Sailors traditionally raise hell in port, and David Frazeur. a seaman on the Steel Navigator, is a traditional sailor. When his ship docked at a port in tropical Sumatra about a month ago, he went ashore like a tidal wave. Next day, having managed to get back aboard, he awoke to find in his bunk a scaly, lizard-like creature about a foot long, with a stubby snout and a tongue that looked like a worm. Seaman Frazeur greeted the creature with no amazement, named it Pandora, fed it on milk and egg yolk. When he went back to the U. S., Pandora went with him.
Last week he gave Pandora to the National Zoological Park in Washington, D. C. Acting Director Ernest Pillsbury
Walker identified it as a pangolin, a rare, highly-specialized, prehensile-tailed mam mal which eats ants and termites. Because the natives of southern Asia think that it catches ants beneath its scales while pre tending to be asleep, they look upon it as a highly untrustworthy animal. According to one legend, whenever the pangolin answers a call made by a man in the forest, the man quickly meets with disaster. So far as Mr. Walker knew, Pandora is the only pangolin in captivity, certainly the only one in the U. S.