Just when you think you're jaded about nature - you've had it with
save the whales, protect the wolves, and don't eat veal - along
comes science-writer (Natural Acts, 1985) and novelist (The Soul of
Viktor Tronko, 1986, etc.) Quammen with his wonderful lust for life
- in its more quirky forms - and his observations on the human
observers of nature. Not that he doesn't draw the line. The Quammen
rule is that anything with more than six legs and two eyes is out,
definitely out. So you can imagine what happened when he discovered
that the black widow spider in his den had given birth and that his
desk was a seething mass of pinheaded babes spinning their first
orbs: RAID. Scorpions ("more cluttered with obnoxious useful
hardware than a Swiss army knife") are ghoulishly dispatched in
another chapter with vivid descriptions of what a sting feels like.
Quammen also provides the incidental intelligence that scorpions
"see" with their feet, sensing vibrations and noting
time-of-arrival differences across their eight spraddled legs.
Piranhas and bedbugs, the almost mythical African okapi,
orangutans, the archeopteryx, assorted lizards, including the title
iguana, are among the other quaint creatures considered in this
collection - mostly culled from Quammen's monthly columns in
Outside. There are also musings on urban life - the plight of
street trees, for example, and a quite delicious dog-hating essay
("The Descent of the Dog"). We are to blame, he says, for their
horrendous population explosion (60 million dogs in the US) and for
bringing out the worst in them - in particular, the bark. On the
other hand, Quammen all but waxes poetic about the honks (and
general life-style) of geese. Of the human observers, Quammen has a
fine cast of scientists and naturalists fleshed out by old hands
like "Crawfish" - a guide on an Okefenokee trip he took with "The
Red Ace," a high-school buddy. This is a particularly personal
essay with echoes of the 60's - and tales of youthful bravura -
sketched against the wild beauty of the swamp. Altogether, a fine
feast to restore natural wonder. (Kirkus Reviews)
From the award-winning author of The Tangled Tree and The Song of
the Dodo comes a collection of essays in which various weird and
wonderful aspects of nature are examined. From tales of vegetarian
piranha fish and voiceless dogs to the scientific search for the
genes that threaten to destroy the cheetah, Quammen captures the
natural world with precision. Throughout, he illuminates the
surprising intricacies of the natural world, and our human
attitudes towards those intricacies. A distinguished essayist,
Quammen's reporting is masterful and thought provoking and his
curiosity and fascination with the world of living things is
infectious.
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