The Prairie Critters are characters from Pecos Bill, a segment from the 1948 Disney package film, Melody Time. They are animals that live in a Texan landscape on a prairie between a desert.
Background[]
Personality[]
These animals featured in the story of Pecos Bill typically live across the Texan landscape. While they do not speak, some of the animals that Pecos interacts with have different types of personalities. The mother coyote, who raises Pecos with her pups, is shown to have a loving personality, especially regarding him getting along with her pups. As soon as Pecos grew up as a little boy, the coyotes felt that he was too old to play with them and that the other animals became interacted within. Despite his size, Pecos interacted with various wild animals such as a rattlesnake (showing an aggressive personality towards Pecos) who was no match against many animals he encounters, especially when he grew up making friends with a horse named "Widowmaker" and his love interest Slue-Foot Sue. However, after Sue found herself stuck in the moon where she lives, Pecos returned to the coyotes' territory where he was raised as a child in the past and the coyotes howled with him, even though he is already grown up.
Appearances[]
Melody Time[]
As dusk falls on a Texan terrain across a prairie and desert, two owls perched on a branch fly past a large rock formation where a coyote howls. Elsewhere, two tortoises walk across the terrain and hide in their shells to avoid a tumbleweed, the second one hitting them. After the tumbleweeds pass, two pronghorns pop out of a small hill while two prairie dogs scamper and hide into two holes while avoiding the tumbleweeds. Elsewhere in the desert, a family of quails scurry along the desert while a quail hatchling tries to catch up with his family and gets distracted passing by a bovine skull, but not before a pair of jackrabbits leap to the spot where the quail is standing. As the jackrabbits leap past the skull, the quail hatchling attempts join his family within different spots of the line, but his siblings push him just before leading his family in front. Later, the animated animals approach an area where they see a group of live-action people singing "Blue Shadows on the Trail" around a campfire - amongst them are owls, squirrels, jackrabbits, prairie dogs, and quails.
During the story of Pecos Bill, a flock of buzzards are seen flying around the Pecos River while young Pecos finds himself lost in the desert. That night, a mother coyote enters her cave and approaches Pecos sleeping with her pups. The mother coyote looks at Pecos, who then smiles and licks him, thinking he is one of her pups. Later, Bill became hungry so he approaches the mother coyote who is providing milk for her pups, which Bill decides to get milk from her.
The next day, the mother coyote's pups observe Pecos feasting on a large bone as he grew up with the coyotes. As the coyote pups attempt to chew on the bone, Pecos yells at them, crashing them into a wall. During Pecos' life, he studies the behavior of other animals in the prairie such as jackrabbits, birds, snakes, lizards, and tarantulas; the next montage shows his interaction with a pronghorn, a jackrabbit, and a rattlesnake. One day, Pecos encounters a stray horse named "Widowmaker" about to be eaten by a flock of buzzards in the desert, so he rushes to save the horse from being eaten, causing the buzzards to lose their plumage before starting his friendship with Widowmaker. As Pecos rides on Widowmaker, a squirrel and rattlesnake follow him which Pecos grabbed the snake and used it as a lasso.
During the "Pecos Bill" musical number, Pecos encounters a drought that occurred across Texas - amongst the animals he encounters are a jackrabbit, vulture, and some longhorn cattle who are dehydrated, so he lassoes a rain cloud from the state of California to bring it to Texas, satisfying the animals. Later, the next verse involves Pecos realizing that a band of rustlers stole a herd of cattle whom they never knew the herd belonged to him, leading him to capture and beat up the rustlers (knocking out their golden teeth), saving the longhorn. As Pecos and Widowmaker walk across a very dry desert, a vulture flies by, feeling dehydrated, followed by the two approaching a sign depicting a skeletal vulture perched one of the signs reading, "Border - No Water", but not before Pecos grabs the sign to form the Rio Grande.
The next day, a carefree Pecos rides on Widowmaker across the prairie, headbutting a herd of charging bison (which the narrator describes this as a one-man rodeo). Suddenly, he encounters a cowgirl named "Slue-Foot Sue" riding on a large catfish across a stream, which she dismounts from her catfish while Pecos desperately fell in love with her. However, after Sue got stuck on the moon due to Widowmaker feeling irritated about her, Pecos felt sad that he lost his love and returned to the coyotes' territory where he was raised. He began to howl with the coyotes, but never forgot about Sue, just before the camera moves across the Texan landscape where coyotes continue to howl and join in the symphony.
As the story ends, the same scene from the opening of the segment transitions to a group of live-action people being watched by several desert animals in an animated desert while the two tortoises that were walking across the desert suddenly show up after the story ended. As the camera pans away from the campfire, a coyote stands atop a tall rock formation and howls just before the film ends.
Other appearances[]
The longhorn from Pecos Bill appears during the "Quack, Quack, Quack, Donald Duck" sequence where he rides on Widowmaker along with Pecos during the end of "This is Your Life, Donald Duck".
Disney Parks[]
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad[]
References to Pecos Bill and the coyotes whom he was raised with were alluded in the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. One of the references in the advert described Bill eating like a coyote, an allusion to his interaction with the coyotes.
Trivia[]
- Some of the vultures seen in the short graphically resemble the ones seen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; however, unlike the vultures serving the main villain of Snow White, the Evil Queen, these vultures are depicted as wild animals. However, some book adaptations of Pecos Bill give the vultures a generic design.
- In a 1970 Disneyland Record book adaptation of Pecos Bill, the rabbit that Pecos was chasing has a striking resemblance to Rabbit from the Winnie the Pooh franchise with his body having a yellow fur coloration. Unlike Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh, who has anthropomorphic stature, the rabbit that Pecos was chasing in the book is more of a non-anthropomorphic animal. Whether this was intentional or not is unknown.
- Additionally, the original Pooh cartoons were not in development around the time when Melody Time was released in theaters.
- Some clips of the animals seen on the prairie such as the owls flying and the pronghorns peeking out of the prairie floor were later used in the Disney's Sing-Along Songs volume of Little Patch of Heaven.
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