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Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

Current price: $34.99
Publication Date: February 23rd, 2022
Publisher:
Thorndike Press Large Print
ISBN:
9781432894269
Pages:
455

Human encounters with wildlife are increasing as land development shrinks wildlife habitat. Roach recounts dangerous engagements, some head-shaking practices, and plenty of laugh-out-loud turf wars.

Kay Wosewick, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI
September 2021 Indie Next List

Roach playfully explores the trials and tribulations of human and wildlife cohabitation. From bear attacks in Colorado to elephant attacks in India, Roach blends science and humor and leaves you questioning our actual place on the food chain.

Monica De La Torre, Bright Side Bookshop, Flagstaff, AZ
Fall 2022 Indie Next List for Reading Groups

Description

What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and danger tree faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to problem wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem--and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.