/lit/ - Literature

QUIZ — ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL


One hundred creatures in roughly increasing size. Some non-fiction works; some in translation. Names of well-known main characters redacted. Some authors (no works) appear more than once. Hints on request.

1)
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be


2)
When did you start your tricks
Monsieur?

What do you stand on such high legs for?
Why this length of shredded shank
You exaltation?


3)
It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him, when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of those wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working creature in the world — when anybody is looking — but his leather-headedness is the point I make against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No — he goes anywhere but home. He doesn’t know where home is. His home may be only three feet away — no matter, he can’t find it. He makes his capture, as I have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts; not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backward dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top — which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more — as usual, in a new direction.


4)
How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!


5)
“What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle — it’s just a web.”

“Ever try to spin one?” asked Dr. Dorian.

6)
The butterfly, a cabbage-white
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Well never now — it is too late —
Master the art of flying straight.


7)
The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes.


8)
“Do you really cook grasshoppers?” Newt asked.

“When I can get them,” Po Campo said. “The old ones taste better than the young ones. It isn’t that way with animals, but it is with grasshoppers. The old ones are brittle, like old men. They are easy to get crisp.”


9)
He pulled himself up over the gunwale with R————'s assistance. The water streamed off him and from the masses of weed which clung to his body. R———— fussed over him, helping to pick him clean. Suddenly she gave a little cry, which was instantly echoed by A————.

'Just look at the little beggars!' said A———— — the swear words he still refrained from using were those which, never having come R————'s way, she did not know to be swear words.

On A————'s body and arms and legs were leeches, a score or more of them, clinging to his skin. They were swelling with their blood as R———— looked at them. They were disgusting things. A———— was moved by the sight of them to more panic than he had felt about crocodiles.

'Can't you pull 'em off?' he said, his voice cracking. 'Arhh! The beasts.'


10)
He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

11)
I was haffway on the bord when I herd A———— squeek like he was happy again and that means he won the race.

And the other ten times we did it over A———— won evry time because I coudnt find the right rows to get to where it says FINISH. I didnt feel bad because I watched A———— and I lernd how to finish the amaze even if it takes me along time.

I dint know mice were so smart.


12)
The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark.


13)
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:


14)
Sparrow, favourite of my darling girl,
Playfellow she cradles in her arms,
Offers her fingertips to nibble...


15)
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

16)
That a kingfisher hanged by the bill, sheweth in what quarter the wind is, by an occult and secret propriety, converting the breast to that point of the horizon from whence the wind doth blow, is a received opinion, and very strange, introducing naturall weathercocks, and extending magneticall conditions as far as animal natures: a conceit supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made out by reason or experience.


17)
Then, on what had already been a day of oddities and alarms, she noticed something else strange. Beyond the cat, quite far beyond, between the barn and the house, she saw what looked like a troop of dark grey figures marching in columns. Marching? Not exactly, but moving slowly and all in line.

They were rats.


18)
Then, as they were coming in from abroad, they espied a little robin with a great spider in his mouth. So the Interpreter said, "Look here." So they looked, and Mercy wondered; but Christiana said, "What a disparagement is it to such a pretty little bird as the robin-redbreast is; he being also a bird above many, that loveth to maintain a kind of sociableness with man! I had thought they had lived upon crumbs of bread, or upon other such harmless matter. I like him worse than I did."


19)
The policeman's face bore a constant look of tolerant interest. Set the sack down son and let's see what all you got there.

H———— rolled the sack from his shoulder and lowered it to the paving and spread the drawstrung mouth with his thumbs. A musky smell rose. He tilted it slightly policeward. The officer thumbed his cap back on his head and bent to see. A prefiguration of the pit. Vouchsafed a crokersack vision of hell's floor deep with the hairy damned screaming mute and toothy toward the far and heedless city of God.


20)
That's the wise thrush; she sings each song twice over
Lest you should think she never could recapture
That first fine careless rapture!

21)
Then B———— heard something he had never heard before — the sound of the hair on his head rasping up on the pillow. B———— analysed the noise. It couldn't be! It simply couldn't! Yes, his hair was standing on end. B———— could even feel the cool air reaching his scalp between the hairs. How extraordinary! How very extraordinary! He had always thought it was a figure of speech. But why? Why was it happening to him?

The thing on his leg moved. Suddenly B———— realized that he was afraid, terrified. His instincts, even before they had communicated with his brain, had told his body that he had a centipede on him.


22)
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.


23)
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.


24)
A Saucer holds a Cup
In sordid human Life
But in a Squirrel's estimate
A Saucer hold a Loaf.


25)
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door...

26)
K————: (reading from the dictionary). State — or condition — of being — or remaining — a widow — or widower. (Looks up. Puzzled.) Being — or remaining? ... (Pause. He peers again at dictionary. Reading.) 'Deep woods of viduity.' ... Also of an animal, especially a bird ... the vidua or weaver-bird ... Black plumage of male ... (He looks up. With relish.) The vidua-bird!


27)
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before.


28)
He had never seen a bird this close before. The feathers were more wonderful than dog's hair, for each filament was shaped within the shape of the feather, and the feathers in turn were trimmed to fit a pattern than flowed without error across the bird's body. He lost himself in the geometrical tides as the feathers now broadened and stiffened to make an edge for flight, now softened and constricted to cup warmth around the mute flesh. And across the surface of the infinitely adjusted yet somehow effortless mechanics of the feathers played idle designs of colour, no two alike, designs executed, it seemed, in a controlled rapture, with a joy that hung level in the air above and behind him.


29)
The driver was sort of a wise guy. "I can't turn around here, Mac. This here's a one-way. I'll have to go all the way to Ninedieth Street now."

I didn't want to start an argument. "Okay," I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. "Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?"


30)
Every now and then R———— fell in and came back on the rope with the next article, which flustered K———— a little because she never knew where to look for him. So she got cross with O———— and said that his house was a Disgrace, all damp and dirty, and it was quite time it did tumble down. Look at that horrid bunch of toadstools growing out of the corner there! So O———— looked down, a little surprised because he didn't know about this, and then gave a short sarcastic laugh, and explained that that was his sponge, and that if people didn't know a perfectly ordinary bath-sponge when they saw it, things were coming to a pretty pass.

31)
Our young adventurer, supporting a volume of embryology on the pit of his stomach, followed the development of the organism from the moment when the spermatozoon, first among a host of its fellows, forced itself forward by a lashing motion of its hinder part, struck with its forepart against the gelatine mantle of the egg, and bored its way into the mount of conception, which the protoplasm of the outside of the ovum arched against its approach. There was no conceivable trick or absurdity it would not have pleased nature to commit by way of variation upon this fixed procedure. In some animals, the male was a parasite in the intestine of the female...


32)
They walked a short distance eastwards from the road and Lucy set the rabbit down. It sat stupefied for nearly half a minute and then suddenly dashed away across the grass.

'Yes, he *has* got something the matter with that leg, you see,' said Doctor Adams, pointing. 'But he could perfectly well live for years, as far as that goes. Born and bred in a briar patch, Brer Fox.'


33)
A yard she had, enclosed all about
With stickes, and a drye ditch without,
In which she had a cock, hight C————;
In all the land of crowing n'as his peer.


34)
The driver tried to interfere, but he pinned him down in his seat with one elbow, and put on full speed. The rush of air in his face, the hum of the engines, and the light jump of the car beneath him intoxicated his weak brain. "Washerwoman, indeed!" he shouted recklessly. "Ho! ho! I am the T————, the motor-car snatcher, the prison-breaker, the T———— who always escapes! Sit still, and you shall know what driving really is, for you are in the hands of the famous, the skilful, the entirely fearless T————!


35)
I put my eye to the crack. A rumpus arose in the darkness. Two bright eyes shone, and out through that hole that was no wider than a string bean came a weasel. He flew right out at me, landed on my shoulder, gave me a lecture that I shall never forget, and vanished under the scant cover of trillium and bloodroot leaves.

He popped up about five feet away and stood on his hind feet to lecture me again. I said, ‘Scat!’ so he darted right to my knee, put his broad furry paws on my pants, and looked me in the face. I shall never forget the fear and wonder that I felt at the bravery of that weasel. He stood his ground and berated me. I could see by the flashing of his eyes and the curl of his lip that he was furious at me for trapping him. He couldn’t talk, but I knew what he meant.

36)
Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed, three inches, four
And four and a half, fed fry to them —
Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.


37)
I didn't have a net with me so I fought the trout over to the edge of the creek and swung it up onto the shore. The trout had a big red stripe down its side. It was a good rainbow.

"What a beauty, " he said.

He picked it up and it was squirming in his hands.

"Break its neck, " I said.

"I have a better idea, " he said. "Before I kill it, let me at least soothe its approach into death. This trout needs a drink." He took the bottle of port out of his pocket, unscrewed the cap and poured a good slug into the trout's mouth.


38)
However stuporous a lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you're tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container's sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle's rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof.


39)
We everywhere saw great numbers of partridges (Nothura major). These birds do not go in coveys, nor do they conceal themselves like the English kind. It appears a very silly bird. A man on horseback by riding round and round in a circle, or rather in a spire, so as to approach closer each time, may knock on the head as many as he pleases.


40)
The new arrival was duly christened Achilles, and turned out to be a most intelligent and lovable beast, possessed of a peculiar sense of humour. At first he was tethered by a leg in the garden, but as he grew tamer we let him go where he pleased. He learned his name in a very short time, and we had only to call out once or twice and then wait patiently for a, while and he would appear, lumbering along the narrow cobbled paths on tip-toe, his head and neck stretched out eagerly. He loved being fed, and would squat regally in the sun while we held out bits of lettuce, dandelions, or grapes for him. He loved grapes as much as Roger did, so there was always great rivalry. Achilles would sit mumbling the grapes in his mouth, the juice running down his chin, and Roger would lie nearby, watching him with agonized eyes, his mouth drooling saliva. Roger always had his fair share of the fruit, but even so he seemed to think it a waste to give such delicacies to a tortoise. When the feeding was over, if I didn't keep an eye on him, Roger would creep up to Achilles and lick his front vigorously in an attempt to get the grape-juice that the reptile had dribbled down himself. Achilles, affronted at such a liberty, would snap at Roger's nose, and then, when the licks became too overpowering and moist, he would retreat into his shell with an indignant wheeze, and refuse to come out until we had removed Roger from the scene.

41)
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass


42)
in the whole market
yours
was the only shape left
with purpose or direction
in this
jumbled ruin
of nature


43)
He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use. He could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled through the long grass was: “Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”


44)
The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be.

It is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it’s about to trip over something — but flying is completely out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has also forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.


45)
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

46)
As she left the bright hot kitchen and walked up the stairs she thought of the fox on the landing, the stuffed fox, shot when Susan was a baby by Tom Garland, who found it coming from a hen house. It stoood between two windows and its glass eyes followed Susan wherever she went. Never did she lose the feeling that the fox's soul was hidden in the furry body. She could stroke him and tough his eyes with her fingers, and carry him in her arms, but she dare not turn her back on him. So she walked sideways past him, up the stairs to her own bedroom under the roof. The attic stair creaked and she loved the comforting sound, which talked to her. She knew it would cry out if the fox came up in the night.


47)
Once upon a time there were two chipmunks, a male and a female. The male chipmunk thought that arranging nuts in artistic patterns was more fun than just piling them up to see how many you could pile up. The female was all for piling up as many as you could.


48)
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.


49)
It *was* a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.


50)
The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling. Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.

51)
But all of these are as nothing compared with the delicate and diaphanous box jellyfish, the most poisonous creature on earth. We will hear more of the unspeakable horrors of this little bag of lethality when we get to the tropics, but let me offer here just one small story. In 1992, a young man in Cairns, ignoring all the warning signs, went swimming in the Pacific waters at a place called Holloways Beach. He swam and dived, taunting his friends on the beach for their prudent cowardice, and then began to scream with an inhuman sound. It is said that there is no pain to compare with it. The young man staggered from the water, covered in livid whip-like stripes wherever the jellyfish's tentacles had brushed across him, and collapsed in quivering shock. Soon afterwards emergency crews arrived, inflated him with morphine, and took him away for treatment. And here's the thing. Even unconscious and sedated he was still screaming.


52)
Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. C———— was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion.


53)
It came as a shock to me to discover that she was the most precarious of swimmers. Even in the wild state otter cubs have little if any instinct for water, and their dam teaches them to swim against their better judgment, as it were, for they are afraid to be out of their depth. In the water Edal preferred to keep her feet either in surreptitious contact with the bottom or within easy reach of it, and nothing, at that time, would tempt her into deep water. Within these self-imposed limits, however, she was capable of a performance that even Mij might have envied; lying on her back she would begin to spin, if that is the correct word, to revolve upon her own axis, to pirouette in the horizontal plane, like a chicken on a spit that has gone mad.


54)
The man stopped. The chuck realized he had been spotted. To his right and just ahead was a fallen birch. He would hide under there, wait for the man to go by, then investigate for any tasty —

The chuck got that far in his thoughts — and another three waddling steps — although he had been cut in two. Then he fell apart on the edge of the road.

55)
But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.


56)
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.


57)
The snake-man was just a bit too far away from the snake to reach it with the end of his pole. He waited, staring at the snake and the snake stared back at him with two small malevolent black eyes.

Then the snake-man started speaking to the snake. 'Come along, my pretty,' he whispered in a soft wheedling voice. 'There's a good boy. Nobody's going to hurt you. Nobody's going to harm you, my pretty little thing. Just lie still and relax...' He took a step forward towards the snake, holding the pole out in front of him.

What the snake did next was so fast that the whole movement couldn't have taken more than a hundredth of a second, like the flick of a camera shutter.


58)
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.


59)
They were standing on the edge of a steep, narrow valley at the bottom of which ran — at least it would have been running if it hadn't been frozen — a fairly large river. Just below them a dam had been built across this river; and when they saw it everyone suddenly remembered that of course beavers are always making dams and felt quite sure that Mr. Beaver had made this one. They also noticed that he now had a sort of modest expression on his face — the sort of look people have when you are visiting a garden they've made or reading a story they've written. So it was only common politeness when S———— said, "What a lovely dam!" And Mr. Beaver didn't say "Hush" this time but "Merely a trifle! Merely a trifle! And it isn't really finished!"

60)
For the first days I carried her about with me to give her confidence. She liked to lie across the back of my neck, her long nose hanging down one side of me and her long tail down the other, like a fur collar. Every time I moved she would tighten her grip in a panic, and this was painful. After the fourth shirt had been ruined I decided that she would have to cling to something else, so I filled a sack full of straw and introduced her to that. She accepted it without any fuss, and so between meals she would lie in her cage, clutching this substitute happily. We had already christened her ‘Sarah’, and now that she developed this habit of sack-clutching we gave her a surname, and so she became known as ‘Sarah Huggersack’.


61)
He took four of the horseshoe nails from the sack. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand he made a small “o” about the size of the bit, which was an inch and half in diameter.

“Now, we’ll say this is the hole you bored in the log,” he said. “About an inch apart, drive these nails in on a slant opposite each other.”
Holding one of the nails in his right hand, he showed me the right angle.

“The ends of the nails will enter the hole about halfway between the top and the piece of tin,” he continued. “Leave an opening between the sharp points big enough for a coon to get his paw through.”


62)
Two things she took with her from the ship: a little monkey whose name was Mr. Nilsson — he was a present from her father — and a big suitcase full of gold pieces. The sailors stood upon the deck and watched as long as they could see her. She walked straight ahead without looking back at all, with Mr. Nilsson on her shoulder and her suitcase in her hand.


63)
Lulu soon adapted herself to the house and its inhabitants and behaved as if she were at home. During the first weeks the polished floors in the rooms were a problem in her life, and when she got outside the carpets her legs went away from her to all four sides; it looked catastrophic but she did not let it worry her much and in the end she learnt to walk on the bare floors with a sound like a succession of little angry finger-taps.


64)
. . . . . . . . . But
There, I was saying, are found
The bushy, T-shaped mask,
And below, the smaller, eared
Head like a grave nut,
And the arms folded round.


65)
...I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes —
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.

66)
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.


67)
It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To the shepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle twinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening morn that note was heard by G————, beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways — by the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear of O———— knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity.


68)
"How far can you bear me? " I said to G————.

"Many leagues," said he, "but not to the ends of the earth. I was sent to bear tidings not burdens."

"Then I must have a steed on land," I said, "and a steed surpassingly swift, for I have never had such need of haste before."


69)
June 16. — Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise or turtle. This was the first I had seen, which, it seems, was only my misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity; for had I happened to be on the other side of the island, I might have had hundreds of them every day, as I found afterwards; but perhaps had paid dear enough for them.

June 17. — I spent in cooking the turtle. I found in her three-score eggs; and her flesh was to me, at that time, the most savoury and pleasant that ever I tasted in my life, having had no flesh, but of goats and fowls, since I landed in this horrid place.


70)
"Sir, if you have a down payment of three thou, I can make you owner of something a lot better than a pair of rabbits. What about a goat?"

"I haven't thought much about goats," Rick said.

"May I ask if this represents a new price bracket for you?"

"Well, I don't usually carry around three thou," Rick conceded.

"I thought as much, sir, when you mentioned rabbits. The thing about rabbits, sir, is that everybody has one. I'd like to see you step up to the goat-class where I feel you belong. Frankly you look more like a goat man to me."

71)
In their brief time together S———— forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where’s his basis for comparing? But there is a mad exuberance, as with inanimate objects which fall off of tables when we are sensitive to noise and our own clumsiness and don’t want them to fall, a sort of wham! ha-ha you hear that? here it is again, WHAM! in the cephalopod’s every movement, which S———— is glad to get away from as he finally scales the crab like a discus, with all his strength, out to sea, and the octopus, with an eager splash and gurgle, strikes out in pursuit, and is presently gone.


72)
A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.


73)
Now T———— had made a pet of the most extraordinary animal ever seen in Rome. Giraffes excited great admiration when first seen, and so did the rhinoceros, but this, though not so large was far more fabulous. It came from an island beyond India called Java, and it was like a lizard the size of a small calf, with an ugly head and a back like a saw. When T———— first looked at it he said that he would now no longer be sceptical about the monsters said to have been slain by Hercules and Theseus. It was called the Wingless Dragon and T———— fed it himself every day with cockroaches and dead mice and such-like vermin. It had a disgusting smell, dirty habits and a vicious temper. The dragon and T———— understood each other perfectly.


74)
L———— stole forward holding his thorn bush sideways. F———— circled out to his left. She carried a natural blade of stone in either hand. The two hyenas moved closer together and snarled. F———— suddenly jerked her right hand round and the stone thumped the bitch in the ribs. The bitch yelped then ran howling. L———— shot forward, swinging the thorn bush, and thrust the spine at the dog's snarling muzzle. Then the two beasts were out of reach, talking evilly and afraid. L———— stood between them and the kill.

"Be quick, I smell cat."


75)
He squatted over the wolf and touched her fur. He touched the cold and perfect teeth. The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her.

76)
And, out of nothing, a breathing,
hot breath on my ankles,
Beasts like shadow in glass,
a furred tail upon nothingness.
Lynx-purr, and the heathery smell of beasts,
where tar smell had been.


77)
"I believe in my tusks.
Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,”
Said the gamey black-maned boar
Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.


78)
"Now," quoth Arthur a Bland to himself, when he had come to that part of the road that cut through a corner of the forest, "no doubt at this time of year the dun deer are coming from the forest depths nigher to the open meadow lands. Mayhap I may chance to catch a sight of the dainty brown darlings thus early in the morn."


79)
But look! — just where the hill rose from the flat,
A leopard, wonderfully lithe and fleet,
With dappled pelt: a sleek and nimble cat.


80)
The mules stand, their fore quarters already sloped a little, their romps high. They too are breathing now with a deep groaning sound; looking back once, their gaze sweeps across us with in their eyes a wild, sad, profound and despairing quality as though they had already seen in the thick water the shape of the disaster which they could not speak and we could not see.

81)
B———— was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark — for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed. If asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at.


82)
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel. New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.


83)
"Your Grandpa went to town one day and was late starting home. It was dark when he came riding his horse through the Big Woods, so dark that he could hardly see the road, and when he heard a panther scream he was frightened, for he had no gun."

"How does a panther scream?" L———— asked.

"Like a woman," said Pa. "Like this."


84)
"When you meet her," he said, "remember that she is a gorilla and not a human being. Gorillas have their own etiquette. Don't speak loudly or make any sudden movements until she gets used to you. If you smile, don't show your teeth, because bared teeth are a threat. And keep your eyes downcast, because direct stares from strangers are considered hostile. Don't stand too close to me or touch me, because she's very jealous. If you talk to her, don't lie. Even though she uses sign language, she understands most human speech, and we usually just talk to her. She can tell when you're lying and she doesn't like it."


85)
She stands as he left her, tethered, chewing. Within the mild enormous moist and pupilless globes he sees himself in twin miniature mirrored by the inscrutabale abstraction; one with that which Juno might have looked out with, he watched himself contemplating what those who looked at Juno saw.

86)
— It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.

— Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.


87)
The camel looked along its nose at T————. Its expression made it clear that of all the riders in all the world it would least like to ride it, he was right at the top of the list. However, camels look like that at everyone. Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinctions for rank or creed.

This one appeared to be chewing soap.


88)
He swung back the net, heavier now that it was wet. He had to turn his head, but out of the corner of his eye he saw two swirls in the black water just off the starboard bow. They were about eight feet apart, and they had the sluggish oily look that marks the presence of something big just below the surface. His conscious mind had no time to function, but instinct told him that the net was wide enough to cover both swirls if he could alter the direction of his cast. He could not halt the swing, but he shifted his feet slightly and made the cast off balance. He saw the net shoot forward, flare into an oval, and drop just where he wanted it.

Then the sea exploded in his face. In a frenzy of spray, a great horned thing shot like a huge bat out of the water. The man saw the mesh of his net etched against the mottled blackness of its body and he knew, in the split second in which thought was still possible, that those twin swirls had been made not by two mullet, but by the wing tips of the giant ray of the Gulf Coast, Manta birostris, also known as clam cracker, devil ray, sea devil.


89)
A savage clamour!
Well may I get aboard! This is the chase;
I am gone for ever.

[Exit, pursued by a bear]


90)
'Where is the lion,' repeated M————. 'Where is the lion,' he said uncertainly once more. Finally, he shouted: 'Well, where is it?'

A great stamping could be heard behind the scenes. Then the lion entered. It consisted of a beaver in the forelegs and another in the hindlegs. The audience shouted with delight.

The lion hesitated. Then it walked up to the footlights and took a bow, and broke in the middle.

The audience clapped and began to row home.

'It isn't finished!' shouted M————.

91)
He sat down on a large mushroom, and now there was a quiver in his voice. 'S————,' he said huskily, 'that crocodile would have had me before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock which goes tick tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and bolt.' He laughed, but in a hollow way.

'Some day,' said S————, 'the clock will run down, and then he'll get you.'


92)
Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly “salted,” that is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof, comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange “veldt” or grass country. As for “lung sick,” which is a dreadful form of pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks. It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.


93)
Ah! how my heart beat with emotion and horror! The formidable beak of a cuttlefish was open over N————. The unhappy man would be cut in two. I rushed to his succour. But Captain N———— was before me; his axe disappeared between the two enormous jaws, and, miraculously saved, the Canadian, rising, plunged his harpoon deep into the triple heart of the poulp.

94)
The brush was very thick ahead and the ground was dry. The middle-aged gun-bearer was sweating heavily and W———— had his hat down over his eyes and his red neck showed just ahead of M————. Suddenly the gun-bearer said something in Swahili to W———— and ran forward.

'He's dead in there,' W———— said. 'Good work,' and he turned to grip M————'s hand and as they shook hands, grinning at each other, the gun-bearer shouted wildly and they saw him coming out of the bush sideways, fast as a crab, and the bull coming, nose out, mouth tight closed, blood dripping, massive head straight out, coming in a charge, his little pig eyes bloodshot as he looked at them.


95)
A shiver went through my body. Between the lifejackets, partially, as if through some leaves, I had my first, unambiguous, clear-headed glimpse of R————. It was his haunches I could see, and part of his back. Tawny and striped and simply enormous. He was facing the stern, lying flat on his stomach. He was still except for the breathing motion of his sides. I blinked in disbelief at how close he was. He was right there, two feet beneath me. Stretching, I could have pinched his bottom. And between us there was nothing but a thin tarpaulin, easily got round.


96)
The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.


97)
When you quit the kingdom of Ferlec you enter upon that of Basma. This also is an independent kingdom, and the people have a language of their own; but they are just like beasts without laws or religion. They call themselves subjects of the Great Kaan, but they pay him no tribute; indeed they are so far away that his men could not go thither. Still all these Islanders declare themselves to be his subjects, and sometimes they send him curiosities as presents. There are wild elephants in the country, and numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big. They have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do no mischief, however, with the horn, but with the tongue alone; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles and when savage with any one they crush him under their knees and then rasp him with their tongue. The head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry it ever bent towards the ground. They delight much to abide in mire and mud. ’Tis a passing ugly beast to look upon, and is not in the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin; in fact, ’tis altogether different from what we fancied.

98)
The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.


99)
The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole. Actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.


100)
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said — “Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!” This the creature? this he?

>>20300175
1) The Flea by John Donne
5) Charlotte's Web
10) The Metamorphosis
13) Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
20) Home Thoughts by Robert Browning
23) Dust of Snow by Robert Frost
25) The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
27) Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
29) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
32) Tales of Brer Rabbit?
37) Chapter 12 of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (aka the best chapter in english literature)
43) Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (I think its by Kipling?)
45) I think this is Alice in Wonderland
48) Blake
56) The Wild Swans at Coole by W.B. Yeats
58) The Way Through the Woods by Kipling

>>20300284
All right, except —

32) Not Tales of Uncle Remus (although yes, the end is a quotation from it).

37) Not Hemingway. They do go trout-fishing in TSAR but I don't think they feed the trout on port. Hemingway takes his trout-fishing too seriously for japes like that!

48) Sure, but you need the work as well to be eligible for a VALUABLE PRIZE.

>>20300384
>48) Sure, but you need the work as well to be eligible for a VALUABLE PRIZE.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell iirc (or is it Albion?)

>>20300396
Yeah, Marriage of H & H

>>20300384
>>20300396
Gosh darn it, I could've sworn that was TSAR. I feel ashamed of myself now. Is it a River Runs Through It by any chance?

>>20300235
62) Pippi Longstocking
65) Vulture by Robinson Jeffers (his poem on Salmon is one of my favorites as well)
66) I'm not confident, but is this The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
69) Robinson Crusoe (I probably read this book at least a dozen times when I was a kid)
75) The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
81) Animal Farm by George Orwell
89) The Winter's Tale by ol' Billy Shakespeare
91) Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
92) King Solomon's Mines by Rider Haggard?
93) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
98)The Hippopotamus by T.S. Eliot
100) Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

>>20300456
>Is it a River Runs Through It by any chance?
Nope. It's a whimsical-ish comic book. About half-way between fiction and non-fiction.

All the others are right though.

11) Flowers for Algernon?
68) Lord of the Rings
72) Hound of the Baskervilles

>>20301092
Correct. (The misspelling is a clue on 11.)

Bump before bed.