Swallowed By A Boa

Throughout the years of World War Two, the USO outpost service sought to stimulate the interest of soldiers in the creation of attractive and rare articles from native products such as hard woods, nuts, seashells, sea beans, orchids, butterflies, insects, reptile sharkskins, and other local animals. With the advent of V-J Day this hobby program was vastly increased. USO was asked to rush materials and instructions to men on hitherto "super-secret" islands. To the studies of plants and animals were added sketching, painting and clay modeling. Photographic materials, more plentiful now, were shipped out as fast as possible, so that men could take pictures of the rare orchids, and marine and jungle life.

Some of the work of the USO focuses on the care of pets. A group of lonely Navy men lavished all their affection on a well-groomed Peking gosling that they had purchased at a native market in Panama. They built a fenced-in yard with wire netting all around and over it, for her protection. But even that did not help. One night a Panamanian boa constructor swallowed her. Native pets of all kinds are popular. One group of men in the Darien Indian country had collected a zoo of their own. They had a coati, a strange little animal with a long snout, that looks like a cross between an anteater and a raccoon. It is smart and makes an excellent pet. They had also captured a "kinkajou," which is the Central American "honey bear." Then there were parrots, parakeets, songsters and one beautiful, intelligent macaw in all his brilliant plumage and glory.

“I honestly believe,” says Clarence MacDonald, Director of the Pacific USO, “that they realize how good-looking they are, as they act very conceitedly around other birds!” And then he added: “In many outposts our boys have monkeys. Panama is alive with many kinds of monkeys—but at this one base a most unusual thing has occurred. Two full-grown black spider monkeys have adopted this outpost. Every morning at daybreak they come trooping in to spend the day with the boys, then return to the jungle each night. These monkeys are big and usually walk upright—and what clowns they are! The commanding officer of this outpost, as well as the men themselves, told me that if it were not for these two 'screwballs' they would be bored to death at this lonely station. Two black spider monkeys have become morale-builders!

“I visited this outpost two weeks ago, and the moment I had finished climbing up the long, steep hill to the station, out came one of the monkeys to meet me, with his arms waving and walking as erect as possible. He had become a sergeant since my last visit! Yes, believe it or not, that monkey was a full-fledged non-com. The boys had shaved three stripes on his black, powerful, hairy arm, and thereupon painted in with white paint three sergeants’ stripes. This was a new kind of 'monkey business.”

By: davidbunch

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