ID this story please

Cafe Society
1

My dad remembers reading a science fiction story in the late 70s or early 80s, but not the title. Does anyone recognize his description? Thanks in advance for any leads!
The story is of a farmer on some distant planet, sometime in the future. The farmer grows vegetables, mostly for his family’s consumption, but he is deviled by pests that are eating his lettuce, carrots, celery, tomatoes, etc. In fact, I think he calls one of the animals Killdevils.

The pests take the form of animals similiar to those on earth: rabbit like, mole like, groundhog like, etc. etc. Each morning he sees their handiwork, the damage they have done to his crops, he sees their multiple footprints, he even catches glimpses of the animals, but he never really gets a good luck at the varmints and can never catch them. For some eerie reason something prevents him from using poison or inhumane traps.

All these critters are fairly small in size, but he sees one set of footprints that are grizzly bear size. But he can’t track them. These footprints appear, go for a while and then disappear, only to appear a few yards or miles away.

The farmer decides to hunt this large animal, this “king of beasts” and sets out with full pack. Somehow, in the middle of the forest, he hurts himself, I forget how. While he’s laying their helpless, this bear-sized beast appears, large and wooly. Before his eyes, the beast starts to come apart. It turns out that the beast, I think it had a two syllable name, like Orzo or Uthra, was actually all the other smaller animals, clinging to each other in a symbotic relationship that created the larger animal.

I believe the animals help the farmer back to the farm and they all live happily ever after.

2

I haven’t read the story, but it sounds like it could be by Cliff Simak (his bibliography is here Summary Bibliography: Clifford D. Simak) or James Schmitz (his bibliography is here Summary Bibliography: James H. Schmitz). I’ll keep thinking/searching

3

I sure your looking for a story I read in one of the free download collections. I will let you know, if I ever run across it again.

4

One of the Baen collections?

5

Perhaps or Project Gutenberg or one of the other sites. It’s been about half a year to a year since I’ve read it.

6

This sounds vaguely familiar, but that’s about it. My initial guess would be to look in the anthology Dangerous Vegetables (published by Baen, “created by” Keith Laumer; it’s actually a pretty lousy collection)–do any of these titles seem right?

Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! by Ray Bradbury
Pressure by Fred Saberhagen
Rogue Tomato by Michael Bishop
The Ultimate Catalyst by John Taine
Manna by John Christopher
The Potato by Bentley Little
Cannibal Plants from Heck by David Drake
Black Harvest of Moraine by Arthur J. Burke
No Harm Done by Jack Sharkey
The Cactus by Mildred Johnson
Look, You Think You’ve Got Troubles by Carol Carr
The Pure Essence by Irwin Sonenfield
Pumpkin Head by Al Sarrantonio
You Say Potato, I Say . . . Trouble by Lawrence Schimel
The Crime of Micah Rood by Elia W. Peattie
Root of Evil by Edward Wellen
Step Into My Garden by Frank Belknap Long
Cordle to Onion to Carrot by Robert Sheckley
Night Bloomer by David J. Schow
Strange Harvest by Donald Wandrei
Pumpkin by Bill Pronzini
The White Fruit of Banalder by John D. MacDonald

7

Here’s the link to the webpage for Dangerous Vegetables from the Internet Speculative Database:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?8712

For what it’s worth, it’s generally better to link to the ISFDb webpage rather than copying down the list of story names. The ISFDb has links within it that allow you to look for other appearances of the stories, etc. The ISFDb is also extremely comprehensive.

8

Great title/concept, though.

9

I wrote:

> . . . the Internet Speculative Database . . .

I meant:

> . . . the Internet Speculative Fiction Database . . .

10

Agreed. For some reason the search I was doing didn’t return anything from ISFDB, so I ended up just copying the list from some other site.

11

Thanks, that would be great. I’ll pass along Hunter Hawk’s list of possible titles too. Much appreciated.