The Creek
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Beauty left the water and sat on the bank, using her front feet to groom the fur on her head and chest. Smoothing her whiskers, she watched the twins swim.
“The creek is your best friend, and in times of danger the water is our safest haven,” she said as Chunk and Slim swam close by.
“No enemy except the mink can swim as well as a muskrat. In times of danger you easily escape or defeat an enemy with your swimming ability. For this reason, I must tell you again, the creek is our best friend.”
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
If you’re looking for a Disney-style book for young readers, put this one back on the shelf.
On the other hand, if you want a book that gives young readers (and adults) a glimpse of true-to-life animal characters in real outdoor situations, read on. ‘Cause folks, these animals act just like the creatures that live in the stream behind your house. Or even the woods and fields around the local golf course. You live in a big city? Great! You can learn just how animals live outside your world of streets and high-rises.
The Creek is a story about a family of muskrats who live, well, on a creek. Not sure what a muskrat might be? Read the book. How about a mink? Or groundhogs, coyotes, raccoons and skunks. (Just about everyone knows what a skunk is, right?) Anyway, on the creek you’ll meet them all. Doing what they really do in the wild.
You’ll learn what they eat, how they interact with other animals, who their friends and enemies might be and, finally, how animal behavior is very much like our own. Sometimes it’s sad, but most of the time it’s wonderful and all the time it’s educational.
Life on the creek is not for the faint-hearted. Beauty, a young female muskrat, is raising her two twins, Chunk and Slim, without the aid of a mate. She has a valuable ally, though; in her father old One-Eye (the wisest, toughest ‘rat on the waterway).
Between the two of them they must teach the twins how to survive on a stream filled with danger and adventure.
Want a children’s book that really teaches a thing or two about the outdoors? The Creek is the right one. Read it and see.
About the Author
Born in
“Six years in the Marine Corps, straight out of high school,” he said.
“Then jobs ranging from timber cutting to factory work, laboring for a construction company and even a try at being a car salesman. In the end, though, I always returned to writing about the outdoors in one fashion or another.”
Since he sold his first magazine article in 1982,
“Well, forty years of hiking, hunting, fishing and trapping gave me a decent knowledge of animal behavior and I wanted to write something for kids that sort of told the story from the animal’s perspective. That probably sounds a little far-fetched at first glance, but wildlife stories generally focus on interaction between people and animals. In this story the focus is on the wildlife and humans play no role at all.”
Mike resides in Nashport, a tiny town in the southeast corner of the Buckeye State with his wife, Wendy, two stepsons Connor and Cameron and a hundred-pound English boxer named, appropriately enough, Wilson.