• U.S.

VENEZUELA: Jungle Tale

2 minute read
TIME

Monsignor de Ferrari, a Salesian Father, died last August in Caracas. Last week news of his death reached the U.S., and with it as strange a tale as was ever told of jungles, of holy travels, and of unholy terror in the Venezuelan wilds:

On one of his many quests for souls in the jungles of southern Venezuela, Monsignor de Ferrari paused one day beneath a giant cedar tree. Looking up into the branches, he saw two marvelous beings. Enticed down, they turned out to be children of not more than twelve or thirteen.

They were unusual children: their arms reached to their ankles, their heads were in the shape of pears. Their savage mouths gave even the good Monsignor pause. In their hands, as weapons, they carried sharp, long thorns of the támara tree. They spoke no recognizable language. But they could speak in pantomime, and De Ferrari could understand them.

Apparently their tribe, the Kirika Indians, had been set upon by the predatory Guahibos. Their village had been burned, the men killed, the women and children taken prisoner. Only they had escaped.

Monsignor de Ferrari packed the pair on a raft, started off down river with them and several other jungle children for his mission school. In the night, the Kirikas leapt upon a sleeping child. An awakened missionary collared them, saw that támara thorns were in their hands. Thereafter, the Kirikas were bound to the raft with stout ropes.

Some nights later, when the expedition had moved ashore, Monsignor de Ferrari was startled from his sleep by the eerie screams of a howling dog. With his Indian helpers he set off in the direction of the howls. On the ground they found the disemboweled body of the Monsignor’s favorite dog. Its eyes had been plucked; its belly had been ripped. Regretfully, the priest concluded that his Kirika charges had done the deed.

Shaken but still hopeful, De Ferrari took the children on to the mission school at Puerto Ayacucho. They stole clothes, tried to set fire to the buildings. One night they stole away. They were not seen again.

Long afterward, explorers picking their way through the jungle would come upon the gouged bodies of animals, eyes torn and bellies punctured. People hearing of these things assumed that the children from the cedar tree were vampires.

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