Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison

Date Started: June 17, 2015
Date Finished: June 17, 2015
Book Acquisition: Carrollton Book Exchange
Overall Rating: 3/5

I'm sitting on a plane en route to the California. My flight was delayed, then delayed again, then hastily boarded so we could sit on the tarmac in a line of planes as orderly as any elementary school class on the way to lunch. This book made the delays and the literal hours spent in security seem really pretty okay. It was light, and interesting, and very endearing read about (you guessed it) a safari guide's experience in the African Bush.

Favorite Parts:

1. The introduction of Dick, an atrocious but much loved vehicle. It reminded my very forcibly of Richard Hammond's love for Oliver in the Top Gear Botswana Special. 
2. The (true) love story between Sir Sereste Khama (one of the founding fathers of Botswana) and his English wife, Ruth. I hope I have a marriage as obviously devoted as theirs. I was so impressed by them in fact that I've just purchased a book about their lives. 
3. At some point, when Allison was going something he was sure would kill him he thought he tombstone would need to read, "HERE LIES PETER ALLISON. HE WAS RIDICULOUS." (186) Even if I die very normally, I want a similar inscription. I love being ridiculous. I think it's one of my better qualities.  
4. Allison's descriptions of "Bird Nerds" (and his eventual descent into those same ranks.

"My perception was that people who watched birds wore funny clothes and had poor hygiene. They has beards (even the women) with bits of food stuck in them. Bird-watching was close kin to the dirty perversions of stamp collections and crocheting cushion covers." (124)

Eventually Allison says, "I am on those people, I thought, and it didn't seem such a bad thing after all." (127)

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY MOTHER'S CLAN. In the last couple months  I have taken up the much loved Myers' pastime of  gardening and embraced my love of counting birds. I have generally been marginally interesting in bird, and birding, but my family is borderline nonsensical in their birding quest. My grandparents have spent small fortunes chasing birds across the world.

For this last Christmas I requested a small bird feeder to stick to my window in the hopes of distracting my cats from their more destructive pursuits. Mother got me a feeder just like her own, well frequented feeder, and super high quality seeds. I set it up at a prominent window and waited. To date it's been up for nearly six months and I've literally never had a damn bird come visit. Not a single. fucking. bird.

Somehow this rejection has fueled me. Every couple months I move the feeder to a new window and hope for a visitor. In the meantime, I've started making lists and tallying the birds that visit the yard (but not the feeder). I have a pair of cardinals, the occasional blue birds and blue jays, and packs of robins (mostly in the front). The lists were the final straw, really, "I am on those people, I thought, and it didn't seem such a bad thing after all."