Animals Books

THE SPOTTED FAWN When Nimble's mother first looked at him she couldn't believe she would ever be able to raise him. He was such a tiny, frail, spotted thing that he seemed too delicate for a life of adventure on the wooded ridges and in the tangled swamps under the shadow of Blue Mountain. "Bless me!" cried the good lady. "This child's not much taller than an overgrown beet... more...

A FAMOUS BITER That black rascal, Mr. Crow, was not the oldest dweller in Pleasant Valley. There was another elderly gentleman who had spent more summers—and a great many more winters—under the shadow of Blue Mountain than he. All the wild folk knew this person by the name of Timothy Turtle. And if they didn't see him so often as Mr. Crow it was because he spent much of his time on the muddy... more...

Chapter One. Cats. I have undertaken, my young friends, to give you a number of anecdotes, which will, I think, prove that animals possess not only instinct, which guides them in obtaining food, and enables them to enjoy their existence according to their several natures, but also that many of them are capable of exercising a kind of reason, which comes into play under circumstances to which they are... more...

CHAPTER I LITTLE WHITE FOX MAKES A DISCOVERY Little White Fox was very, very much worried, for something dreadful had happened, something he couldn't account for at all: Tdariuk, the reindeer, was dead! Tdariuk was not related to Little White Fox. And he wasn't a bit in the world like him. He was many times bigger than Little White Fox would ever be, and he was quite different from him in... more...

CHAPTER I Little Dot had lost her way in the bush. She knew it, and was very frightened. She was too frightened in fact to cry, but stood in the middle of a little dry, bare space, looking around her at the scraggy growths of prickly shrubs that had torn her little dress to rags, scratched her bare legs and feet till they bled, and pricked her hands and arms as she had pushed madly through the bushes,... more...

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is "soporific." I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit. They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies! When Benjamin Bunny grew up, he married his Cousin Flopsy. They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful. I do not remember the separate names of their... more...

A STORY FOR NORAH   This is a Tale about a tail—a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin. He had a brother called Twinkleberry, and a great many cousins: they lived in a wood at the edge of a lake.   In the middle of the lake there is an island covered with trees and nut bushes; and amongst those trees stands a hollow oak-tree, which is the house of an owl who is... more...

CHAPTER I.THE FAMILY OF RATS. My very earliest recollection is of running about in a shed adjoining a large warehouse, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Poplar, and close to the River Thames, which thereabouts is certainly no silver stream. A merry life we led of it in that shed, my seven brothers and I! It was a sort of palace of rubbish, a mansion of odds and ends, where rats might frolic and... more...

SOMEBODY IS EXPECTED On May Day the feathered folk in Pleasant Valley began to stop, look and listen. They were expecting somebody. "Have you seen him?" Rusty Wren asked Jolly Robin. Jolly Robin said that he hadn't; but he added that he was on the lookout. "Have you heard his song?" little Mr. Chippy inquired eagerly of Mr. Blackbird. "No!" that dusky rascal replied.... more...

CHAPTER 1 To Baree, for many days after he was born, the world was a vast gloomy cavern. During these first days of his life his home was in the heart of a great windfall where Gray Wolf, his blind mother, had found a safe nest for his babyhood, and to which Kazan, her mate, came only now and then, his eyes gleaming like strange balls of greenish fire in the darkness. It was Kazan's eyes that gave... more...