Mammals - A Guide to Familiar American Species

Today I am going to write my first book review. I'm excited!

I found this book last year when I went to visit my grandma. She lives in the middle of the forest up near Hood Canal and her house is made entirely out of gingerbread. She has a bit of an ant problem, but the gingerbread makes surprisingly good insulation. I never would have suspected.

Well, she had recently moved in and unpacked about seven hundred million boxes of old books that she's been hauling around since the fifties. So her entire living room (I'm not exaggerating! The ENTIRE living room! And it's kind of a big living room,) was full of grandmother-high stacks of old books. It was like the library of a mad naturopath. It was the library of a mad naturopath. She had everything from A: The Magic Vitamin to Zinnias, Garden of Color. She's been studying plants and nutrition her entire life, and in those piles of books, one could document the history of the entire American movement towards natural remedies. I managed to find two books that weren't solely devoted to plants and/or vitamins. One was an 1890 edition of the White House Cook Book, which I was immediately instructed to get my hands off of, and the other was this book:


It was so mine.

I looked through it and found pictures like this one:


And advice like this:

Mammals as Pets

Our best pets are domesticated mammals. Wild ones when captured young make fine pets, too. Be sure to observe the law in capturing them. Raccoons, skunks and tree squirrels make good pets. Flying squirrels, white-footed mice, and chipmunks do well in captivity. Foxes, coatis, woodchucks, armadillos, and even larger mammals are kept as pets. Be sure you can provide proper food, clean drinking water, and a satisfactory shelter. Take time to handle and play with your pet, if you want it to be tamed. Experts at zoos can give you practical advice.

What are coatis? Oh, this is a coati:


How cute! I totally want one! What a useful book! The blue parts on the North American map are where they used to live, and the pink/purple is where they live now. As of 1955.

I have to admit that I haven't actually read the book cover to cover - I've mostly just looked at the pictures. But from what I have read, I've learned things like:

Otters are large, aquatic weasels. Two kinds live in North America - the Sea and the River Otters.

Sea Otter is larger, more valuable, more interesting.

Really! I've had that sea otter living under my sink this whole time, and I had no idea it was more valuable than a river otter. Fascinating.

I also learned that tuft-eared squirrels are our most attractive squirrels, that bottlenose dolphins are commoner than common dolphins, and that bog lemmings are not true lemmings, but are in fact more like voles.

This is an absolutely fantastic book, especially for anyone going back in time to the fifties on a hunting expedition. I give it a 9.8 out of 10.