貘 Mo

貘

房山有貘獸，好食銅鐵，而不傷人。凡民間犁刀斧之類，見則涎流，食之如腐；城門上所包鐵皮，盡為所啖。

Mo

On Fangshan there was an animal known as mo (a white leopard*), which liked to eat copper and iron, but did not harm people. The various ploughs, knives, and axes owned by the common folk made its mouth water, and it ate them up like tofu; the iron facings of the city gates were quite devoured too.

*most dictionaries seem to gloss 貘 mò as ‘tapir’, which in this context seems entertaining but unlikely, so I’m following my Classical Dictionary’s minority reading of ‘白豹’ báibào or ‘white leopard’.

Yuan Mei 袁枚, Wang Yingzhi 王英志 (ed.), Yuan Mei Quanji 袁枚全集 [The Collected Works of Yuan Mei] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1993), Volume 4: Zi Bu Yu 子不語, juan 6, p. 106.