Of books & fowl & green, green pastures.

For I will consider my cat Jeoffry, For he is the servant of the living God... ~ Christopher Smart. So what does one do on the Sunshine Coast when the sun don't shine? Well we went into Eumundi & browsed through all their second hand books. Ditz bought The Youngest Templar. I think she thought it was fantasy ~ but she did read it!

We went into Noosa & browsed along Hastings Street. I was very taken with these guinea fowl. French ~ & too expensive for me to even consider asking their going price.

We ate icreams while we watched the passing parade that included bush turkey chicks. And we went into Nambour to their 2nd hand book shop. This has to be one of my favourite places in the world. You descend down, down, down a narrow set of stairs & the shelves begin at the very doorway & stretch back the whole length of the block. Absolute heaven.

So why is this my favourite bookstore of all time? Because I have never left there without buying at least one book ~ usually several ~ & almost never what I went in there to look for! This time I came out with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' The Tribe of Tiger. Now Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' Reindeer Moon has sat on my bookshelf for over 2 decades, possibly 3. It is one of my all time favourite re~reads. Thomas trained as an anthropologist & lived on & off for years with the Ju/wai bushmen of the Kalahari so her novels have an authenticity that is sadly lacking in other similar novels like Clan of the Cave Bear ~ which I absolutely loathed & which doesn't hold a candle to Reindeer Moon.

When Thomas was 19 her father, who was involved in the making & selling of the first microwaves, decided he needed to get to know his family instead of working so much, uprooted them all & descended on Africa looking for the Kalahari Bushmen. Thomas' mother was a lecturer in Literature at Holyoke & then retrained after this experience as an anthropologist. Her brother trained as an anthropologist & advocated so well for the Kalahari he got himself banned for several decades. Interesting family. Look them up some time.

Anyway Thomas is incredibly observant about animals as well. Her Hidden Life of Dogs was a best seller. The Tribe of Tiger, which I have actually borrowed from the library [several times] is just as fascinating. I think I was originally attracted by the title. Animal books aren't usually my thing but I knew the poem this title was taken from & intrigued enough to persist. Thomas is extremely readable & her insights absolutely fascinating, especially in context of our own observations of *The Neurotic One*.

Thomas observes there is very little difference apart from size between the lion in all his glory pacing the African grasslands & the resident moggy hunting mice in your kitchen. I don't think she would be surprised by Issi hunting goannas. She says her own cats hunt deer ~ which are considerably larger! I know there are lots & lots of books around that purport to tell you all about your moggy but not a one of them is so insightful & fascinating as The Tribe of Tiger. For starters Thomas argues from a position I would agree with from my own observations of cat behaviour, that they are very social animals ~ we simply fail to recognize their sociability because most humans are more pack oriented, like dogs, acknowledging a pack hierarchy. Cats are different ~ as anyone who has owned both can tell you. Cats are extremely vocal. It's their way of keeping in contact when another cat is not right beside them ~ & they usually aren't because all cats hunt meat & divide territory accordingly. Fascinating stuff. I am delighted to own my very own copy of this book!

Then up behind Eumundi my parents, at one time before my father died, owned 50 acres of rolling hillside. When dad died mum sold & the land has been sub~divided into acreages. Everything has changed almost beyond recognition ~ to all the grandchildren's displeasure. More than one of them had put in dibs to inherit those 50 acres! Hard to believe the spot we stood on was once the pasture dad put his cows when we were due to visit so the kids could see his *girls* from the verandah. Ditz still regrets the loss of those 50 acres.