How To Attract The Wombat

Will Cuppy is one of the greatest humourists produced by the US and remains, despite the huge success of 'The Decline & Fall of Practically Everybody', too little known.

Here is one of his classics, examining curious creatures (Birds Who Can't Even Fly, Optional Insects, Octopuses and Those Things) whose habits - and often whose mere existence - seem to have disturbed Cuppy, and well as more mundane creatures like The Frog, the Gnat and The Moa, which have no visible vices but whose virtues are truly awful. Roaming the length and the breadth of the animal kingdom, Cuppy neatly classes his observations for easy reference: Problem Mammals, Pleasures of Pond Life, Birds Who Can't Sing and Know It. Included with 50 shorter pieces are longer meditations like 'The Poet and the Nautilus', 'Swan-upping, Indeed!' and 'How to Swat a Fly' which codifies the essentials of this simple activity in ten hilarious principles. All this, plus over 100 delightful Nofgizer drawings! But (of course) the seat of honour is occupied by the Wombat, the nocturnal star of three essays. Whether sleeping in Rossetti's silver epergne or tunnelling under the lawn, the Wombat never fails to fascinate Cuppy, clearly supplying him an alter ego from the animal kingdom.