What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?
I liked Reaper Man. It's a great little story about duty, and still somehow there's snowglobes and shopping malls involved. Feet of Clay is also great. It was the very first Terry Pratchett I ever read, and I can still remember finding it by accident in the old paper back section of the library. Pushed to some back corner to make room for all the new paper backs.
just finished two books by the same author. Elephant Whisperer and Babylon's Ark by Lawrence Anthony. Both true stories. He's a pretty famous conservationist in South Africa who runs a pretty big wildlife preserve. In the Elephant one he takes in a problem herd of Elephants on short notice, otherwise their going to be killed, and he needs to reintegrate them into the wild and above all, get them to stop escaping on rampages. Along the way he has to deal with a mini civil war in Zululand, actual assassination attempts, poachers using heavy weaponry, and some very angry elephants. It was a pretty amazing book. Uplifting to see someone working with elephants (Which have always been some of my favorite creatures) but also pretty heart breaking at parts. Spoilers, but the circle of life is harsh and some of the animals you really get to know don't make it.
Babylon's Ark continues his personal crusade to help animals. It takes place in the opening days of the invasion of Iraq. The author/conservationist see's footage of how the war has devastated the Baghdad Zoo, once the largest most impressive zoo in the middle east. He pretty much immediately drops everything he's doing and travels to Iraq. The dude must have some serious connections, because he's meeting with ambassadors like their old friends and gets a pass to be one of the first non-military westerners into occupied Baghdad. Once in he starts working with the devastated zoo to try and safe the animals, and it was a hugely unpleasant under taking. Not only are they dealing with unexploded ordinance littering the ground, but literally every night loots descend on the place to strip whatever they just built or salvaged. It only cools down when some looters break into a bear cage to kill and eat the bear, and the bear rips them apart instead.
It keeps getting tougher to, because their desperate to find food for the few surviving animals, but the military keeps find private zoo's and herds that Saddam, his sons, and other powerful people kept in their estates. All the animals keep getting transported to the zoo and dumped on them, so that the military doesn't have to worry about it.
Both were fantastic books, highly recommend.
