"Certainly. Of course," replied Peter. "They seem to me rather
stupid creatures. Anyway they look stupid."
"Then you know the leader of the flock, the big ram with curling
horns," continued Old Mother Nature.
Peter nodded, and Old Mother Nature went on. "Just imagine him
with a smooth coat of grayish-brown instead of a white woolly one,
and immense curling horns many times larger than those he now has.
Give him a large whitish or very light-yellowish patch around a very
short tail. Then you will have a very good idea of one of those
mountain climbers I promised to tell you about, one of the greatest
mountain climbers in all the Great World--Bighorn the Mountain Sheep,
also called Rocky Mountain Bighorn and Rocky Mountain Sheep.
"Bighorn is a true Sheep and lives high up among the rocks of the
highest mountains of the Far West. Like all members of the order
to which he belongs his feet are hoofed, but they are hoofs which
never slip, and he delights to bound along the edges of great cliffs
and in making his way up or down them where it looks as if it would
be impossible for even Chatterer the Red Squirrel to find footing,
to say nothing of such a big fellow as Bighorn.
"The mountains where he makes his home are so high that the tops of
many of them are in the clouds and covered with snow even in summer.
Above the line where trees can no longer grow Bighorn spends his
summers, coming down to the lower hills only when the snow becomes
so deep that he cannot paw down through it to get food.
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