After completing my reading of Andrea Wulf‘s award-winning – and justly so – The Invention of Nature; Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, I not surprisingly found myself wanting to take up some of the works of von Humboldt himself. Unfortunately, as my French is very rusty from decades of neglect and my German all but non-existent […]
Lying in my bunk at the Malheur Field Station after a long day of study for the Oregon Master Naturalist program, I suddenly heard the howl of a Coyote. Then another. Then two more. It is a sound like no other, and while I had often heard it before, it still sent a thrill down my spine; a thrill that would take dozens, perhaps even hundreds of pages to explain.
While visiting the Festival of the Cranes at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, I naturally peeked in to the visitors center and the little shop operated by the Friends of the Bosque located there. Experience has taught me that very often these little refuge shops can be excellent locations to discover some very interesting books addressing the natural history of the local area – and indeed, this was the case here. While there were literally dozens of books seen on the shelves that were worthy of note, those that follow particularly caught my attention.
“In addition to acorns and grains, pigs happily devour that which most disgusts us – rotting garbage, feces, carrion, even human corpses. Of all the animals commonly eaten by humans, the pig is the only one that will return the favor.”