In all of his work Seton displays the poetic ability to imagine himself as another, non-human creature. In his prefatory "Notes to the Reader" in Wild Animals I Have Known, he explains, "Man has nothing that animals have not at least a vestige of, the animals have nothing that man does not in some degree share."

"Lobo: The King of Currumpaw," the first story in the book, is Seton's most famous animal biography. Lobo, a wolf, is a notorious predator that for five years has claimed the lives of cows and sheep almost nightly. The ranchers of northern New Mexico hire Seton to do what all other hunters have failed to do: trap and kill the beast. Lobo eludes all traps and baits, until Seton takes advantage of a force stronger than the wolfs cunning: his love of his mate.

Seton kills Blanca, the...