A Chiclero Story | The Skullman | The Frog Statue |

When I was a young man I worked in the mountains as a chiclero, taking the chicle in pails. One day I was working on a tree and the dog was a little way off and he started barking and chasing a gibnut. I dropped my machete and grabbed my gun and followed the dog who was now two or three hundred yards off in the bush.

The dog was running back and forth near this big log - running back and barking. We didn't know if there was any venomous animal inside so when the dog was a side, another chichlero looked inside with a small torch (flashlight) he carried with him and said, "Whoo!", what kind of big animal is that???" And you know what? It was one of those boa constrictors and his head looked like it was two feet across with its mouth open. . .

We shot it seven rounds and then we tried to get it out of the log. There were nine of us now and we used big sticks to try and bust up the log. When we finally got the snake out  it measured about thirty feet long.

It seemed dead but we weren't sure, so one man cut the belly with his machete. When he cut the belly, three gibnut came out. One was already melt, because when you touched it, it turned to slime. The next one, the hair was just coming off like you were cleaning it. And the last gibnut we cut out, the one closest to the mouth but still ten feet into the snake was alive! It was the gibnut the dog had chased, over the log and into the mouth of the snake.

But that gibnut was so sorry. No one wanted to take that gibnut, no one wanted to eat it, because you know something was wrong with that animal. Something was wrong with eating that meat. So we just leave it there. 

And when we got through those three, there was more in the belly! Because you know at night he just lay there with his mouth open and animals rush in and he swallow and stay right there. . .

This girl, she had a boy friend, but another man came and visited her. She fell in love with the man who came to visit her, and he was a "skull". From the skull he was able to change into the shape of this man.

The original boy friend continued to visit the girl, but they couldn't go no further with their relationship. The girl could only think of the new man who wanted her. The skull would come only at night and one evening he said that he would like to take her for a walk to where he lives. So they set off to the wilderness. The original boy friend had been watching the girl and her new friend and he followed them into the bush with his machete.

When the girl and her new friend reached the center of the wilderness, the man changed himself into the form of a skull. He looked at the girl and said, "You are wrong to go off with a strange new man, you should love your boy friend, he is right behind us in the bush with his machete". And the skull disappeared . . .

Down by the village of San Benitto Poite, near the Guatemalan border, there is a road to the old ruin of Pusilha . As you approach the ruin, coming up the trail, there is a statue of a six foot frog. Around the frog are three stelae. The old people said hearing a chorus of frogs meant rain was coming, but there is another story they tell of frogs in the old times . . .

When you look at the sculpture you can see two bulges on the shoulders. The frog on the statue is of a type of frog found around the village of San Benito Poite. The old Mayas use to catch these frogs and cut the bulge on the shoulder and take out a white liquid. They would taste this fluid and it would change the way they saw the world. Things would be different than normal. And in that way they would communicate with their gods.

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