DIPPING INTO MY FILES

Animals

American author, professor and actor (1978), Elena Passarello wrote a book of essays in 2017 called "Animals Strike Curious Poses."

This is a bestiary of famous animals and their human friends, and how their interaction occurs.

(bestiary = A collection of descriptions or representations of real or imaginary animals)

 Some subjects:

The Recently Uncovered Wooly Mammoth

"Up from the mummy on that ice-cave slab comes a linked chain of animals, all of them pointing backward,"

Mozart's Pet Starling

(Vogel Staar (1785) "At the moment it locks in on your Mozartean whistle, the little bird will only blink, aiming it's entire soundless self toward the music coming from you.")

Mozart would whistle a tune and his pet starling would whistle back a deviant copy.

St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio

Legend:  A wolf terrorized the city of Gubbio until St Francis tamed it.

Jeoffry: The Poet's cat.

Supposedly true:  Book by Oliver Soden

"Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age."

Duerer's Rhinoceros 

In 1515, Albrecht Duerer drew a magnificent picture of a rhinoceros which caused a sensation. 

Mr. Ed 

Enough said!

Cecil the Lion

For over ten years an enormous lion became the lure for people to visit Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.  He was not afraid of people and people were not afraid of him. 

An American bow hunter killed Cecil because he would become a sought-after trophy. (Why is it always thoughtless Americans?)

Koko the Gorilla

Koko lived for 46 years at the Gorilla's preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.  

She mastered sign language and had a pet kitten.

That reminds me:

When I was seven or eight-years old, my Aunt Marjorie took me to watch the parade of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Two things occurred there that gave me nightmares for years:

A boy about my age was hitching a ride on the bar connecting two wagons.  He fell off and was squashed to death.

A wagon rolled by that held Gargantua, the mean-looking circus gorilla.  He glared at me through the cage bars and scared me silly.

I later learned to love that circus and often helped them pull the "big-top" up and tear the "big-top" down.

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