Animals do the darndest things—just ask bestselling author Mary Roach. After writing about the science behind human cadavers (Stiff), space travel (Packing for Mars) and life as a soldier (Grunt), she turns her attention to criminals in the wild in Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.
This book is such a rich stew of anecdotes and lore that it’s best savored slowly, bit by bit. Roach doles out surprising true tales from her around-the-world survey of human-wildlife relations, such as the story of a woman who returned home to find a leopard in her bed watching TV, or one about bear bandits in Pitkin County, Colorado, who tend to prefer premium brands of ice cream like Häagen-Dazs over brands like Western Family, which they apparently won’t touch. Her exploits are accompanied by numerous, sometimes lengthy footnotes, such as a particularly intriguing one about the scientific difficulties of studying monkey ejaculate.
ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Mary Roach shares some highlights from her worldwide travels to collect stories of fuzzy fugitives.
Roach also tackles deeply serious topics in Fuzz, such as the death and destruction caused by certain wandering elephants, or bears whose DNA needs to be traced in order to track down one who killed a person. But no matter the situation, Roach approaches it with contagious enthusiasm, gifting readers with sentences like this one about a tourist lodge in India: “I love this kind of place, love the surreal decay of it, love the clerk who does not know where breakfast is served or even if breakfast is served, love everything, really, except the rat turds on my balcony.”
As Roach marvels at this wild world, she brings home the fact that, as one expert put it, “When it comes to wildlife issues, seems like we’ve created a lot of our own problems.” Roach is never one to proselytize, however, jokingly calling herself “Little Miss Coexistence” as she challenges herself not to set a trap for that roof rat pattering on her deck. Nonetheless, Fuzz will open readers’ eyes to a myriad of animal rights issues, and possibly change their attitudes about how to approach them. When it comes to handling pesky rodents and birds, for instance, Roach concludes, “Perhaps the model should be shoplifting. Supermarkets and chain stores don’t poison shoplifters; they come up with better ways to outsmart them.”
