Ao Ao

The sound arrives before the thing does. It comes down through the wooded hills at dusk, a flat doubled bark repeated without pause, ao, ao, ao, and it is always closer on the third call than it was on the first. By the time a traveler understands what he is hearing, the gap has already narrowed. The creature is named for that cry. It is the last thing many people in the old Paraguayan stories ever heard.

What exactly is making the sound depends on who is telling it. In some versions the Ao Ao is an enormous sheep, woolly and heavy through the shoulders, its mild grazing-animal shape ruined by a mouth full of fangs and a set of claws no sheep ever wore. In others it is closer to a peccary grown to monstrous size, a wild pig of the South American scrub turned into a engine of appetite. The tellers never settled the matter, and the disagreement is part of the fear. A thing that might be a sheep and might be a boar and is certainly neither is harder to picture, and harder to forget once pictured.

Its origin is not in doubt. Long ago the spirit of evil, Tau, seized a mortal woman named Kerana, the beautiful daughter of Marangatu, and for this a curse fell on the union. Kerana bore seven children, and all seven came out monstrous, each warped in its own direction. Teju Jagua wears a dog’s head on a lizard’s body. Moñái rules the open country. Luisón haunts the graveyards. Ao Ao was born into this litter as one more shape the curse could take, and the shape it took was hunger. Where the others guard or confuse or rot, Ao Ao simply eats.

It eats people, and only people. The old accounts are blunt about this and offer no softening: human flesh is its sole food, and it goes looking for that food the way weather goes where it goes, without hesitation or doubt. There is a colder detail folded into the genealogy. The Ao Ao is at least half human by birth, which is exactly why its diet counts as cannibalism and exactly why the curse bites. The thing devouring you is, on its mother’s side, a cousin.

The hunt follows one pattern. The Ao Ao scents a lone person somewhere in its territory of hills and ridges and begins to run, calling as it comes, and it does not stop. Distance means nothing to it and terrain means nothing to it. A person who climbs an ordinary tree has only bought a few minutes, because the beast will circle the trunk, howling without rest, and start digging at the roots with those heavy claws until the whole tree leans, groans, and goes over, spilling its passenger onto the ground where the mouth is waiting. It does not get tired. That is the part of the story that does the real work on a listener, lying awake and doing the arithmetic of how long a person could keep climbing higher trees.

There is one exception, and the whole legend balances on it. If the fleeing person reaches a palm and climbs that instead, the Ao Ao is finished. The smooth trunk gives the claws nothing to tear at and nothing to grip, and the deep palm roots will not yield to digging. The pindó palm in particular is held to be blessed, sacred ground raised into the air, and against it the creature’s whole method fails at once. So it circles the base, howling now in plain defeat, and at last it turns and lumbers off into the hills to find someone who chose the wrong tree. The survivor stays up there a long while, listening to the cry fade, smelling the rank animal heat that lingers under the fronds.

Crueler versions give the Ao Ao a supplier. Its brother Jasy Jatere, the fair-haired one of the seven, was said to lead disobedient children astray and deliver them to Ao Ao to be eaten, which is why Paraguayan adults could quiet a misbehaving child with the bare threat of its name. The original Ao Ao is also credited with enormous reproductive power, sometimes ranked as a Guaraní spirit of fertility, and it bred a whole line of offspring cursed exactly as it was. Together these became the lords and protectors of the high country, a host of mouths patrolling the ridgelines. One stray account even claims it will eat clothing, as though the hunger could not always tell where the meal stopped.

Its powers are few and total: a pursuit that never flags, a body strong enough to uproot the trees its prey hides in, and a refusal of any food but human. Its weaknesses are just as narrow. It cannot climb. It cannot defeat the palm. And being a creature of pure single-minded appetite, it can be escaped by anyone who keeps enough wit, under the weight of that howling, to run for the one tree that will hold.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Ao Ao?

The Ao Ao is a monstrous, man-eating beast from Guaraní mythology, usually described as either a giant fanged sheep or a huge carnivorous peccary. It is one of the seven cursed children of the evil spirit Tau and the mortal woman Kerana, and it serves as a devouring lord of the hills and mountains.

How do you escape the Ao Ao?

The only reliable way to escape the Ao Ao is to climb a palm tree, especially a pindó palm. The beast cannot grip the smooth trunk with its claws or dig up the deep roots, so it eventually gives up and leaves. Any other tree it will simply topple by clawing at the roots until the person hiding in it falls.

What does the Ao Ao eat?

The Ao Ao eats only human flesh and hunts people as its sole source of food. Because it is half-human by birth, descended from the mortal Kerana, the act counts as a form of cannibalism in the myth.

Where does the Ao Ao come from?

The Ao Ao is one of the seven monstrous offspring born to Tau, the spirit of evil, and Kerana, a mortal woman, after a curse fell on their union. Its name comes from the howling cry, “ao, ao, ao,” that it makes while chasing its victims.

Why do Paraguayan parents mention the Ao Ao to children?

In Paraguay, adults traditionally warn misbehaving children that the Ao Ao will come for them. In some versions of the myth its fair-haired brother Jasy Jatere leads disobedient children astray and delivers them to the Ao Ao to be eaten, which made the threat a common tool for discipline.

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