In the military, a warrior can be awarded the purple hearth for being wounded in combat. In a way, it is a strange award, since being wounded seems to be what warriors are going to be in combat. Yet there are ways of being wounded, and ways of being wounded.
Once upon a time a band of cuchi-cuchi’s passed above a researchers’ camp, at night. Exhausted after a day in the Amazonian forest, all of them were in deep sleep. Yet all of them were awake, right away. Cuchicuchi’s are noisy animals and they pass through the forest waking up birds and monkeys, talking to each other and telling what they see, what they find, what they catch. Biologists, even when tired and grumpy, smiled at the cuchicuchi’s above, because they are also like a passing party. You can’t be upset at them, as you can’t be upset at the noisy neighbour that insist in you joining his party.
Yet you will be mistaken to believe that cuchicuchi’s are but noisy fun. They have powerful claws, which they use with dexterity to climb and to fight, to catch and open what they find. And they can be fierce. I met a biologist once whom brought a cuchicuchi home. He thought to have got himself a cute pet, a pretty thing to have at his shoulder and caress, perhaps like an exotic little monkey. He was soon disabused. His cuchicuchi was fierce the first day, and remained fierce till the day that was released into the wild again, a few weeks after. Only then my friend noticed that she was a nine clawed cuchicuchi, having lost one when she was captured. Yet not once did he notice the missing one. In all those days of restrain, sister cuchicuchi remained fierce and fast, well capable of opening long leashes in his arms.
Ten or nine claws, she never stopped fighting, till free again she was.
