AUDIOBOOK More Sherlock Holmes than James Herriot, by Roger Windsor

Roger Windsor’s stories of life as, first, a naive student at vet school, then as a junior vet in general practice, and finally as a senior member of the Veterinary Investigation Service running a laboratory in Africa, certainly give James Herriot a run for his money. His vignettes of animal woe and human frailty have enduring appeal, and the story of setting up such a valuable service in Botswana, and helping to build that country’s agricultural and forensic veterinary resources, is truly fascinating. With his particular talent for veterinary detective work and more general eye for a character sketch and a tall tale, Windsor will keep even the most animal-averse readers listening in to this hilarious and touching autobiography, narrated by Gethyn Edwards.

This product includes all audio files in .mp3 format for you to download, and a PDF of the photos from the print book.

Author Biography

Roger Windsor studied at the University of Edinburgh Veterinary College. After spending some time in veterinary practice in the UK, he went to work in Kenya and soon became head of the Veterinary Diagnosis Laboratory there. Back in the UK a spell at Norwich Veterinary Investigation Centre made Roger realise that he had found his niche as a ‘vet detective’, a career he went on to pursue with great success in Kenya, Argentina and Botswana. This book is his story up to that point, although he later also worked in Peru, and was awarded an MBE for his work there. Now retired, he runs an art gallery in Scotland.

A member of the Game Department drove into the car park with ten dead or dying vultures on the back of the truck. A farmer near Mochudi was fed up with the vultures making a nuisance of themselves and had laced the carcase of a dead cow with strychnine.

Having sedated the live birds we had a look at the six dead ones and, after the post mortem room had been cleaned, we shut the door and left the four sleeping vultures in peace. At the end of the day we found that two of the four had died, but by the end of day two there were real signs of activity, and when I opened the PM room door on the Saturday morning I was almost knocked over as the two last vultures charged to get out. They took off and flew away. A twenty percent success rate is not bad when treating strychnine poisoning!