# Your favourite animal stories? - especially legends and myths **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 20, 2008, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370 "2008-02-20T11:02:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/21 "2008-02-21T06:15:13Z")
I’m a big fan of a story called Rikki-tikki-tavi, about a mongoose who ends up defending a family from an evil venomous snake. ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/22 "2008-02-21T06:19:59Z")
Norse mythology has all sorts of animals - my favorite is the squirrel Ratatosk, who lives in the world tree Yggdrasil. He never stops chattering, and he runs up and down the trunk of the tree, bringing gossip between the roots and the braches. Then there is the goat Heidrunn, who lives on the roof of Valhalla, and who gives mead instead og milk, enough to fill an endless host of champions. And the pig Særimne, who is slaughtered every day and served to the dead heroes, yet every night is restored to life (a metaphor for the pig being the main food animal in the norse countries?) The Midgard Worm encircles the world, biting its own tail. Odins horse Sleipnir har eight legs (that makes him faster, see?) and was born some time after a male god (Loki the trickster) transformed himself into a female horse to distract the workhorse of a craftsman the gods did not want to pay. Needless to say, this was to become a point of embarrassment for Loki. Almost all the norse gods have an animal or two associated with them. Odin has, in addition to the horse, two ravens and two wolves. Thors wagon is drawn by goats (which, like Særimne, can be killed an eaten, and then restored to life, as long as no bones are broken,), while Freyas is drawn by a team of cats. Frey, her brother, has a gigantic golden pig as a riding animal, and another of Loki’s children is the monstrous chained wolf, Fenris, who will eventually break his chain and destroy the world. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/23 "2008-02-21T06:31:53Z")
Richard Adams borrowed a bit of factual information from Ronald Lockley’s _The Private Life of the Rabbit_ in writing his own masterpiece, _Watership Down_. The result is a story about rabbits who can speak to one another, have prophetic visions, wage wars and have a complex mythology interspersed with tidbits about how rabbits are easily exhausted by walking long distances, how they dig temporary scrapes when a full warren isn’t available, reabsorbtion of unborn litters if the warren is too crowded, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/24 "2008-02-21T06:50:29Z")
I got bit by a wallaby. In northern Nevada. U S of f"ing A. Wife was trying to sex a joey, and was having trouble with Angeroo. I walked in to the pen to help and grabbed her by the tail. Next thing I know, she’s got her little teeth into my leg. First time is 10 years I’ve been bitten by these critters. Imagine my outrage. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/25 "2008-02-21T06:55:06Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] This is one of those annoying “I can’t remember where I read this but I swear I did”, but I “somewhere I read” that in the Southwest when movie going was an event (newsreels, cartoons, featurettes, coming attractions, etc.) Hopi and Apache and other Indians would leave the reservations, come into town, buy their tickets to the show, watch the Road Runner/Coyote cartoons {laughing uproariously}, then leave before the movie started. Road Runner & Coyote were the two main figures in their folklore centuries before Chuck Jones was born. [/QUOTE] Mmm, when I was a child my parents would read me stories about Coyote and all his adventures. I don’t remember many of the stories but I loved that book to pieces. (Literally, it just fell apart one day and I thought my heart would fall apart with it. I was so sad.) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/26 "2008-02-21T07:11:58Z")
Tanuki Wars (Pom Poko) is decent: > **[Pom Poko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pom_Poko)** > > Pom Poko (Japanese: 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, Hepburn: Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, lit. "Heisei-era Raccoon Dog War Ponpoko") is a 1994 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Isao Takahata, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Hakuhodo, and distributed by Toho. > An environmental allegory, the story features tanuki, or Japanese raccoon dogs (incorrectly referred to as "raccoons" in the English dialog). In Japanese folklore, tanuki are considered to be ma... [http://www.amazon.com/Pom-Poko-Kokondei-Shinchou/dp/B0009MAO3W/ref=sr\_1\_5?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1203577848&sr=1-5](http://www.amazon.com/Pom-Poko-Kokondei-Shinchou/dp/B0009MAO3W/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1203577848&sr=1-5) ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/27 "2008-02-21T09:58:55Z")
**Big Bad Voodoo Lou** and **Miss Purl McKnittington** - sounds like the Irish legend [The Children of Lir](http://www.ireland-information.com/articles/thechildrenoflir.htm) to me. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/28 "2008-02-21T18:16:46Z")
**Irishgirl, Big Bad Voodoo Lou and Miss Purl McKnittington** - [The Wild Swans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Swans) is a Hans Christian Andersen tale of a mute princess who had to weave stinging nettles into cloaks for her brothers magically transformed into swans. StG ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/29 "2008-02-21T18:42:33Z")
My favorite is the short story “Tobermory” by H.H. Munro, aka Saki. If you haven’t read it it’s about a cat that has been taught to speak English. Tobermory has a real attitude as well, and his new ability has the humans around him planning his death, just to shut him up. I named one of my cats Tobermory in honor of the original! ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370/30 "2008-02-22T07:59:47Z")
I don’t know where to start in replying to all this wonderful stuff, except to say Thanks Heaps! and I will be following up on it all. I was delighted to see _The Elephant’s Child_ mentioned because I quoted this in my last book, _Crocodile_. It was the positive reviews of the chapter _Crocodiles in Life and Legend_ which led to this project. I just finished _Spiders and how to learn to love them_ but there wasn’t much on legends in that one - I was way over the word length before I got to legends! I had not thought of metamorphosis, **Miss Purl McKnittington** , but I have now! I can go in any direction so unusual suggestions are very welcome. Thank you for the reference to the classification system - I was looking for something like that. My knowledge of legends is weak - it is my natural history which is strong, so I have a lot to learn. **Septima** : I am getting really interested in Norse mythology. I interviewed a Dane yesterday. Odin and the berserkas was one of the ideas which really excited me when I started looking into this as my next book and doctorate. Your comments make it even more intriguing. Dogs, snakes, mongeese (?), rabbits, swans, wolves, coyote, cats, Tanuki, weasels…the only hassle is which to follow up first. Thanks again. Two weeks in - I still have three years minus two weeks to work on this - life is good! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favourite-animal-stories-especially-legends-and-myths/438370.md?page=1)