"Meat? Where can he get meat in the jungle, unless he spears a tapir?" asked Blake.
"There's the iguana," the guide said, with a laugh.
"Do they eat them?" cried Joe, for several times in the trip through the jungles he had jumped aside at a sight of the big lizards, which are almost as large as cats. They are probably the ugliest creatures in existence, if we except the horned toad and the rhinoceros.
"Eat them! I should say they did!" cried the guide. "Come over here."
He led the way toward a hut and there the boys saw a most repulsive, and, to them, cruel sight. There were several of the big iguanas, or lizards, with their short legs twisted and crossed over their backs. And, to keep the legs in this position the sharp claw of one foot was thrust through the fleshy part of another foot. The tail of each iguana had been cut off.
"What in the world do they do that for?" asked Blake.
"That's how they fatten the iguanas," the guide said. "The natives catch them alive, and to keep them from crawling off they fasten their legs in that manner. And, as the tail isn't good to eat, they chop that off."
"It's cruel!" cried Joe.
"Yes, but the Indians don't mean it so," the guide went on. "They are really too lazy to do anything else. If some one told them it was work to keep the lizards as they do, instead of just shutting them up in a box to stay until they were needed to be killed for food, they'd stop this practice. They'd do anything to get out of work; but this plan seems to them to be the easiest, so they keep it up."
"Is iguana really good eating?" asked Joe.