Dewey's Readers Book Group

Dewey's Readers

Non-Fiction Book Group

 Third Wednesday of the month at 4:00 PM

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

by Mary Roach

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. 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.

Room Reservation: 
Wednesday, October 19
Program Time: 
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Event Category: 
Event Location: 
Name of Organization: 
Jamestown Philomenian Library
Contact Name: 
Deborah Homer
Contact Phone Number: 
401 423-7284
Contact Email: 
jamlibinfo@gmail.com