The more noble and morally admirable characters in Dorothy’s works, as a general rule, are animal lovers, while the depraved and evils ones are cruel toward animals. (For full references see “Reference Key”)
“All day long a million larks fluttered singing into the sunshine, and the little cruel hawks of the plains followed the traveling sheep and preyed upon the living sparks of music. Singing the larks rose, although they knew that the hawks were waiting for them, singing even as they fled from the talons of death.” [Hence the image for title of the novel] (Gold, p.19)
Joan Whatmore's father, Marcus, saves one of larks that sought refuge by flying inside his shirt: “He had carried the desperate beautiful atom there until the safety of darkness came; and, dear, rough, gentle old man that he was, even after thirty years I never saw him tell of it without tear-blurred eyes. It had been so frightened and so small and valiant, that it had flown not only into his shirt but his heart.” (Gold, p. 19-20)
Marcus laments the loss of a lamb kicked to death for no apparent reason by otherwise mild-mannered horses: “The next kick drove his head in, and when my father picked him up his little pink mouth was open, and blood running from his nostrils. The old man held him in his arms, and shook his fist after the playing horses, then he shook it at the sky and cursed all Heaven. But if it happened to be listening, I defy it to have minded. For it was not for the loss of the lamb that he swore, but because it had run so fast, and given such a little pleased bleat.” (Gold, p. 127)
Joan's closest friend through thick and thin was her 140 lb. pet mongrel dog, Tim, a gift from her future second husband: “Jerry had found him years before, a great clumsy puppy flogged into insensibility by his bullock-driving owner. And somehow Tim had never got used to being loved; it still overwhelmed him; caresses leaving him trembling from his great broad liver and white head to the end of his spotted tail.’ (Gold, p. 204)
When Joan gave birth to twins, Tim assumed the role of their guardian angel. “He rested his great grizzled head on the bunny blanket and looked at them long and earnestly, with his eyes that began to show the blurring of age. Then he wagged his tail with short thumps against the floor boards, and licked my cheek that he accepted our mutual responsibility. Thereafter he lay in the sun near the babies’ cot, and rumbled a little bit as he slept, just to show what he would do to any one who hurt them.” (Gold, p. 263)
Tim’s death: “I sat down near the old dog. His breathing grew easier at last, and he seemed to sleep for a while. Then he scrambled agitatedly to his feet, stumbled to me, and rested his head in my lap, whimpering. I shook his great shoulders and asked him what was the matter. He looked up at me with old bleared eyes, whined softly, tried to lick my hand, and then very swiftly he was dead.” (Gold, p. 290.)
Clippings, Joan's first husband, is killed while trying to save the victim of a traffic accident. Clipping's pet terrier, expecting that his master will soon come home, looks all over for him, but when he eventually realizes that his master will never return, he dies of grief: “He looked everywhere; in the fowl-yards and duck-houses, way down by the big sand hill, and even as far as the wool shed and drafting yards. and if a car came, or he heard strange voices, he was gone from my arms in a flash, galloping with the little gallop that heaved him up at one end and then at the other. It broke my heart to see him, and yet it was worse when finally he ceased to look. Then one morning, although his little whiskered body was still on his chain, we found that he had gone away--as I hoped, to find Clippings for whom he had looked so long on such stumpy legs. I wrapped him up in Clippings’s old neat coat.” (Gold, p. 264)
Donald the Shearer saves a dingo pup caught in the forked branch of a bush: “The mother runs away into the brush, an’ the other fat little chaps is gone like you breathed on a bunch o’ fallen wattle balls! The one ‘at was stuck gives a last little call, an’ then just looks at me waitin’ to be killed . I pull him out an’ dusts his pants an’ puts him in the log mouth, and then breaks off the bush ‘case he might do his divin’ act again . Then I rides on feelin’ good because I’d not killed none o’ the dingo family.” (Battle,. p. 16)
Donald the Shearer closest friend is his horse, Dan: “Why, sometimes if I’m feelin’ lonely a bit, rolled in me blankets with nothin’ but the grass around an’ the stars over—why, he knows! An’ he comes up, stepping gentle thorugh the grass, an’ by an’ by, if I be still, I feels him nubblin’ at the hair o’ me with his bit-o’-velvet nose . Oh, we been rovers, Dan an’ me! But we be still content, a-seeking the gold at the rainbow foot . I never felt kiss to match o’ his nose in me hair . I never seen the match o’ the sun on his hide!” (Battle, p. 34)
Sandy, a neglected child, shelters sick and defective animals in his make-believe farm (p. 52). And John Terchant, the "Little Man" sentenced 30 years to prison for allegedly attempting to kill and rob Old H.B worries about how his pet dog will fare without him. Reminiscent of Argos, Odyssus’ loyal dog, Terchant's pet sits at railroad station wating for his master to return, until shooed away. (Battle, p. 80)
Rancher Tom Henton and his wife adopt an orphaned baby kangaroo, name him Chut, after the chit-chit sound that Kangaroos make, and rear him as if their child. “He would come when the woman called him, and somersault neatly into her lap as she sat on the steps. There, lying on his back {baby kangaroos, joeys, naturally suckle upside down} he took his supper to the accompaniment of small kicks of pleasure.” (Orphan, p. 30)
The same hunters that had killed Chut's mother shelter and feed the little joey by fashioning a maternal pouch from the leg of old pair of trousers and a baby bottle from a rubber tube attached to a tin of milk. (p. 27) By age three Chut had grown into 7 ft., 300 lb. giant yet retained much his babyhood gentleness and innocence: “Tom Henton and his wife knew the big kangaroo as a creature of most docile tractability, with a touching, childish passion for bread and sugar; a giant who, given the chance, would still drink innocently from the baby’s bottle from which he had been fed as a joey!” (p. 50)
The Hentons also adopt Blue Baby and Zodie, two female baby kangaroos, who with Chut grow up playmates (Orphan, p. 34) Zodie later becomes Chut's mate and mother of his offspring. (p. 95) But Chut's innocence and trust of humans was not to last long. One day, when Henton was away on business, the yardman burned Chut's nose with a cigarette, to provoke him into a “boxing” match. Enraged, Chut nearly killed his tormentor. (p. 44-45) Then Shorty Magee, the drunken showman who bought Chut and Blue Baby from the suddenly impoverished Hentons, employed a whip to train the kangaroos to put on an act in which Chut "boxes" with him and Blue Baby jumps through a fiery hoop (p.57-58) His innate cruelty, exacerbated by liquor, Shorty savagely beats Blue Baby doe for missing a jump--though physically pretty, she was slightly lame--and several days later the little doe dies from the injuries.
Shorty also beats up on Chut and deprives him water.(p. 65-69). Eventually Chut disembowels the man (Orphan, p.70) and, now, with a price on his head, he flees back to the safety and solitude of the land he remembered as a joey .Along the way, he is tracked down by a pack of hounds. In a fierce encounter, he kills several hounds and is himself wounded: “Chut struck left and right, clutching, kicking. He tore off the dog on his flank--and another slashed his forearm open, so that a red gush of blood lept out! He disemboweled another of his tormentors, and another bounding liver-and-white body struck him from the side and snapping jaws ripped his ear to the base.” (p. 90-91) Chut narrowly escapes, by jumping over a seven-foot barbed wire fence. (p. 97) [Not exactly a children's books, as contemporary critics described it.]
The big islander Black Tobias takes pity on the tiny snails he accidentally crushes underfoot: “In the giant’s steps the little sea snails had been crushed so Tobias” hand had ended the suffering of one little mollusk by snapping it between thumb and finger.” (Reefs, p.18). Thomas Webber’s animal cruelty so disgusts the ordinarily mild-mannered, turn-the-other-cheek Daphne, that she reacts violently to him: “He was touching it with his foot to make it beat his broken wing and he laughed in joy, asking me with his eyes to join him—and he wouldn’t stop! I thrust at him with a piece of broken wood and he stumbled. (Reefs, p. 35)
“They moved with a strange dignity. They were half naked, and hunched in a common purpose. The stronger shapes of youth supported the brittle shapes of age; women bent protectively over the round bundles of babies; small children clung to dead or dying pets.” (‘Hurricane, North Atlantic’)
Octogenarian Andrew McNair regrets having as a young man hunted animals for sport. Since then he had come to appreciate and respect the innate nobility of animals: “The great deer-like eyes were rolling, the proudly curved was shaken by the thumping of the panicking heart, but still the creature stood royally, a block between the hunter and the fleeing does. The hunter’s shot dropped the great kangaroo within ten feet of Andrew’s cover.” (‘The Gantlet of Flames’)
”Andrew had seen a wood duck break from her tree nest as a swamp was swept by fire, seen her circle madly and rush back to spread futile wings over downed ducklings—and die in the flames. The duck had known that to return was to die. She had returned because she could not let her ducklings die alone.” (Ibid)
”He remembered them when the land was open, fierce and beautiful creatures, confident in the power of splendid muscles and great chest defiantly standing guard as the does fled; the untold centuries behind them, in which they had faced the attacks of wild dogs or the thousand-foot swoop of the great eagles; fighting, often dying, but always with the fighting chance. Then firearms, the thing they could not reach, but which could kill. And presently their simple brains had known their own helplessness, and sometimes the old ones had fled as madly as the does.”(Ibid)
Seaman Heavy Baileaux, a punch-drunk former boxer, banks on his intuitive knowledge of birds to rely on a cockatoo to save him and his wounded captain from certain death. Baileaux tames the cookatoo and the ship's crew adopts "Cocky" as their mascot. (‘The Pit in the Jungle’)
Daniel, a retarded West Indian islander, intuits how crayfish "think" and this knowledge leads him to discover an undersea treasure of Spanish gold. A kindly, generous man, Daniel values the company of a pet cat as much the treasure. (‘The Mysterious Box’)
Young Liliom and her ornery but kind grandfather, Captain Mort, adopt a heron. When the sadistic overseer shoots the heron for sport’ ”The heron staggered in its flight, its white feathers broke away and floated in a little shower,” Lillom rushes to help it and fears that the heron would think that it was she who shot it. (‘My Love Will Come’) When Liliom tries to flee the island to avoid the evil designs of the overseer, she takes her cat family with her. The overseer's evil is reflected in the body of a dead ray: “The ray was quite dead, but its eyes still gleamed, pale greenish-gold and malevolent, while its belly was white it made the night darker.”(Ibid) Michael, the abused boy who years later returns as one Liliom’s suitors, is thus described: “His eyes were like those of a despairing animal that has done no harm and yet has been beaten. (Ibid)
Steward, the incorrigible teenaged delinquent taken in as by the misguided humanitarian Mrs. Gray, plans to steal his benefactress jewelry. To get into the house, he must get past the family’s pet Terrier, Tiddly Winks. He kicks at and tries to poison Tiddly Winks, but the little terrier thwarts him. (‘The Best Laid Plans’)
A crack shot, Dorothy Cottrell had in her day taken out her share of dingoes, hawks, eagles, and fence-breaking kangaroos, yet she respected all animals for their noble instincts, and she loved her pets for the animal in them, not as surrogate children, as do many urban pet owners: “For many years we had the privilege of owning Spike, a sneezing, hiccupping, incurably vulgar English bulldog of noble ancestry, who would come trundling into my room as my breakfast was served, politely kiss my wheelchair good morning, then stand upon stocky hind legs to say good morning to me. Wanting something from the icebox and fearing he was not going to get it, he was not above blackmail and would plump himself behind the back wheel of my chair, thus effectively anchoring me. When he got what the wanted, he would lumber up to kiss me and lavish a passing lick on the chair. The whole thing, he said, was a joke we shared together, and perhaps he had been a shade mean, but it was a jolly game, wasn’t it?” (‘How to Wear a Wheelchair,’) Dorothy’s Spike recalls the spunky Tiddly Winks:“He ate almost anything in unlimited quantities. He ate with haste, without thought and without shame. As a general rule, the more certain he was that he was not supposed to eat something, the more he liked it.” (‘The Best Laid Plans’)
The scene of Joan Whatmore’s feeling guilty about shooting a kangaroo and her accidentally deliberately missing a dingo though she had a clear shot at it could well have been autobiographical. “Twenty yards from me was a great kangaroo feeding; in one hand he grasped the round green stem of a lily. I ran to my prize and knelt beside him, up till that moment I had felt nothing but the joy of the hunter. I laid my hand on the huge warm bulk and the strong animal scent in him was in my nostrils . just above the heart was a crimson stain, while between his lips he still held the fragile petal. An awful and quite unexpected pity seized me. I jumped to my feet with a shriek.” (Gold, p. 39) ”We put up a big red dingo, who had just killed a kangaroo. I fired at him but was excited, and he was trotting quickly, so the shots went wide. (p. 125) In Homestead, Dorothy adopted three stray cats, Electra, Ajax and one whose name I don’t remember.
Animal characters:
Chut -- The kangaroo protagonist (Orphan)..
Blue Baby -- A slightly lame, but pretty little kangaroo doe, Chut's playmate. Killed by the drunken showman Shorty Magee. (Ibid)
Zodie -- Chut's other playmate, eventually redeems the alienated Chut from a life of solitude in the wild and becomes the queen of his harem. (Ibid)
William Mutton -- An obnoxious lamb who bullies young Chut until he makes the mistake of attacking Blue Baby and causes Chut to retaliate. (Ibid)
Tim -- Joan Whatmore's beloved 140 lb. pet dog and bosom companion after the death of her first husband Clippings. (Gold).
Stumpy -- The spunky pet terrier of Clippings McKenzie. Dies of grief when his master is killed. (Ibid)
Raa -- The Whatmore's ill-tempered stud bull, challenged by Joan’s brother Dickie to prove his manhood. (Ibid)
Dan -- The pet horse and best friend of Donald Barford, champion sheep shearer and gifted storyteller (Battle)
Tiddly Winks – The smart little terrier that outwits the delinquent teen Steward. (‘The Best Laid Plans’)
Cocky –Heavy Baileaux’s, the punch-drunk former boxer, pet cockatoo. (The Pit in the Jungle’)
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