Even if you are at home playing while your mom or dad are watching soap operas or sacred cows on TV, there's a fat number of animals running around than for what I'm telling you... And I'm not talking about the mosquitoes, flies and other domestic bugs that are looking for what to eat or who to suck on. We are talking about animals that really scare... Snakes with and without rattlesnakes, tigers that are really pumas or jaguars, wild boars, that is, pigs with very big fangs, ants, but not those ants that run almost invisible through your garden but some that sweep away every bug that comes through them, even if they are people, and crocodiles, why talk about crocodiles?

The literature written for children and young people over several centuries is full, almost plagued, with references to the animal world, although most of these do not correspond to reality, are rather caricatures of human beings, excuses to give lessons to children. Thus, we are not surprised that among the favorite themes of traditional children's literature are the festivals organized by talking animals, the fable of the good animal and the bad, and the moral of the working animal and the lazy.

But this time I want to tell you about a collection of stories where animals are not "good" or "bad", they are just that: animals, animals that are dedicated to surviving in a hostile and difficult environment such as the jungle. That mysterious and at the same time close jungle that served as stage, character and habitat for Horacio , Uruguayan narrator born in 1878 and died in 1937, considered one of the best Latin American storytellers of all times.

In that wild jungle and full of fabulous beings, Quiroga found a theme to conceive stories that show us animals that do not seem real, of how real they are. Quiroga met them and lived with them and was seduced by their strength and wild beauty. It is known that he was a lover of snakes and that in San Ignacio, a town in the middle of the jungle of Misiones, Uruguay, he learned to identify and manipulate them, and he knew how to write amazing stories based on this knowledge, such as Las víboras venenosas del norte, The Poisonous Snakes of the North, The Yarará Neuwiedi, The Anaconda and La serpiente de cascabel, The Rattlesnake, the latter included in the selection I mentioned.

It is a great and chilling pleasure to approach La serpiente de cascabel y otros relatos, The rattlesnake and other stories , a book where animals are alive and run and release their grunts, thanks to the mastery of Horacio Quiroga, who manages to interest young readers, and not so young, by showing them a universe full of nature not manipulated by man, with all the drama and mystery imposed by the law of the jungle and the struggle for survival.

So that you can read it without having to pay much, or better said, nothing, here I give you the link, with the Spanish version -Sorry, I didn't find an English version- published by the Venezuelan publisher El perro y la rana, (The dog and the frog). It features illustrations by David Dávila, who accompanied Quiroga's stories with colors and strokes that attempt to present the strength and contrasts of jungle life.

If you want to know what the book is about, here are fragments of four of the stories:

"It's three o'clock in the morning. For several hours the ants have been devouring everything that moves, because those ants, more terrible than a herd of elephants, directed by tigers, are carnivorous ants, constantly hungry, that devour up to the bone of all that they find alive".

"For a long time, my little ones, I was as if stunned, stubbornly watching
the place where my poor fellow had sunk. I suspected, I was almost certain to know the secret of this mysterious lagoon".

"I knew one day that one of the pawns, tall, yellow and skinny, was a wolf. You may not know it:
In Uruguay, this is the name given to an individual who, at night, becomes
dog or any terrible beast, with ideas of death."

"Instantly, on the dark background, the illuminated head of the snake appeared,
on high and watching us. My companion stood behind me, with the lantern raised so that he could
point, and I made a fire."

So put on your boots and enjoy the fear and, at the same time, the fascination produced by the wild power of nature in full splendor. Enter into this jungle of stories.