How to attract the wombat (urspr publ 1949; utgåvan 1965)

Indeholder afsnittene "Are Wombats People?", "Mammals for Beginners", " The Mouse", " The Squirrel", " The Rabbit", " The Armadillo", " The Porcupine", "Advanced Mammals", " The Tapir", " The Llama", " The Great Anteater", " The Yak", " The Wart Hog", "Problem Mammals", " The Opossum", " The Kangaroo", " The Koala", " The Tasmanian Wolf", " The Bandicoot", " The Wombat", "The Poet and the Nautilus", "Pleasures of Pond Life", " The Frog", " The Toad", " The Salamander", " The Newt", "Octopuses and Those Things", " The Oyster", " The Clam", " The Snail", " The Octopus", " The Squid", " The Sea Serpent", "How to swat a fly", "Insects for everybody", " The Ant", " The Bee", " The Cricket", " The Mosquito", " The Gnat", " The Butterfly", "Optional insects", " The Beetle", " The Firefly", " The Ladybug", " The Flea", " The Fly", "Swan-upping indeed!", "Birds who can't fly", " The Ostrich", " The Emu", " The Kiwi", " The Moa", "Birds who can't sing and know it", " The Pelican", " The Duck", " The Goose", " The Swan", "More about Wombats", "Appendix", " The Scorpion", " The Earthworm".

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I am very fond of Cuppy's style, and the prose is of a warm quality. Sadly, a very large number of wild-life films have robbed the book of much shock value. If you want to read the text for what could have been a killer wild-life oddity documentary, or a short TV series, here it is.
The book was originally published in 1935. ( )

It's tough for me not to heap up rose petals for the sainted Author of THE DECLINE AND FALL OF PRACTICALLY EVERYBODY, but the sad fact is that this book just isn't very funny, or even clever. ( )

This was Cuppy's third book of complaints about animals. It is mostly about mammals, but also gets into amphibians, birds, insects, worms, Greek poets, and practically everything else. It is rich in empirical science, such as, "A decapitated salamander cannot make quick decisions," and philosophical insights, such as, "Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same." And even aesthetics: "The wart hog is often called the ugliest of all animals but the rhinoceros is uglier because he is larger and there is more of him to be ugly."

There is a section titled “Problem Mammals” but Cuppy seemed to have had problems with all the animals in this book, including “birds who can’t even fly” and “birds who can’t sing and know it.” And wombats, of course. “Are wombats people?” he asks, rhetorically. Because animals are, after all, only human. Three whole chapters are devoted to wombats but I can’t say they offer any useful advice on attracting them. No matter. After reading the three chapters you probably won’t even want to attract them!

Some people have accused Cuppy of making up things. I have never found any proof of this, but where did he get the factoid on page 116, that a snail can do the hundred yard dash in thirty hours flat? Can’t help wondering about that one!

Very funny. Cuppy-strength funny. One does not need to be a wombat fancier to enjoy this book, which is lavishly and delightfully illustrated by Ed Nofziger. ( )

Cuppy's offbeat sense of humor shines through this treatise on the animal world. It's a series of short essays, each about an animal (including, of course, the Wombat). There are tidbits of actual information tucked among the silliness -- not very much of it, but what there is seems to be accurate. All in all it's a delightful read. ( )