Unicorns by Lucille Recht Penner Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t know that. They thought the horn had killed the spiders because they were poisonous. So the sea unicorn must be real!

    Still, a sea unicorn wasn’t the same as a land unicorn. And people who had paid a fortune for
real
unicorn horns began to worry. What if their horns came from sea unicorns? What if sea unicorn horns didn’t have the same magical powers?
    And then they began to wonder. Were land unicorn horns fake, too?
    As the years went by, scientists stopped believing in unicorns. Doctors stopped using unicorn-horn medicine. Hardly anyone went searching for unicorns.

“Come see the living unicorn!”
    In the 1980s, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus showed off a new animal to the world. A living unicorn! It was pure white, with a long, fluffy mane and tail. A single horn stuck out of its forehead.
    Everyone who saw it was thrilled.

    A couple that lived in California had made it from a baby Angora goat. They never told anyone how they did it. But it wasn’t the first time it had been done. People had “made” unicorns before.
    Thousands of years ago, Roman farmers twisted the soft horns of young rams together. The horns joined together and became one horn.
    In Sudan, Dinka tribesmen operated on large baby bulls so that they had only one horn. They trained the one-horned bulls to be the leaders of their herds.
    Why would anyone do that?
    Just as in the legends, an animal with one horn is a good fighter. Other animals run away when they see a sharp horn pointed at them. If a one-horned bull has to fight, it can put all its weight behind its horn. Animals with two horns have to turntheir heads from side to side to fight.
    In 1933, Dr. W. Franklin Dove decided to make a unicorn bull. He picked a male calf that was one day old. Dr. Dove knew that horns grow from tissue on each side of a calf’s skull. These bits of tissue are called “horn buds.”
    Dr. Dove moved the horn buds to the front of the calf’s skull above its eyes. He put the two buds right next to each other. Then he waited and watched. As the calf grew, the buds joined into one horn.
    Dr. Dove’s bull was the strongest animal in the herd. It was also the gentlest. Just like a unicorn in stories and myths.

    Some people get angry about these kinds of unicorns. They think it is mean to the goats, rams, and bulls. And they say these animals are not
real
unicorns.
    Other people wonder whether real unicorns are still living in faraway places. Do they exist today? Did these fabulous creatures ever exist?
    What do
you
think?

Text copyright © 2005 by Lucille Recht Penner. Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Mel Grant. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Penner, Lucille Recht.
Unicorns / by Lucille Recht Penner ; illustrated by Mel Grant. — 1st ed.
      p. cm.
“A Stepping Stone Book.”
eISBN: 978-0-307-56090-2
1. Unicorns. I. Grant, Mel, ill. II. Title.
GR830.U6P46 2005   398′.469—dc22   2005000853
    RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks and A STEPPING STONE BOOK and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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