a pack of lobos chases red and white mustangs but avoids a bull bison;
two golden eagles take off;
waterfowl rise as a bear moves through the shallows;
two hummingbirds have "...iridescent orange-red throats..." (p. 293);
a group of people agree that this is pretty.
Maybe that last item is the anticlimax?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can certainly see why wolves would avoid a full grown bull bison in its prime. Far too big and strong for them to take on. Wolves would hunt only calves and aging, weakening bison.
But I think lions could take on bison. I recall mention of a lion roaring its triumph after taking down a bison in CONQUISTADOR.
Sean
Yes, that happens -- and in the Emberverse series, too.
The North American fauna that existed in pre-Columbian times was "truncated"; it lacked the huge variety of herbivores and predators that was present before human beings arrived here towards the end of the last glacial period.
North America then was more like Africa, in some respects -- there were many varieties of big cat, dire wolves were common, and huge herds of many types of grazing animals including many varieties of antelope and bovine.
This was probably the result of late-Stone-Age specialist game hunters bursting into a world where the animals hadn't co-evolved with human predators. It's notable that the further you get from Africa, the fewer the survivors of the Pleistocene megafauna.
In the Emberverse, not only do the local animals rebound as human pressure on the environment is drastically reduced, but many invasive species do as well -- both African and Asian varieties, which are present on game ranches, private preserves and so forth. (Half of all the living tigers in the world were in North America in 1998, I found.)
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Exactly! I had most of what you wrote above in the back of my mind, including how N. America and Britain had more lions and tigers in private ranches and game preserves than lived in the wild. I also remember reading your book CONQUISTADOR how the proto-Indians and their descendants wiped out many species from hunting.
Sean
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