- First published
- 1975
- Editions
- 2 editions
- Status
- In print
The Gnats of Knotty Pine
On the eve of hunting season the animals of Knotty Pine gather to find a way to outwit the hunters, and salvation comes from the unlikeliest of allies: great swarming clouds of gnats.
"The moose was shivering from fright. Tomorrow was the first day of hunting season, which meant terrible trouble for many of the creatures living in Knotty Pine Forest. The big fellow was on his way to a meeting of the animals, held every year on the day all the shooting began."
Bill Peet described how a real-life nuisance solved his "almost story": "It was years later while mowing the lawn one evening that a solution to the animals' problem came to me. The lawn mowing was interrupted time and again by buzzing swarms of gnats... An all-out attack by a few billion buzzing gnats could be mind-boggling to the hunters and send them fleeing from the forest in a frenzy." He wondered how an activity in which one side cannot win and the other cannot lose could be considered a sport, and some hunters tried to have the book removed from libraries.
From the book
Preliminary sketches
