Two Classic Animal Stories by Paul Gallico

I bring you two classics of a bygone era from the master. If you want to share my joy just Google Paul Gallico, or Ludmilla the Lonely, or The Snow Goose and submit your order.

The Snow Goose takes you back to Dunkirk and the desperation; then the good in mankind rises to the challenge.

I am not going to tell you more. But you will find a sudden heart wrenching twist in the tale that will choke you up near the end before it will make you want to do someone a kindness. It will blow your breath away!

If you are lucky like I was way back you will find both stories in one book. They are both short and Penguin, I think, published them together once but they are each worth a small fortune.

Ludmilla the Lonely

Did you know that the cow [like humans] takes nine months from conception to birth? Add to that and consider the value of milk; then buy this book and read it

First you read it for yourself; then to your six year old; then pass it on to the grandparents and all people younger than one hundred.

There is this little cow that was not blessed with external beauty, except for her eyes that glowed with a desire of a golden heart to spread joy and kindness, but she doesn’t deliver milk, or somehow fails to do so.

On the annual climb to the summer pastures in the high mountains where the good grass grows to produce the sweetest milk she almost gets left behind because some thought she might not even survive the climb, and not produce anything in any event but someone sees the longing in those eyes and she goes along, almost as an afterthought.

She survives the climb; the grass is good that year; soon milk was flowing; mountain cheeses were heaping up but for poor little Ludmilla.

Until she wanders off in desperation and down a little path on one side came across the sweetest grass and she feels something reacting in the scrawny little body when she swallows the first bite. That night the owner looks in wonder at those two eyes that are now shining and takes the milking stool to her. And he takes the stool again the next day; and another one; before everyone became aware that a miracle was happening.

This is as far as I will go. You have to walk the story through the book.

Gallico speaks to humans through the animal and though it is not possible to lift mankind quite up to the level of the noble animal, Gallico gets you almost there. If you allow him to try a little harder and you help him lifting, we can almost make it, but not quite.

Maybe someone somewhere will make it when he/she has read both these books.