ANIMAL FIELD GUIDE
Ornate Box Turtle (Terrapene ornata)
And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass. His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along… His horny beak was partly open, and his fierce, humorous eyes, under brows like fingernails, stared straight ahead. (Steinbeck, 14)
John Steinbeck’s acclaimed novel The Grapes of Wrath first introduces one of its most prominent themes—animals—with the opening of its third chapter, where we meet the infamous land turtle amidst its solitary journey across an Oklahoma highway, a turtle which, officially, remains unidentified. After investigating the variety of turtle species native to Oklahoma, we have considered the ornate box turtle (Terrapene ornata) the most likely candidate for Steinbeck’s land crawler. The descriptions the book gives us match closely with what we know about this particular species. According to Oklahoma's Wildlife Department, they are fairly common, though their greatest dangers include mortality on highways and illegal harvest (Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conversation). Interestingly, these are both perils Steinbeck's turtle endures.
For information on the turtle as a symbol and its mythological origins, please refer to the “Turtle Legends” section of our Natural Narratives page.
Black-Tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus californicus)
Joad held up his rabbit-laden wire between his two hands and walked to the fire .... He made the wire taught, then found a stick and slipped the pieces of meat along the wire until they were over the fire. And the flames licked up around the meat and hardened and glazed the surfaces. Joad sat down by the fire, but with his stick he moved and turned the rabbit so that it would not become sealed to the wire. "This here is a party," he said. "Yes, sir, this sure as hell is a party." (Steinbeck, 50)
Though less prominent in the novel, the rabbit serves as a behind-the-scenes look at what kind of common wildlife must have roamed the areas Tom, Casy, and Muley inhabited. The Black-Tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) is Oklahoma's only residential rabbit, and it is in actuality a hare. We can observe the differences by noticing it is a larger animal with lankier limbs and much taller ears than rabbits. This modern representation gives life to the world in which Steinbeck's characters existed and the animals they hunted for survival.
It is interesting to note that not all areas of the United States during this time shared the same relationship with animals that desperate Oklahomans like Muley had with jackrabbits. For example, in many states in the 1930s, jackrabbits were considered nuisances, growing wide in population and eating everything, including farmer’s crops. Thus, often, “rabbit drives” would be observed, where farmers would band together to hunt black-tailed jackrabbits just like the one pictured above.
“Rabbit drives were a means by which farmers could directly improve their economic condition,” says the Kansas Historical Society. “Though gruesome by today's standards, the drives fostered a sense of community as farm families struggled to survive during the worst years of the Dust Bowl and the Depression.” Interestingly, it is out of a similar source of desperation and need that, in the face of over-abundance, inspires such excessive hunting and killing for Kansas farmers still attempting to keep their farms afloat. They add, too: “The remains of the rabbits were used as feed for other animals. Relatively few were eaten by humans because of the fear of a disease known as ‘rabbit fever,’ introduced into the rabbit population earlier in the 1930s.”
It is highly likely this “rabbit fever,” or Tularemia, is the same ill-condition referenced by Muley when advising Tom Joad on how to cook their own jackrabbit: “'Look out for boils on that jackrabbit,' [Muley] said. 'I don’t like to eat a jackrabbit with boils'" (Steinbeck, 50). Rabbits with Tularemia often times have inflamed infections visible on their skin.
Cat (Felis catus)
When the folks first left, and the evening of the first day came, the hunting cats slouched in from the fields and mewed on the porch. And when no one came out, the cats crept through the open doors and walked mewing through the empty rooms. And then they went back to the fields and were wild cats from then on, hunting gophers and field mice, and sleeping in ditches in the daytime.... [creeping] in from the fields at night, but they did not mew at the doorstep any more. They moved like shadows of a cloud across the moon, into the rooms to hunt the mice. (Steinbeck, 116-117)
Cats play their own subtle role in The Grapes of Wrath. Mostly their presence, like the jackrabbit, is one behind-the-scenes, but unlike the jackrabbit, they are alive, and usually in advantagous positions. In the previous quote, the cats are the ones taking over abandoned houses, hunting, and shedding any need for dependency.
Prefacing the jackrabbit scene, a gray cat watches Tom, Casy, and eventually Muley, weaving in and out of our attention from the background:
A lean gray cat came sneaking out of the barn and crept through the cotton plants to the end of the porch. It leaped silently up to the porch and crept low-belly toward the men. It came to a place between and behind the two, and then it sat down, and its tail stretched out straight and flat to the floor, and the last inch of it flicked. The cat sat and looked off into the distance where the men were looking. (Steinbeck, 43)
The evening star flashed and glittered in the dusk. The gray cat sneaked away towards the open barn shed and passed inside like a shadow. (48)
The gray cat came out of the barn and trotted miaowing toward the fire, but, nearly there, it turned and went directly to one of the little piles of rabbit entrails on the ground. It chewed and swallowed, and the entrails hung from its mouth. (50)
Fifteen feet back from the men the fed cat was sitting, the long gray tail wrapped neatly around the front feet. (51)
The cat drew up to the house and a spotlight snapped on. (58)
The cat’s presence spans almost 20 pages and, though it has little interaction with the characters, Steinbeck requires we give our attention to it. Thus, he privileges the reader a deeper sense of the scenery and wildlife even as his characters remain somewhat less conscious. And here, too, as in the opening quote, the cat is described in impressive ways. Its quiet and sly nature is provoked by hunger and curiosity.