By: Joe Strupp When most people pick up The Wall Street Journal, they are likely looking to read about stock peformance or corporate deals, not the national frog shortage or the market for deer urine. But for those who want to know if a financial trend has legs (four of them, to be exact), Herd on the Street: Animal Stories from the Wall Street Journal, published last month by Wall Street Journal Books/Free Press, will be an eye-opener ? with tales of dogs on Prozac and goldfish surgery.
Ken Wells, the editor for the book as well as the Journal''s Page One senior editor, just couldn't resist poking fun at the newspaper's "Heard on the Street" section with the book's title: "I just thought it was a delicious pun."
Wells said he agreed to work on the book because he was "a longtime fan of animal stories and I wrote a few myself." A Louisiana native, he grew up in the bayous "with a fishing pole in one hand." Early in his career, he covered alligator sightings and helped with the family's snake-collecting business.
One of Wells' favorite stories in the book concerns the Carnation Co.'s "cattery," where felines are scientifically studied in an attempt to determine what type of cat food sells best. Among its characters are Edward Kane, the man who runs the lab yet is allergic to cats, and a chairman who personally taste-tests the cat food from time to time.
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