Thoreau: A Fabulous Animal
Tuesday, December 27, 2011 at 7:26AM 
"The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have tail to speak of? For in my examination I overlooked it entirely. Naturalists say it is an inch and a half long. It reminded me at once of the camelopard, high before and low behind,—and no wonder, for, like it, it is fitted to browse on trees. The upper lip projected two inches beyond the lower for this purpose....The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns,—a sort of fucus or lichen in bone,—to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!"
—Henry David Thoreau
Paul Doiron
A "camelopard" is a giraffe. I had to look it up, too.
Wildlife
Reader Comments (1)
Wow. Incredible shot. It's my first time to see this kind of animal. Is it a relative of reindeer?
- Allen W.