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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Tanuki Wars (Pom Poko) is decent:
Big Bad Voodoo Lou and Miss Purl McKnittington- sounds like the Irish legend The Children of Lir to me.
Irishgirl, Big Bad Voodoo Lou and Miss Purl McKnittington - 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
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!
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!