There are several sorts of armadillo here, but all are equally indifferent to criticism. Nothing is more impervious to criticism (or anything else, if you come to that) than an armadillo. He should have been born a minor poet. An oyster appears to care very little for what is said of him, but a good deal of his indifference is assumed; you often catch him opening his shell to listen. The armadillo won't open his shell for anything--figuratively as well as literally speaking. If a raging mad jaguar prances up to an armadillo, the armadillo curls up quietly with an expression that says: "Really, you excite yourself overmuch; I suppose you want to gnaw me. If you expect to _eat_ me, after your length of experience, you must be--well, rather a fool, if I may say so. I shall go to sleep," which he does, while the jaguar ruins his teeth. Naturalists have marvelled at the fact that native Paraguayans find whether an armadillo is at home by poking a stick into his burrow, when (if he is) out comes a swarm of mosquitoes. "What," they ask, wonderingly, "can mosquitoes want with an armadillo, when other things not quite so hopeless are near at hand for biting?" But it is probably a mosquito championship meeting.
The sloth, _sluggard_ as he is, has not gone to the ant, but to the ant-eater; that is to say, his cage is not far from Sukey's here. Sukey is not a wise person. Nobody anxious to be an orator with so little talent for it can be wise. When first you enter the room you observe that Sukey is anxious to address a large meeting. She has a ledge before her, on which she rests her fore-knuckles in a manner so extremely suggestive of a lecture that you instinctively look for the customary carafe and glass, and feel perplexed at their absence. Regardless of this disadvantage, Sukey will turn this way and that, and thump alternately with one fist and the other, and even, in the excitement of her eloquence, bounce bodily upon the ledge before her, as one has heard of a gymnastic American divine doing in his pulpit. This will the voiceless Sukey do till public indifference disgusts her, and she flops heavily back on her knuckles into hinder retirement. But no failure can stifle her ambition, whether it be actually for oratorical distinction, as appearances indicate, or only for such cockroaches as you may choose to offer, as the keeper believes.