She stopped on a tree stump by the river and watched the battle unfold.īefore long, the mongoose had more or less ripped the snake’s body in two. Flame was not going to take sides it was not up to her who would win and who would lose. The red-cheeked mongoose had sunk its teeth into the two-metre long snake, and the snake had wound itself round the mongoose’s throat. She had not been out long when she chanced upon a mongoose and a snake locked in battle, thrashing about on the banks of the Guna River. One afternoon Flame had gone hunting for food. Her back, tail and heels were a rich, glossy red and when she moved it was like seeing a cloud on fire. The mother jackal had a thick coat of hair. Although they all belong to the Canis family, dogs and wolves are the same species and closely related, whereas jackals are a different species, a completely different kind of animal.

In fact, they are about halfway between a dog and a wolf: a bit bigger than a dog, but a lot smaller than a wolf. The local people called them ‘red wolves’ on account of their colour, or ‘jackal-dogs’ because of their size. Jackals were quite common in these mountains. They had opened their eyes five days after they were born, and by the seventh day they had been clambering over everything. Perhaps the cave really was a special place, because the week-old pups had been bursting with health and full of life. More recently, a jackal had made this cave her den and given birth to a pair of pups: one male, one female. The local people call it Buddha Belly Cave because it reminds them of the big round belly of the laughing Buddha Maitreya, and because they have heard the story of the Ming dynasty monk who spent ten years in the cave, reciting sutras. Behind the bushes at the foot of one of the mountains, there is a little hole in the rock that opens into a big cave. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.įar away in the remote west of China, close to the Tibetan border and the monasteries of Shangri-La, snow-covered mountains rise above lush grassland. The moral rights of the author have been assertedĪ CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British LibraryĪll rights reserved.

Jackal and Wolf by Shen Shixi