A wonderfully involved tail of a pig’s escape and eventual recapture.Firstly, a protracted endeavour to find him, eventually discovered resting in a barn, engaged in ‘thinking unutterable things’. Secondly, the vain boast of an Irishman who was sure...
I don’t blame them either. A delightful recollection of a sensible ursine response to the outrage of war in their habitat. See another lovely account from the same book, of monster lobsters.”Last year, when the hard fighting was going on up there” he...
The Countess lives in a sea of white cats who hang upon her every word, here looking up at her lovingly. Even her voice addressing them is likened to a purr.’Every luminous slit-pupilled eye was upon her. The only movement lay in the vibration in their throats....
Among the most cherished beings in Mervyn Peake’s sprawling, imaginative Gormenghast, are the teeming masses of white cats belonging to the Countess. She has more love for furred and feathered friends than for humans, even those of her own producing, though...
Williamson pays close attention to the calls and cries of birds and animals, and here he distinguishes between the mutual call of a dog and a bitch otter. I found the description of White-tip’s cry extraordinary. ‘White-tip answered him. Her cry was like...
A berry crushed into service as a metaphor for a mud-mark. ‘Tarka’s deep seals in the lower ooze showed like big blackberries crushed in the mud.’ Source: Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter: His joyful water-life and death in the two rivers,...
Generally speaking, I’m not a big cat fan, preferring dogs all round. However, although I can be dismissive of the pampered creatures slouching around domestic hearths, some cats with strong characters, or a sassy, streetwise streak, can partially win me over. I...
This is one memorable cat. Patrick Leigh Fermor had chance to observe the same big tom-cat every night in Athens after the war, performing what was clearly a regular feline routine. I loved this whole story. For other cat-related Greek tails, see also the naming of...
A symbiosis of hovering birds and fly-pestered bullocks, the darting martins hoovering up bothersome crisp-winged flies. ‘Martins twittered along the river-bank, and hovered about the heads of bullocks, taking crisp-winged flies from their muzzles and between...
An undertow of this animal life-loving adventure is hunger. We must be one of the few species having a significant segment of its global population not living with hunger as a daily driving urge. ‘Food chain’ takes on new meaning as Williamson portrays...
A lasting impression of Tarka the Otter is of the playfulness of these and other creatures. Tarka plays with anything to hand or paw: a water spout, a pebble, a dung-ball, a cocoa can. Here he is intrigued by a water-smoothed glass pebble, and Williamson uses a liquid...
Of course, this simile is obvious when you see it, but have you ever seen it before? Please try incorporating it into your simile-store. ‘Over fall he slid, smooth as oil.’ Source: Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter: His joyful water-life and death...
Perhaps a dialect word, used by Willliamson as referring to a hedgehog. It doesn’t seem to appear in the OED’s 600,000 word dictionary, but I am proud to say that a friendly vuz-peg frequents our garden almost nightly. See also ‘errin-og’ for...
Williamson says this is a ‘name given by fishermen to porpoises’, perhaps in dialect. It doesn’t appear in the massive OED. See also ‘vuz-peg’ for another quirky animal name. Source: Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter: His joyful...
