiman has had a deep dent on the top of its head - a mark from the ax of the insidious agouti.
Agouti went to the village. There was a trap on the road that he had to pass through. As the agouti ran under her, a large ax fell and cut off a piece of the agouti's tail. This is why the agouti still has such a short tail.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru