Herd on the Street: Animal Stories from The Wall Street Journal

by Ken Wells (Editor), Bruce McCall

For more than sixty years, The Wall Street Journal has prided itself not just on its serious journalism, but also on the whimsical and arcane stories that amuse and delight its readers. In that regard, animal stories have proven to be the most beloved of all. Now, veteran Journal reporter and Page One editor Ken Wells gathers the finest, funniest, and most fascinating of these animal tales in one exceptional book.
Here are lighthearted, witty stories of breakthroughs in goldfish surgery, the untiring efforts of British animal lovers who guide lovesick toads across dangerous motorways, and the quest to tame doggy anxieties by prescribing the human pacifier Prozac. Other pieces reflect on mankind's impact on the animal a close-up look at the nascent fish-rights movement, the retirement of U.S. Air Force chimpanzees that once soared through space, and ongoing scientific efforts to defeat that most hardy enemy -- the cockroach.
Each of these fifty-odd stories -- from the outlandish to the poignant -- exemplifies the superb feature writing that makes The Wall Street Journal one of America's best-written newspapers. This charming and utterly captivating collection will be a joy not only to animal lovers, but to all those who appreciate artful storytelling by writers who are obviously having a wonderful time spinning the tales.

Genres: Animals, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2003

About the author

Ken Wells, journalist and novelist, grew up second of six sons on the banks of Bayou Black deep in South Louisiana's Cajun country. His father was a part-time alligator hunter and snake collector and his Cajun-French-speaking mother a gumbo chef extraordinaire.
Wells began his journalism career covering car wrecks and gator sightings for the weekly Houma, La., Courier newspaper. He has gone on to an adventurous career: a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the Miami Herald; editor of two Pulitzer-Prize-winning projects for Page One of The Wall Street Journal where, over a 24-year period, he also roamed the U.S. and the globe covering among other stories the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the first Persian Gulf War and South Africa's transition to a multiracial democracy. He later served as a senior editor for Conde Nast Portfolio magazine and spent six years at Bloomberg News/Businessweek as both a senior writer and editor before leaving in 2015 to pursue book writing full-time.
He is the author of six well-received novels of the Cajun bayous: Meely LaBauve (a 2000 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book); Junior's Leg (2001); Logan's Storm (2002); and Crawfish Mountain (2007). Tom Wolfe said of Crawfish Mountain, "Ken Wells is the Cajun Carl Hiaasen." In 2010, Knopf Young Adult published his YA novel, Rascal, a Dog and His Boy. His sixth novel, Swamped! is a fast-paced YA survival story set in Louisiana's exotic and forbidding Atchafalaya Swamp. It was co-authored with his niece Hillary Wells and published in January of 2023.
Wells has penned four works of narrative non-fiction: Travels with Barley: A Quest for the Perfect Beer Joint, a travelogue through America's $75 billion beer industry; The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous, a story of blue-collar heroism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou, published by W.W. Norton in 2019 and republished as a paperback by Blair Publisher in 2024; and Boudin, a lively travelogue through the mania surrounding Louisiana's most popular sausage, that was published by LSU Press on April 14 as part of its Louisiana True series. The Pirates, published in September 2008 by Yale University Press, won the Harry Chapin book award in September 2009. A paperback version was published by YUP in 2015. Gumbo Life, meanwhile, was chosen by the Louisiana Center for the Book to represent the state at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., last fall.
While serving as an editor on Page One of The Wall Street Journal, Ken was also chosen to edit two anthologies of "A-heds," the beloved middle-column feature that has appeared on the front page of the paper since the early 1940s. Floating Off the Page was published in 2003 and Herd on the Street: Animal Stories from The Wall Street Journal was published in 2007.
Ken more recently is the author the whimsical Christmas novella, A Christmas Tree Without a House: The Tale of Sam and the Mysterious Joseph E.W. Pine (A Very Possibly True Story) available on Amazon and which is now an audiobook on Audible. Kirkus Reviews called it "enchanting." Ken's journalistic and literary accomplishments were honored in 2009 when he was awarded an honorary doctorate from his undergraduate alma mater, Nicholls State University, and was inducted as a Louisiana Legend by Louisiana Public Broadcasting that same year.
Ken divides his time these days between Chicago and a lovely little summer log cabin in the wilds of Maine. He's an avid photographer, hiker and fisherman and dabbles in blues and jazz guitar and songwriting. He cooks a mean Cajun gumbo and visits Louisiana every chance he gets.

Reviews

[Flanöör · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I am a bit stupid, but I expected this book to be completely different from what it actually was. I thought that it would contain some interesting, peculiar and funny stories about pets from their owners, but it was basically nothing like that. To be fair, there were a few more bizarre stories about unusual pets, but other than that it was more of a horizon expanding book about what animals are used for all around the world and some interesting tales about how people have found use for them. Obviously it isn't a bad thing, it's cool to learn something new and interesting, but to me it seemed to be a bit boring, and I read it mostly out of politeness. Nevertheless, it was intruiging to know that lambs produce a lot of methane and learn about making caviar. Overall it's a good book to expand your knowledge about animals that many people will probably find interesting.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ken Wells is a Cajun Bayou boy turned Wall Street journal reporter. I loved his books about coming of age in the swamps of southern Louisiana and I love the work he has done since he moved "up the Bayou." This collection of animals stories by some of the world's best writers (Daniel Pearl in one of them) is one of my all time favorite books. I keep a copy in my guest bedroom. It brings laughter, tears and lots of information I didn't know.

[Andy Plonka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who get their daily chuckle from the Wall Street Journal's front page column on something amusing will enjoy this compilation of stories featuring diverse members of the animal kingdom.

[Sigrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a compilation of articles about animals that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Some are more interesting than others and it’s the sort of thing that one takes along to waiting rooms because they’re all just a few pages long. In some ways, because the book was published in 2003, the most interesting part is the authors who appeared. Daniel Pearl, Tony Horwitz, Geraldine Brooks, Erik Larson…. A reminder of what excellent writers the Wall Street Journal used to have.

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy reading, a snappy compilation of stories with good writing.

[M. Peter Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Herd on the Street is decidedly okay. It's a collection of 57 short articles published in the Wall Street Journal over the span of fifty years, all related to animals. They are not, as I thought from the title, articles about animals in finance.

The best audience for this book is likely pre-teen children who love animals or bored adults looking for something light to read on an airplane. The prose is straightforward enough, and if you find yourself wearied by tales of English toads or New Zealand sheep farts the next article is just a few pages ahead.

Read today, twenty years after publication, Herd on the Street becomes a little more interesting with the benefit of hindsight. There's a 1994 article about the then-novel treatment of pets with Prozac; a 1990 write-up about Reedpoint, Montana's annual "Running of the Sheep," still running strong and hitting its 35th anniversary this year; an article about Russian caviar by Daniel Pearl written just a few years before his murder by militants in 2002.

I don't recommend this book, but it isn't bad.

[Hardeep · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contained articles culled from the famed "middle-section" of the Journals first page. These articles are typically very quirky in nature, and make for interesting reading when perusing the WSJ.

However, an entire book dedicated to animal themed stories from the Journal was a bit much for me, and my patience wore out!

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

there's an article from 2001 that must be one of the first national stories about kids reading to dogs in the library.