The booklet I read to research this post was Exotic Pets – The Domesticated Silver Fox by Vasanth Simon which is quite interesting & which I downloaded for free from Kindle. This booklet is only 2 pages but tells you pretty much everything you need to know. They are bred in Russia originally from 100 vixens & 30 males & 45,000 offspring were produced & only the ones with tame charasterics were selected. To buy one they start at $5,950 but they are vaccinated and wormed. They can be kept indoors or outdoors but if you keep one in a cage it may dig its way out. You can feed it on tinned dog food and they recommend you give it some vegetables. Also if you keep one outside you must bring it in if it rains. I’m tempted to get one of these but I think the price tag is rather hefty. Finally they are vaccinated against rabies so at least they don’t have to be quarantined for 6 months which is what they do in britain.

The book I am reviewing in this post is The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett which is a very good book which was a free gift with Esquire magazine. This book was written in the 1920′s & spawned a series of quite successful films. It was about a married couple who were private investigators & were played by William Powell & Myrna Loy. In this book they are investigating a murder which has been made to look like a suicide. They were quite a glamorous couple & the films which were made in the 30′s are still screened on television from time to time. Hammett was a very successful thriller writer & I think he had a number of his books made into films. Obviously the book has a happy ending and the murderer is caught.

The book I read to research this post was Down Under by Bill Bryson which is an excellent book which I bought from a carboot sale. This book is a kind of general history of Australia. Apparently the ruling australian prime minister in 1967 went in a lagoon and disappeared without a trace. If it had been the US president for example it would have made the front page around the world. As it is hardly any newspapers outside australia reported it. Probably partly due to australia’s remoteness also don’t forget it’s got a small population & has a relatively stable government & economy so tends to get ignored by the worlds press. At the Sydney Olympics Australia came 4th in its medal tally in a very diverse range of sports which is fantastic for a country with 19 million. China’s population increases by a larger amount than that every year. Even though baseball isn’t an established sport in Australia there are even some australian professional players in america. Apparently in a given period the New York Times ran as many stories on Belarus as it did on Australia. It was only discovered around 300 years ago. At one stage someone set sail from South America to try and discover a great southern landmass and by chance sailed through the Torres Straits which separate Australia from Papua New Guinea and no idea how close they came to discovering Australia. Tasmania was discovered before Oz by a ship from the Dutch East India Company and called Van Dieman’s Land after the captain’s boss. In Fiji and New Zealand there were cannibals who would try and eat anyone unfortunate enough to land there. A lot of people thought there was a great southern continental landmass that would rival eurasia and when Australia had been explored were rather disappointed.