A cast off finished, the knitting put aside, a book picked up while my piano was being tuned. “Footprints on the Toilet Seat: Memoirs of a Falcon Doctor” by J. David Remple. My copy came signed via Glenn Stewart of UCSC, who was helping his friend get some publicity for it.
And what a book! It is self published and it is at times achingly in need of a copy editor for the punctuation goofs. Forgive it that: the story flows well of itself, and it is by the man who, with his wife, established the first hospital specifically for falcons in the land where falconry goes so far back it is mentioned in the Quran.
His wife the year had before decided to study Arabic, just on a whim, having no idea that they would soon get talked into leaving Wyoming and taking this job in the United Arab Emirates where they would stay for eighteen years.
Falcons are migratory birds in the Middle East, passing through there between summer and winter grounds. By tradition there, then, the big ones they capture must be males–well, obviously!–except as anyone who reads this blog knows, actually, the females are the ones who are a third larger.
You can imagine the conversations that start right off the plane.
Wildlife and wildly different peoples’ lives. Read this book.