They are very sly and most dangerous to other creatures. Most of them feed on animals that have warm blood, for they love blood, which is to them as water. They sleep during the day, which is their night, and roam about during the darkest part of the night, which is their day. It is at that time that they seek for prey, so they are much dreaded by the animals that sleep during the night.
Their abodes are in the deep hollows of trees, in holes or gloomy recesses under their roots, in caverns, in crevasses found among the rocks, in burrows under fallen trees, and where fallen limbs are piled upon each other. In a word, they like the places where the light cannot penetrate, for the light blinds them. They cannot bear the bright sunshine.
These prowlers do not come out of their abodes to attack their prey until the night is far advanced, for then the sleep of the day animals is heaviest, and they do not easily awaken and scent their enemies. One of the gifts of these night creatures is that they know the hours of the night just as well as if they had watches or clocks, and they seldom emerge from their abodes for their raids and depredations before midnight, and generally return to their dens towards four o’clock in the morning. If they go out earlier, or return later, it is because hunger obliges them to do so.
Almost invariably they make their raids singly, so that the pair have more chance to capture prey. It is wonderful how these night creatures know their way. They see so well that they go through the thick jungle as if the sun were shining, and through the intense darkness, they note every sapling, every branch, every thorny bush, every leaf, every ant, and, no matter how far they go, they know their way back to their lairs.
This gift of theirs is not possessed by human beings, who have to make special marks, such as breaking young branches of trees, marking them back, or putting heaps of leaves, or sticking sticks into the ground to find their way back.
There are only a few night winged creatures, such as owls, vampires, bats, flying squirrels, and a few birds; but there are many night snakes.
CHAPTER VII
THE NJEGO, OR LEOPARD
The njego, or leopard, is the most dreaded of all the night prowlers by all the animals of the great forest.
One night a njego, looking at his beautiful spotted skin, his long tail beating his flanks, exclaimed to himself: “Many creatures of the great forest hate and fear me, for I love blood. I thrive and live chiefly on kambis [antelopes] and ncheris [gazelles]. I have no friends. All think I am not to be trusted.
“I am the biggest of the night prowlers. I have to be cunning in seeking my prey. No large creature can walk in the forest and through the underbrush with a lighter step than mine, and if I make a slight rustling going through the thicket of the jungle, the beasts of the forest think the wind is the cause of it.