I tell you de ting look like a bear.
The teller was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and grew up in New York City, with no experience of wild animals beyond a love of dogs. Their grandfather is Arawak. He grew up hunting and foraging in the East Berbice-Corentyne region, became an army veteran and later a conservation ranger and guide, and knows the forests of the interior about as well as anyone.
Every summer the family went back to Guyana, and the grandfather would come down the river by speedboat to spend a week with them. He was full of stories about mermaids, shape-shifting river dolphins, witches and dragons. The one he told most was the Mapinguari. He insisted he had seen them several times, and he would argue with family friends who pictured a Bigfoot-like creature. In his telling, it looked like a tall bear.
In May 2016, when the teller was fifteen, they went with him to the village, already worn out from food poisoning and the long boat ride. They joined one of his guided walks with a group of city visitors. It went beautifully: black caimans on the riverbank, tropical birds and a pile of jaguar droppings. Near the end they came across something odd, a huge mound of dirt and red clay with an opening like a cave. When the visitors asked about it, the grandfather turned it into a joke about the forest having a mind of its own. Then he quietly told his grandchild they'd come back that night.
After dark they set off from the village outpost with torches and packs. The grandfather was clearly excited. The teller was anxious, exhausted and frightened of the jungle at night, and only felt safe because he walked these forests every day.
The first thing they noticed at the mound was the smell. It was musty and sour, like mildewed wet laundry but ten times worse. Then, off to the left, came a scraping sound against a tree. They swung their torches toward it.
About twenty yards away, gripping a tree trunk roughly ten feet off the ground, were what looked like enormous bear paws with massive claws. Then a head leaned out from behind the trunk into the torchlight. The teller describes it as a cross between a grizzly bear and a beaver: a huge, shaggy, blocky head with big front teeth.
The teller froze, then turned to flee, and found their grandfather laughing with a hand on their shoulder. "I tell you de ting look like a bear," he said.
They backed away and walked the twenty-five minutes back to the outpost, where he teased them about their reaction until they calmed down. He explained that this particular animal had been making a home near the village and he'd been keeping an eye on it for a couple of weeks. He's retired now and lives with the family in the United States. The teller has never forgotten that night.