9 chapters
7 hour read
Selected Chapters
9 chapters
WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN
WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN
Books by Ernest Thompson Seton: Stories in This Book: THESE STORIES are true. Although I have left the strict line of historical truth in many places, the animals in this book were all real characters. They lived the lives I have depicted, and showed the stamp of heroism and personality more strongly by far than it has been in the power of my pen to tell. I believe that natural history has lost much by the vague general treatment that is so common. What satisfaction would be derived from a ten-p
6 minute read
LOBO, The King of Currumpaw
LOBO, The King of Currumpaw
I CURRUMPAW is a vast cattle range in northern New Mexico. It is a land of rich pastures and teeming flocks and herds, a land of rolling mesas and precious running waters that at length unite in the Currumpaw River, from which the whole region is named. And the king whose despotic power was felt over its entire extent was an old gray wolf. Old Lobo, or the king, as the Mexicans called him, was the gigantic leader of a remarkable pack of gray wolves, that had ravaged the Currumpaw Valley for a nu
42 minute read
SILVERSPOT, The Story of a Crow
SILVERSPOT, The Story of a Crow
I HOW MANY of us have ever got to know a wild animal? I do not mean merely to meet with one once or twice, or to have one in a cage, but to really know it for a long time while it is wild, and to get an insight into its life and history. The trouble usually is to know one creature from his fellow. One fox or crow is so much like another that we cannot be sure that it really is the same next time we meet. But once in awhile there arises an animal who is stronger or wiser than his fellow, who beco
27 minute read
RAGGYLUG, The Story of a Cottontail Rabbit
RAGGYLUG, The Story of a Cottontail Rabbit
RAGGYLUG, or Rag, was the name of a young cottontail rabbit. It was given him from his torn and ragged ear, a life-mark that he got in his first adventure. He lived with his mother in Olifant's Swamp, where I made their acquaintance and gathered, in a hundred different ways, the little bits of proof and scraps of truth that at length enabled me to write this history. Those who do not know the animals well may think I have humanized them, but those who have lived so near them as to know somewhat
2 hour read
I
I
IT WAS EARLY in November, 1882, and the Manitoba winter had just set in. I was tilting back in my chair for a few lazy moments after breakfast, idly alternating my gaze from the one window-pane of our shanty, through which was framed a bit of the prairie and the end of our cowshed, to the old rhyme of the 'Franckelyn's dogge' pinned on the logs near by. But the dreamy mixture of rhyme and view was quickly dispelled by the sight of a large gray animal dashing across the prairie into the cowshed,
41 minute read
I
I
THE HENS had been mysteriously disappearing for over a month; and when I came home to Springfield for the summer holidays it was my duty to find the cause. This was soon done. The fowls were carried away bodily one at a time, before going to roost or else after leaving, which put tramps and neighbors out of court; they were not taken from the high perches, which cleared all coons and owls; or left partly eaten, so that weasels, skunks, or minks were not the guilty ones, and the blame, therefore,
46 minute read
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JO CALONE threw down his saddle on the dusty ground, turned his horses loose, and went clanking into the ranchhouse. "Nigh about chuck time?" he asked. "Seventeen minutes," said the cook glancing at the Waterbury, with the air of a train starter, though this show of precision had never yet been justified by events. "How's things on the Perico?" said Jo's pard. "Hotter'n hinges," said Jo. "Cattle seem O.K.; lots of calves." "I seen that bunch o' mustangs that waters at Antelope Springs; couple o'
57 minute read
WULLY, The Story of a Yaller Dog
WULLY, The Story of a Yaller Dog
WULLY WAS a little yaller dog. A yaller dog, be it understood, is not necessarily the same as a yellow dog. He is not simply a canine whose capillary covering is highly charged with yellow pigment. He is the mongrelest mixture of all mongrels, the least common multiple of all dogs, the breedless union of all breeds, and though of no breed at all, he is yet of older, better breed than any of his aristocratic relations, for he is nature's attempt to restore the ancestral jackal, the parent stock o
31 minute read
I
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DOWN THE wooded slope of Taylor's Hill the Mother Partridge led her brood; down toward the crystal brook that by some strange whim was called Mud Creek. Her little ones were one day old but already quick on foot, and she was taking them for the first time to drink. She walked slowly, crouching low as she went, for the woods were full of enemies. She was uttering a soft little cluck in her throat, a call to the little balls of mottled down that on their tiny pink legs came toddling after, and pee
2 hour read