They say America is an extraordinary country. Yes, it is extraordinary in its own way, because there are extraordinary animals there.
Take aracabora for example. She lives at the very tops of the Rocky Mountains. Uninformed people call it a mountain subterfuge. They couldn't think of anything better! It's like confusing an old jalopy with a late-model Packard.
You will not find a single dodge above three or four thousand above sea level. Another thing is the aracabora, which climbs the highest mountain peaks. With his faith
with their tires they rest directly on the sky, so that the moon man has to cut new gorges each time so that moonlight can penetrate the earth at least through them.
The noble Aracabora seems to be created for mountain life. Her left legs are shorter than her right ones. Therefore, it is very convenient for her to stand on the steepest slope of the mountain. And not only stand, but also run. At the same time, she never drifts to the side and, in order to maintain her balance, she does not have to cling to a bush or a stone.
She always starts at the foot of the mountain and runs in a spiral up, up and up, and chews all the time as she runs.
And here’s something else nature has given her for convenience: on her short left legs she has hooked claws, so that she can more dexterously cling to the mountainside and not slide down.
The only way to catch an aracabora is to follow it on its heels all the way to the top. There, of course, she stops, because there is nowhere else to run.
But even then it is not so easy to catch, because it has a habit of turning itself inside out in order to run downward in a reverse spiral. There's just one problem: when the racabora runs inside out, it doesn't cost her anything to catch a cold.
Now do you understand why there are so few Aracabora left on earth? Alas, almost all of them died of pneumonia.
In addition to the mountain dodge, there is another animal in America that is mistaken for the aracabora. But sometimes real aracaboras are called incorrectly. But you never know what they call it incorrectly. For example, a baseball umpire shouts, “Strike!” But you should say - “Ball!”
So, they call this animal the squint. One might say that the club-crawler has the same chassis as the aracabora, that is, its legs are shorter on one side than on the other. Only her character is much more harmful. This was discovered quite by accident when they once tried to drive a ski-climb to the top of a mountain.
It turned out that this was impossible to do. She will drive you wherever she wants.
And yet there is a very simple way to catch a slanting lure. Let her attack you, then quickly retreat to the side and down. The squirrel will turn after you and immediately tumble, because its legs are of different lengths on different sides. Are you smart? Here you don’t get confused and sit astride her, like a cowboy on a wild bull that he managed to lasso. And then tie her short legs with a stronger rope.
Ignorant people often confuse the clubfoot with the side-footed snake or with the aphrosia side-duck, and sometimes even with the rock bindweed. But, in fact, the only difference between them is that some of them are left-footed, while others are right-footed.
And in the Rocky Mountains there is a mountain slide, or, simply, a net. It looks like a whale, except for one feature: at the tip of its tail it looks like a scoop or net. All summer long, if the mornings are clear and cool, you can watch rock sliders using their net.
Look at the horizon and you will see them hanging upside down on the ridge of a mountain. They throw their net onto a rocky ledge so as not to slide down.
The mountain slide hangs and hangs until it spots a group of tourists climbing up the canyon. At the right moment, he unclenches his net and slides down with his mouth open along the wide, smooth slope of the canyon. At the bottom he is a hap! - scoops up tourists with a net and crawls up the opposite wall of the canyon. And having reached the top, he again throws the net onto some rocky ledge and, hanging upside down, dozes, digesting his breakfast.
When I first visited the Rocky Mountains, I noticed that their slopes in some places were covered with dried trees. And on one slope these dead trees are located in such a pattern, as if some giant had left there traces of his huge jaws.
This is probably why this mountain is called the Giant’s Smile.
If you ask the old-timers who settled in these places back in the days of Bill Buffalo, why is this so, perhaps there was a forest fire in the mountains? They will only laugh at your ignorance. “Have you never heard of a flying cat?” - they will be surprised.
No, we haven't heard.
This cat turns out to be larger than the mountain lion - the ka-guar. And she has a large hard callus on her nose and forehead. In the morning, the flying cat gallops higher and higher over the mountains until it finds a bare peak above the forest line. There she lies down to rest, stretched out along the entire ridge and hanging her head down. Having rested and got hungry, she makes a giant leap and, as if on sails, flies down and lands on the first tall tree.
Oh no, it doesn’t fall, but flies headlong and hits him with all its might with its calloused nose. She has such a strong nose that the bark bursts when struck, and sometimes the tree can’t stand it and falls.
And then the flying cat, with its long thin tongue, licks off the ants and other insects located under the bark of the tree. So this huge, scary-looking beast actually turns out to be the kindest and most harmless creature in the world. Actually, this happens often in life, doesn’t it?
Among the snows and glaciers of the Rocky Mountains lives another interesting creature - the snow snake. It is very difficult to distinguish against the background of white snow. So if you want to see him, find the tip of his tail - it's black. The whole snake is white, whiter than snow, and the tip of its tail is black.
And when the snake crawls, you see how the black tip runs away after it.
The snow snake is very difficult to catch, even if you find it and see it clearly, because as soon as a person approaches it, it immediately curls up and hides its
black tip. And without it, he becomes simply invisible.
At the edge of the glacier, the snow kite rises and rolls down like a hoop. Do not be afraid that, having rolled down, he will hit hard stones painfully. No, he foresees everything. He has something in store for this case too. Having reached the foot of the mountain, the snow snake crumbles into small pieces. And then each one crawls upward, turning into a small snow snake.
This is why the snow kite is so difficult to hatch and why there is so much snow on the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Of course, because snow snakes really need snow, they won’t live without it, they simply won’t have anything to eat.
Everything you have learned about snow snakes is true. In the mornings, especially on Sundays, they are very easy to see. But their closest relatives on the maternal side - ring snakes - are rarely seen.
Actually, ring snakes are exactly like snow snakes, only they are not white and do not eat snow. It is not even known exactly what color they are, but everyone knows that they are very dangerous because they eat people.
The ring snake, when it wants to attack, curls up and rolls right towards you. The only way to escape from her is to jump through the ring.
Ringneck snakes weren't useful until a guy in Wichita, Kansas, managed to train two of them. And then one day, sitting behind the house, he was playing his bagpipes, and suddenly an idea struck him. He soldered a frame from bagpipe pipes, attached his trained snakes to it, telling them to first curl up, threw a saddle on the frame, and thus invented the bicycle.
You probably don't know why Ab Lincoln decided to become President of the United States. Have you heard what he did for a living? He cut down wood and at the same time cut crossbars for farm fences.
But one day a clever swindler from Pittsburgh wandered into those places and offered farmers instead of wooden
barbed wire crossbars. He said that barbed wire is all the rage now. And Ab Lincoln was left without a job. It was then that he began to think about whether he should run for president?
Farmers seemed to have gone crazy and, in pursuit of fashion, now put up two fences at once: one to fence off, and the other to screen out. But both of these barbed fences required posts, and the posts needed deep holes.
South Dakota farmers turned out to be more resourceful than others in this matter. Instead of digging and tearing holes for posts, they looked into the “Goods by Mail” catalog and ordered a batch of Snollygosters for home delivery.
You don't know what snollygoster is? Well, it's like a small kangaroo, only its tail is a little different - it looks like a corkscrew or a drill. More than anything else, the snollygoster loves to jump higher and then plop down on the tip of its tail. Yes, with such force that the tail, willy-nilly, is corkscrewed into the ground.
If the snollygoster wants to make the next jump, it pushes its hind legs with all its might and pulls its tail out of the ground. But there is a hole left from the tail, do you understand?
An excellent deep hole, just right for a barbed fence post.
Snollygosters also love a funny joke. A good joke makes them jump to the skies. They are always happy with everything and laugh merrily. That's why they are also called laughing-jumpers. So all South Dakota farmers need to do to put up a straight fence is to walk ahead of the Snollygosters and tell them funny stories and anecdotes.
One anecdote - and the hole for the fence is ready.
There are also weepers and jumpers. But they are of absolutely no use in farming. They shed so many tears that they do not have enough strength to jump. However, there were no more little crying babies left: they cried and cried and cried themselves to death.
But there remains one more family of jumpers - not laughers, not cryers, but simply jumpers. They live among cowboys and hate dudes. Scientists call them glyptodonts. But ordinary people are so afraid of them that they were afraid to even give them a simpler name, so they remained glyptodonts.
When this most dangerous beast sees a dude dressed in a cowboy dress and proudly prancing in the saddle, he immediately digs up a round, weighty pebble with his elastic long tail. He places it on another similar pebble. Taking aim. Then he swings his tail like a baseball bat and sends the top pebble straight at the unsuspecting dude.
Not a single dude ever found out who threw the stone at him. But ask a real cowboy, he will tell you right away.
But what does the flying creeper have to do with it? - you will be surprised. Nothing to do with it. Just for company.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru