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

Mr. Milton and I were greatly annoyed by the absence of our rifles; and he proposed that we should leave the mule where he stood, go back to our camp, get our guns, and kill the sheep. Now, even then I was quite well up on the subject of curiosity in wild animals, and I knew to a minute what to count upon as the standing period of sheep, goat or deer. As gently as possible I informed Milton that no sheep would ever stand and look at a sorrel mule for the length of time it would take us to foot it over that lava to camp, and return. But my companion was optimistic, and even skeptical. "Maybe he will, now!" he persisted. "Let's try it. I think he may wait for us." Much against my judgment, and feeling secretly rebellious at the folly of it all, I agreed to his plan,--solely to be "a good sport," and to play his game. But I knew that the effort would be futile, as well as exhausting. Jeff tied the mule, for the sheep to contemplate. We went and got those rifles. We were gone fully twenty minutes. When we again reached the habitat of the mule, that ram was still there! Apparently he had not moved a muscle, nor stirred a foot, nor even batted an eye. Talk about curiosity in a wild animal! He was a living statue of it. He continued to hold his pose on his lava point while we stalked him under cover of a hillock of lava, and shot him,--almost half an hour after we first saw him. He had been overwhelmingly puzzled by the uncanny sight of a pair of curling horns like his own, growing out of the back of a long-eared sorrel mule which he felt had no zoological right to wear them. He did his level best to think it out; he became a museum specimen in consequence, and he has gone down in history as the Curiosity Ram.