Digger/Headscratchers


 * Also, Grim Eyes is the only member of the tribe who openly condemns the killing of Blood Eyes, when said killing very likely saved her own life. However, since the killer, Blood Eyes was her mother, and she likely witnesses, if not the killing, then its immediate aftermath at a very young age, it's expected that she'd be a little conflicted. On top of that Bloodtail and her Mother condemned the killing in no uncertain terms.
 * Yeah, but Bone-Claw Mother knew that those two were the reason Blood Eyes went axe-crazy in the first place, so she probably threatened to tell everyone what she knew if they so much as made a sound about it.
 * Bipedal wombats? The babies would fall out of the pouches.
 * Maybe they just have them stay off their feet when they're carrying babies?
 * Add the fact that marsupial pouches are actually fairly muscular... I suspect that a wombat with a young baby could probably get around well enough not to be bedridden, and new mothers probably are exempt from intensive labor.
 * Alternately, perhaps "wombat new mothers cannot move around normally without endangering the infant and so are completely dependent on their families" is more or less the equivalent of "human childbirth is dangerous for both mother and child, and the child is unable to do anything for itself for several years" - a price the species pays for bipedalism and dexterous hands/forepaws, and something which fostered a complex social structure for the protection of the mothers and children?
 * The ending. We don't get to see Digger's journey home at all. We never found out what happened to the shadow. it's just...suddenly over. Just like that. Why don't we get to see Digger get home? Are we supposed to assume her's was a totally uneventful trip back? Never mind the fact that she wasn't even sure the caravan man would be able to get her home in the first place. But I could have even forgiven all that if the ending wasn't so damn sudden.
 * Digger isn't actually the story of Digger's life. It's a story about her travels in a strange land. We never saw her leave her home. We met her a few minutes before arrival. The story ends a few minutes before she leaves for home. And hey, that leaves room for an admittedly-unlikely sequel!
 * Isn't carnivore liver poisonous?
 * Indeed - and Digger gets acute vitamin A overdose in the story. The vomiting and dizziness wasn't all down to Owl Caller's purgative.
 * Is it ever explained what the skin lizards mean when they talk about the "lefthand names of God"? I find it odd and somewhat amusing that their love of purple ink was eventually revisited as an important plot point, while such an interesting phrase is never elaborated upon, to my knowledge.
 * Religion doesn't have to make sense. Could mean mirror-writing the names of god, but that's only a rough guess.