(1894–1961)
U.S. writer and cartoonist
James Thurber
Mother-love, in beasts and birds, can’t always be observed carefully, because of innate animal secrecy, but—to revisit an old Ohio highway for a moment—I once encountered a mother quail leading her young across the road in a single file. She diverted my attention from them by pretending to have a broken wing, and flopped around almost at my feet, in an exhibition of bravura acting something like that of the late Lionel Barrymore as Rasputin. When the small birds had disappeared into the deep grass, she flew calmly away and joined them.
“And So to Medve,” in Old Dogs Remembered, ed. by Bud Johns (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1993), 27–28.
It is well to bear in mind that the truth about dogs is as elusive as the truth about man. You cannot put your finger on any quality and safely say, “This is doglike,” nor on any other quality and say, “This is not.” Dogs are individualists. They react to no set bylaws of behaviorism, they are guided by no strict precepts of conduct, they obey unvaryingly no system of instinct, they follow religiously no standard of bloodlines. I know an English bulldog with the manner of a Chesterfield. I know a beagle that can tell time. I know a Scottie that never has the slightest idea what time it is, and I miserably admit to the ownership of a high-bred French poodle that cools its soup by fanning it with a hat.
James Thurber, “Dogs I Have Scratched,” in The Dog Department: James Thurber on Hounds, Scotties, and Talking Poodles, ed. Michael J. Rosen (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 56.