Primates - including man - are the ones to watch. In the jungle it is men or related primates who can be dangerous.

It shouldn’t happen to a vet, but in Richard Jones’s case it invariably does - whether he’s in Belize or Banffshire: an orang-utan called Josh, fractious bulls, bellowing heifers, lambless ewes, three Caesarean calvings in one night, odd goings-on in the Glacks of Garrough, a strange use for a hock bottle, a hint when Jack Russells are about to bite and a safe method of extracting an egg from a nine-foot African rock python!

Yet the ones to watch in this beautifully drawn novel are, the author suggests, the humans. Why can’t some people let sleeping dogs lie - especially when they’re dead! And why exactly does Richard’s ferocious Classics teacher reappear in his life and insist on working in the practice? Are his motives benign, or is an excision required?

Read on, for laughter and indeed information, as this highly detailed and humorous picture of rural life offers both in large measure.

R Llewellyn Brown was born in Tanzania in 1957 and spent much of his childhood in the tropics of Africa, Asia and South America. Educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire and St John’s College, Cambridge, he qualified as a veterinary surgeon in 1981. In the same year he met his future wife on a farm in Scotland. They have two children. After two tours working for the Belize and Hong Kong governments the family returned to Scotland. He and his wife practice in Aberdeenshire as a vet and a lawyer respectively while the children attend the local secondary school. At present he divides his time between his family, running a practice, church commitments, writing humorous articles, hockey and numerous hobbies.