386 EURAMERICA in the grass, and with its head raised charged us like a bolt of shining lightning. I dodged the charge and dropped the noose of my Texas lasso over the head and a foot or two along the gleaming throat” (Buck & Fraser, 1941:104). Buck invokes the image of a rodeo wrangler, and aside from difficulty of knowing where a python’s throat begins and ends, he later reveals that it is actually Ali, his Malay assistant, who shows him how to transport the snake using forest materials. While saying that over the years he brought many pythons to America, he does not include any factual information about the snake, other than to correct the common misconception that pythons are venomous. He knows his readers do not want scientific detail or poetic descriptions, but crave action-packed prose and demonstrations of Texan know-how tempered with confessions of human fallibility such as his failure to conquer the mosquito. Durrell, describing his contact with an anaconda, again takes pleasure in debunking his Buck-like predecessors: In nearly every book written about South America the author at some point or other . . . stumbles upon an anaconda. These eternally measure anything from forty to a hundred and fifty feet . . . in spite of the fact that largest anaconda ever officially measured was a mere thirty feet. Inevitably, the monster attacks and for three or four pages the author wrestles in its mighty coils until he either manages to shoot it with his trusty revolver, or it is speared by one of his trusty Indians. (1956b:141) Durrell’s real anaconda half-heartedly attempts to evade his sack, and Durrell makes its anticlimactic capture a case in point. At every opportunity, he scoffs at the self-aggrandizing thrill-seekers, replacing their exaggeration with comic minimizing that ridicules human fear and violence. Both capture narrators engage the readers to see the world through their eyes, and to share their feeling of being only truly and fully alive when among animals. They often concur, however, the real danger lies in their own mistakes and give
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