Animals and Law

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, animals, laws, legal system, humor

Mary Roach make serious subjects both interesting and humorous. In Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, she writes of animals who cause problems to people (besides ants at picnics or in the kitchen), and the various officers who must deal with them. We're talking serious problems here, from killings to theft, and, in later chapters, "invasions" such as the imported rabbits in Australia and rats in New Zealand.

On the scale of danger:cuteness ratio, bears rank right at the top. A young cub like the one shown here is probably just curious. However, the mother is likely to be nearby, and will object to her baby being this close to a dangerous human. It seldom occurs to us that bears consider us a risk; we're big enough to do them damage, and too big to be worthwhile prey. I wonder what followed this moment. Most likely, the mother made a "Whuff!" sound, at which the cub ran to her, and they trotted off together. I hope so.

Bears are too smart to be predictable. They are also loners, and get cranky if someone gets too close without permission. A cranky bear can slap you as he or she would another bear, and it'll take your head right off. Then, surprised at the result, after some thought, the bear could opt to take advantage of the free meal. Now we have a "killer bear". What is a forest ranger to do with it? There's a chapter on that. Guess what: relocating, whether bear or squirrel, just makes room for another to move in…and so does killing the offender.

Bears are most likely to kill unintentionally. Not so carnivores such as leopards, nor elephants. Each rates a chapter, and the stories range from quirkily funny to spine-chilling. While in India learning about leopard attacks, one evening the author heard a ghastly scream that she concluded came from a leopard's prey being killed. She and those with her decided to wait, to check it out in the morning, leaving matters to resolve themselves overnight. The villagers called it a case of demon possession, which she took for a double entendre, because the villagers had also told her that any leopard that had killed at least two people was considered a demon. Well, whoever died that evening was definitely "possessed" by that leopard at that point!

I haven't been the subject of an attack by anything bigger than a jaybird. But that can be painful enough! I found a blue jay chick in the driveway once, and picked it up to put in a nearby bush. A parent bird bombed me. Had I not been wearing a hat, it would have drawn blood. I've managed to avoid sea gull attacks by eating only inside at the beach! This fellow, according to advertising copy, was trying out a gull repellent method that obviously isn't working. I did note that two species of gull are shown here. That's typical at almost any American beach.

A lot of the book deals with the futility of not just trying to eradicate unwanted species (such as invasive rats on islands), but even counting them to know how big the problem is. Cougars (AKA pumas or panthers) are so elusive that animal "control" officers' most effective method is scanning an area for feces, called "scat". Unlike domestic cats, cougars just "drop and walk off". With experience, the officers can estimate how old a scat is, so with a little knowledge of scat-dropping frequency and a bit of math, they can estimate how many cats frequent a certain parcel of land.

The next-to-last chapter gets into humane killing. It's not quite an oxymoron, but killing most animals "so they won't notice" is nearly impossible, and anything less abrupt than the killing bar on a classic mousetrap will entail a period of suffering, from seconds to minutes to hours. Thus the last chapter deals with genetic methods. The scariest is the gene drive. Scientists working on this have figured out how to "fix" the genes in a female mouse so she will have only female offspring. Ordinarily, releasing a lot of such mice is self-limiting, and won't eradicate them. But the gene drive somehow guarantees that all her daughters will have the same trait. Thus, any male mice remaining will get older and older, as few males get born, and eventually none. A generation later, the oldest females die, and Presto!, no mice. (At least, I think that is how it works. I may have something backwards. Anyway, they all eventually die out.)

Very late in the book, the author writes of a farmer who has a more phlegmatic attitude: Do your best to keep from spilling food all around, and live with a little "shrinkage", just as stores know they can't eliminate all shoplifting, but reduce it as much as they think reasonable, and adjust to it.

Animals don't know they are breaking human laws. I suspect if they could know somehow, they wouldn't care. After all, they were here first. We're the invaders, breaking "their" laws! The cynic's Golden Rule applies: Them that has the gold, makes the rules.