3.3 Taylor - Saturday Book Review

But it's actually Tuesday - also what happened to November?

Oh hey there my friend! My delightful reader! Remember how at the beginning of the month November I was like “ oh yeah, I’m gonna read five books this month, oh look at me with my two books that are over 900 pages long and I’m just going to wing through this here pile, c’mon get it girl!!”

I read one book. 0-1 book.

One whole book for the entire month with my awesome laid out plan of weekly reading for 5 books with my fancy new logo and all the excitement that powered that plan to nowhere. So this is going to be a review and a recap and a chat about what was happening in November and how to work with real life to *kind of* do the thing? Kind of?

Samson helping with Christmas decorating!

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In November I read the absolutely lovely and hilarious Zoo Vet by David Taylor and enjoyed every one of the 255 pages. It took me all month to get through it, which is highly unusual for me and yet seemed to fit the theme of the month. I also broke my toe, had an absurd amount of things happen at work that required ludicrous amounts of brain power, held good grades for the first full month of being back in college, attended a court hearing via zoom in Europe at 3:30 AM on Thanksgiving morning, and stress baked 4 pumpkin pies and at least 80 peanut butter cookies. It’s been a doozy of a month and honestly, I’m glad to be turning the calendar page and looking towards December with all of its joys and traditions, and the unbelievably exciting Christmas Eve dinner I am planning with my sister. Normally, I would feel the need to apologize for not sticking to the schedule and being late, but not this month - this is going to be a grace giving month and its also made me realize how much I’ve come to enjoy writing here weekly! Which is a good feeling to have when you’re starting out!

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So about Zoo Vet. Oh so much fun. The experiences Dr. Taylor talks about having with the different animals are hilarious, joyful, and sad. He talks about discovering his love of veterinarian care quite young and alway searching for strays animals to take in. He mentions his grandmother helping him mend the wing of a bird and how that made him feel that she was as supportive as she was. He makes mention of how angry it made him feel to see zoo and pet owners mistreat their animals or simply neglect them and what it felt like to try and treat or save the animals. I’m going to give you two quotes from my favorite stories he talked about, the first being when he brought home two cougar (he refers to them as pumas) cubs after their mom had died:

“We noticed that friends didn’t call as often, and they certainly never brought their pet dogs with them anymore. A visiting poodle or fox terrier just couldn’t take the nerve shattering experience of ambling into an apparently empty room with its owner, to find itself suddenly under gleeful attack by two whooping, whistling, spotted creatures springing from the darkness beyond the hearth. The Electricity Board meter men took to sending estimated accounts, and representatives of drug firms seemed increasingly to opt for pushing their promotional literature into the mail box instead of coming in to discuss new products.”¹

He then goes on to describe a story where he was swapping two male orangutans between zoos and at that time the method was to sedate them and then drive them in buckled in the passenger seat of a vehicle as transport. Can you imagine driving down the highway and looking to your left and seeing that great orange face of an orangutan staring back at you? Here is this marvelous quote from page 60:

“It was a hot day, and Harold turned out to be a trifle flatulent. It had become very necessary to wind down the windows. The orang sat comfortably behind the safety belt in the passenger seat on my left, his legs dangling over the edge of the seat and his arms in his lap.”

See what I mean?! Don’t you just have this visual immediately of what that car ride must have looked like and smelled like? In this particular story he goes on to talk about how the orang reached out and grabbed a paper boy on a bicycle when they were stopped at a traffic light. Oh its worth reading just for this story!

Honestly though I think my favorite part of the book is how he talks about becoming a zoo vet and how he made the decision to pursue it even when it seemed quite foolish and not at all a way he was going to have a career or feed his family. In this section he mentions that he was in practice for about 9 years as a domesticated and farm animal veterinarian and that he decided after conversations with zoos about apes that he was going to seriously pursue a fellowship at the Royal College of diseases in Zoo Primates. What I love about this passage is he then goes on to say this about his study habits and passion on page 28:

“The classification and characteristics of the various monkey malaria microbes were crayoned around the the faces of the clocks and in the center of the telephone dials. The house was awash with paper. It was impossible to get away from facts. Learn them I had to and learn them I did.”

I absolutely love the passion there. I have no desire to learn about the various monkey malaria microbes, but man do I love learning about the person who does. People and their passions are one of my favorite parts about being alive. One of my top favorite places to be is sitting next to or beside or walking with someone as they tell me all about the thing they are doing, studying, or learning and why it’s incredible. It feels like such a gift and to hear it explained this way in this lovely memoir was such a treat.

Personal Library Choice: Yes.

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We made! Through our one book review for the whole of November! Ha! Thank you for sticking with me and I hope if your November was as all over as mine has been that you take some grace for yourself and continue on to December. I am looking forward with excited anticipation for the Christmas holiday and publishing my plans for this lovely newsletter to include the Reading List for 2023 and the updated schedule as we slide into the new year.

The December list is going to go out this Thursday the 1st, so be on the lookout for that and yes, I know its usually on Tuesdays, but we’re just going to have to get past that. Thank you for being here, see you soon!

xoxo,

Elea

1. Zoo Taylor - Page 49