People may ask me, what attracts me so to animals? Well, I don't profess to love all of them equally and unabashedly. The level of feeling I have for, let's say, spiders, falls very short of what I feel for animals of the mammalian class. We all have our favorites. But perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that there's a sense of awe and wonderment that often rises up within me when observing or learning about them in general.

Then again, I digress.

Just finished reading a book about a guy's experiences that mainly revolved around his life in the West Highlands. The sole obstacle and irritation I encountered in my journey through its earlier pages was that it required me to muster every bit of imagination I had, such was the nature of the book, for the author spent much of the first part describing the surroundings and environment of his socially-isolated abode. What do I know of the trees native to the area, about the shores and waterfalls, steep hill-sides of heather and ochre mountain grasses? What do I understand? How could I appreciate them? I could only imagine them to the best of my ability, for on such things my eyes have never laid upon. Yet the author's writing captivated me, spurring me on to read page after page, until I was richly rewarded. The latter part focused on his obtaining an otter as a pet. And that was where the book truly came alive for me. It's almost impossible for me to quote anything from there with regards to the otters, for his experiences with them can only be fully delighted in when reading them as a whole. But I'll end instead with the following excerpt:

"These monkeys are very affectionate in their own crazy way. They love to cling to one and hate to be alone. But they are full of sin. At liberty in a house they leave a trail of destruction, and little can be done to teach them good behaviour. In illustration of this there is a story of a man who went about house-training one. Diligently, when the monkey messed, he would seize it, slap its backside, and toss it out of the window. After some weeks his efforts bore fruit. The monkey would mess on the floor, slap its own backside, and jump out of the window."
- Gavin Maxwell, Ring Of Bright Water (Pan Books, 1960)