Big cats breed obsession, and the jaguar is the biggest one there is
in the New World.
For centuries, this perfect predator’s little-known habits and
little-seen form have been wrapped into human ritual and art, appearing
in creation myths, sacrificial routines and the deepest, darkest fears
and excitements of the common jungle dweller. The jaguar is a god, and
gods can do whatever they want.
New Mexico-based writer Richard Mahler found that out at his
expense, but for his trouble, he has produced an interesting hybrid of
travelogue, cultural history and species primer in The Jaguar’s
Shadow: Searching for a Mythic Cat, an engrossing record of his
two-year quest for a wilderness run-in with Panthera onca.
Mahler’s quest was inspired in part by those now-famous photographs
taken by hunter Warner Glenn when his hunting dogs cornered a male
jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains east of Tucson in 1996. That same
year, a different jaguar—the late, lamented Macho B—was
treed southwest of Tucson by hunting dogs belonging to Jack Childs, who
would later go on to photograph Macho B and another male jaguar dozens
of times with a camera hidden in the wilderness.
The fact that the jaguar deigns to stroll through Southern Arizona
on occasion restores to the region a kind of mystery that had been lost
among the cul-de-sacs. The fact that both Glenn’s jaguar and Macho B
are now dead, one from a federale’s bullet and the other from a botched
collaring attempt, brings us back down to earth. In fact, as Mahler
finds out while traveling through the American borderlands, Mexico,
Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica and even Panama, many residents of those
humid and green countries where the jaguar is most at home don’t really
believe that there are any jaguars left.
And if they happened to see one, they’d most likely shoot it. The
jaguar, for all our worship and love, is relentlessly hunted throughout
Central America, Mahler discovers. This state of contradiction, along
with the quick pace of that region’s habitat destruction, may spell
doom for the big cat long-term.
Mahler mixes his country-hopping search to see the jaguar in the
wild—which he admits from the outset is nearly an impossible
thing to do—with facts about Panthera onca and tales of
how various New World cultures have used the cat as god, talisman,
totem and resource since the first time a human met a jaguar. He delves
deep into the considerable body of literature on the jaguar, most of it
speculation, at best, up until a few decades ago when jaguar field
research took a huge leap forward in Belize with Alan Rabinowitz.
Mahler interviews Rabinowitz and other field researchers, and talks to
archeologists, zoologists, hunters, guides, peasants and tourists, all
of whom have a different take on the jaguar. This excellent book is as
much an introduction to the science and lore of the jaguar as it is a
thoughtful and sad account of its probable passing from the world
within the next century. Mahler makes a strong case for saving the big
cat, and by extension, all top predators. He also reports on some
hopeful signs, including a gradual change in the jaguar’s “varmint”
status in Sonora’s machismo-soaked ranch country, where any wild cat
should fear for its life.
Despite all his hard-nosed research, Mahler’s search is primarily a
religious one. He is not really looking for a real jaguar, but for what
the jaguar means, and what we will lose when it’s gone.
One night, naked and groggy in a jungle hut on a preserve, Mahler
hears a jaguar rumble and moan from the darkness. It comes as a
revelation, giving just enough proof of its existence to keep Mahler on
the trail, though he knows in his heart that he is chasing a shadow
only.
Mahler reveals himself, and sums up quite perfectly what it is about
jaguars that keeps fascinating humans, when a field researcher turns
the tables on the interviewer late in the book, and asks Mahler why
he is so “passionate” about jaguars.
“I like it that jaguars are generally quiet, cautious,
self-sufficient—and rather inscrutable,” he says. “They are
observers, like writers, and I admire their resourcefulness and
adaptability. But most of all, I simply consider them to be a miracle,
one of many in nature that I don’t feel we can afford to lose.”
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.