Fowl Weather

This is a must read. The book has been written with such love and compasion. I laughed and I cried with every page. I could not put this book down because there was something around the corner of each page that kept your attention to the very end. Don't leave this world without reading Fowl Weather. PM, San Antonio, TX

It's hard to know what else to add to the 24 other 5 star reviews! I'm a poultry enthusiast who has found both of Bob's books to be poignant journals of how our pets own us. Without overly anthropomorphizing their pets, Bob manages to give us a home movie of them that is sometimes a bit Fellini, sometimes a bit Andy Griffith. The balance of wry humor, cozy anecdotes, and dark obsessions create a great read that is truly genius and satisfying. I heartily recommend this book to reading clubs, because there's something for everyone in here.

"Fowl Weather" takes up the story line of fowl-obsessed Bob Tarte, his wife Linda, and their multitudinous non-human family, where "Enslaved by Ducks" left off. Read the latter book first so that you can easily pick up the story of how the author coped with the death of his father and his mother's slow descent into Alzheimer's Disease, with the help of his wife, thirty-nine animals, a sock monkey, and an occasional blast of anti-depressants. Bob Tarte is affected by anti-depressants like no one else on Earth, so it is just as well that he can turn to his ducks, geese, turkey, parrots, and Moobie his bulky white cat for comfort. His wry, self-deprecating style (a uniquely American amalgamation of Samuel Clemens and Erma Bombeck) makes even the toughest philosophical quandaries easy to understand. He engages our sympathy, even while making us smile, although "Fowl Weather" is not as laugh-out-loud funny as "Enslaved by Ducks." How could it be when its overarching theme is death in all of its humiliating, squalid forms--a box of firecrackers where most of the squibs sputter, smoke, and go out without a burst of color or a satisfying bang. Death by cancer or death by raccoon---all that can be gleaned from this book is that one is quicker than the other. All cause sorrow, whether the death of a nameless bunny or the death of a father. It is only a matter of degree. The author writes about himself as though he were a clueless, lost-in-the-Seventies wimp. In reality, he and his wife, Linda are a couple of intensely humane and interesting folks. I'd rather read about them cleaning the chicken barn and tending to their starling nestlings than follow even the most bizarre `happenings' of Paris Hilton, who is essentially living in a one-creature universe. To paraphrase Samuel Clemens, there is something about the outside of a duck that must be good for the inside of a man, even if the relationship sometimes involves a pushbroom. I generally avoid books about death, Alzheimer's, and depression, but this author presents his tragic year with such grace and off-beat wackiness, I couldn't do anything else but chuckle and lighten up about my own daily skein of pratfalls and tragedies. "Fowl Weather" might not make a good movie, but it could generate a great comic strip along the lines of "Maus" for Michigan.

Fowl Weather is a very, very, very funny book but that is almost misleading. In these days, when meanness is mistaken for wit, it is a startling work of art that sees the great and small passages of life, with humor. Bob Tarte has written a very brave, funny book. It is very difficult to say precisely what it's about because it is about life unfolding or maybe unraveling. It's about those moments, parents, pets or even things that make up our notion of self and how they can be taken away and the little things, like the sound of a bird or a spider's web, that can make it endurable. It's a book that deals with daunting issues like mortality with graceful wit. Many of the incidents in this book, say sock monkeys, a purse, or parrots, have never been juxtaposed in the history of literature. It is an outstanding read.