ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: WETA Kangaroo Rats Are Furry Spring-Loaded Ninjas
PART ONE: When I was a little girl, I loved the children’s picture book Sam, Bangs & Moonshine written and illustrated by Eveline Ness, who happened to be married to THE Eliot Ness. The story is about a widower sea fisherman raising his young daughter, Sam. She has a rich imagination, making up all kinds of fanciful tales. Her father calls them “moonshine,” the kind of stories that get you in trouble if you’re not careful.
I related to this book because my parents had divorced when I was five, about the same age as Sam, and we had a cat. More often than not, I lived in my imaginary world to escape from the pain and uncertainty of what was going on around me and not having control over any of it.
IMAGE CREDIT: abebooks.co.uk
Sam’s story about a pet kangaroo turns to trouble when her little friend Thomas believes her story that a kangaroo lives on Blue Rock. I won’t give away the ending except to say there is a kangaroo involved, just not the one from Australia.
In the finale, the page reads “gerbil,” but clearly the corresponding illustration says “kangaroo rat.”
The book was published in 1966 and won a Caldecott Award. Times and attitudes have changed as parents don’t let their kids run wild unsupervised today like they did when I grew up. I practically ran feral. Indeed, the story contains themes of death and loss — but I would still read this book to children.
PART ONE: Kangaroo Rat = Imagination is a wonderful thing, but we need truth and reality, too.
PART TWO: Present day. Clicking around for something entertaining, but not violent, to watch, my partner and I found the latest nature documentary by Sir David Attenborough called The Secret World of Sound.
The first episode of the series, Hunters and Hunted (didn’t I say not violent?), tells about the many adaptations of animals harnessing the power of sound to help them hunt and escape from predators.
One of the animals featured was the kangaroo rat of the Arizona-Sonora Desert. On a nocturnal hunt for seeds, a kangaroo rat must defend its territory from a rival kangaroo rat by thumping his back foot on the sandy desert floor.
While the thumping is intimidating to the intruder, it also attracts the kangaroo rat’s nemesis, a snake. Thankfully, our hero has powerful back legs to inflict sand into the snake’s eyes and escape in a single bound.
PART TWO: Kangaroo Rat = adaptation, risk-taking, desert power. (Sadly, some species of kangaroo rats are threatened or on the endangered list. Not because of snakes and other predators, but because of habitat loss due to human development and infrastructure.
If you are still with me, I am delighted. Not everyone is into kids’ literature. A dance of words and illustrations, I think children’s picture books are more for adults than for kids. Nor do people find the cute and brave factor in rodents.
From the kangaroo rat in my favorite children’s picture book and the real kangaroo rat living in the Sonora Desert, I started to wonder if Frank Herbert’s desert mouse in his DUNE series might be based on the Sonoran Desert kangaroo rat.*
“How do you call among you the little mouse, the mouse that jumps?” Paul asked, remembering the pop-hop of motion at Tuono Basin. He illustrated with one hand. A chuckle sounded through the troop. “We call that one muad’dib,” Stilgar said. — page 307, Dune Messiah
Did this spunky desert dweller give him the idea of thumping to attract the giant spice worms of Arrakis? Given that Herbert explored themes around ecology, it’s plausible.
He was both a Republican and an environmentalist. But then so was Teddy Roosevelt. This was back in the day when Republicans were conservationists.
Herbert also explored themes of human evolution, the consequences of genetic manipulation, and mystical and psychic possibilities. Given my curiosity about all of these things (and Dune), it would have been such fun to sit down and have a conversation with the guy.
Hiking the Oregon Dunes. The Oregonian/OregonLive
What I do know is Frank Herbert’s inspiration for Dune began by researching the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon (1959) for a magazine article that was never published. Still, the seeds for the saga were planted. As it happens, there is a species of kangaroo rat, the Ord’s kangaroo rat, that inhabits the Oregon dunes.
PART THREE: Kangaroo Rat = Ideas are living things. The things and throughlines that help ideas mature and see the light of day can be small and seemingly insignificant — something as small as a desert mouse.
“If you need something to worship, then worship life – all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!” Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah.
*Kangaroo rats can survive without water, obtaining water from their seed diet. They have superb hearing with the ability to hear the approach of a silent owl. Their powerful back legs allow kangaroo rats to jump up to 9 feet in one leap to avoid predators. And they have many predators, as you would imagine for a rodent.
The first Dune novel was published in 1965. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965 and the Hugo Award in 1966. Frank Herbert was born in 1920 and died in 1986 at the age of 65.
Your Turn.
Your thoughts. I would love to hear them—just them down in the comments. I respond to all.
