Book Review: Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat

We have the pandemic to thank for this eye-opening, empathetic and long-overdue tribute to one of our most misunderstood and widely despised relatives. The rat. And I use relative intentionally as I learned from the book that the human species descends from rats. During the early days of Covid, while so many people were out …

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New and forthcoming environmental books (June 2024)

Here’s the latest batch of books to come across our desks — enjoy! The first book is written by the founder of an amazing chicken rescue organization, Sweet Peeps, based in Mobile, Alabama. If you’ve never visited an animal sanctuary (not a zoo) you’re missing out. And you don’t have to go to Alabama to …

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Book Review: Trash Animals

How we live with nature’s filthy, feral, invasive, and unwanted species

Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II, editors

University of Minnesota Press, 2013

TrashAnimals

In this collected cross-section of stories and essays about trash animals — the loathed species we deem dirty or dangerous nuisances, such as pigeons and coyotes — the authors differ in subject matter and narrative focus, but they all have one thing in common. They ask that we see these animals in a new light.

Why is that so difficult? Mostly, as the authors argue, because we hate species who survive on our sloth, such as cockroaches and rats, who clean up after us. And we don’t much like animals who invade environments we have created for our own enjoyment, such as Canada Geese on golf courses, or coyotes in suburban yards. They can alter the landscape! They can destroy the land and the water!

What invasive, destructive species does that remind you of?

Unknown

Reading these pieces, I know I am as prejudice or blind as most. In the essay “See Gull,”

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