The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

We saw one band of seventeen sheep, close to Pinacate Peak, all so utterly ignorant of the ways of men that they practically refused to be frightened at our presence and our silent guns. We watched them a long time, forgetful of the flight of time. They were not shrewdly suspicious of danger. They fed, and frolicked, and dozed, as much engrossed in their indolence as if the world contained no dangers for them. One day Mr. John M. Phillips and I shot two rams, for the Carnegie Museum; and the next morning I had the most remarkable lesson that I ever learned in mountain sheep psychology. Early on that November morning Mr. Jeff Milton and I left our chilly lair in a lava ravine, and most foolishly left both our rifles at our camp. Hobbling along on foot we led a pack mule over half a mile of rough and terrible lava to a dead sheep. There we quickly skinned the animal, packed the skin and a horned head upon the upper deck of our mule, and started back to camp, leading our assistant. Half way back we looked westward across an eighth of a mile of rough, black lava, and saw standing on a low point a fine big-horn ram. He stood in a statuesque attitude, facing us, and fixedly gazing at us. He was trying to make out what we were, and to determine why a perfectly good pair of sheep horns should grow out of the back of a sorrel mule! Ethically he had a right to be puzzled.