Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

I'm glad that my birthday gift to a friend ended up being a dupe, because I got to read this book. And I loved it! I've read the author's work before, and enjoyed her love of esoteric scientific topics, and her ability to make them accessible (fun, even!). It's rare to read a book that is so informative and also so funny. She has enviable journalistic talent delivered with such a delightful tone.

That, and I find this book's topic — humans attempts to deal with less-than-ideal encounters with animals (from the deadly to the annoying) — especially fascinating. She goes all over the world, from India to Italy to Colorado, to explore these animal-human encounters and all the varied and complex ways humans react (spolier: the problems almost always arise because we messed up the natural way of things, and by trying to fix it, we make it worse).

Definitely recommend this book, both for the writing and for buckets of fun facts to tell at your next party.

Easily one of the greatest books I've ever read. Mary Roach does a phenomenal job presenting important animal related issues in a silly and funny way, while still emphasizing the need for change in dealing with human-animal interactions. From elephants to bears to penguins, she's got it all covered.

I always find Mary Roach can bring information to you in a fun way. Her books are detailed but she makes dry information fun. I always learn new stuff in her books. This one is about animals doing harm to our world but really they are just being animals doing what animals do - survive. I learn more about animal scat than I thought I could. LOL.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as a part of a Quick Takes Catch-up post, emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness.

---

So this is about what happens when animals and humans have a hard time co-existing—which basically means when animals being animals inconvenience (or worse) humans. Was that hiker killed by an animal, or did they die of other causes and become food for an animal? What happens when we put a building where an animal expected to be able to be?

I don't think it was as amusing as Roach tried to make it. It was interesting, but it went on too long and therefore became less-interesting the longer it went on. I don't remember anything more specific than that—which says something about the book. It just didn't hold my attention for long.

This is my first Mary Roach book—and maybe would've been my last if I hadn't run into a couple of other bloggers who are Roach fans that were as tepid as I was about the book. Still, I'm going to get a bit more distance between this book and my next.

Science writer Mary Roach travels around the world investigating the animals and plants in nature that cause problems for mankind. She looks at difficulties for humans presented by bears, elephants, leopards, monkeys, cougars, birds, rats, mice, and even poisonous plants and tall trees.

My takeaway from this book is that, over and over, humans find a creature or plant annoying or dangerous or deadly to them, and they take measures to rid the world of the creature or plant, and they never succeed, and they generally make things much, much worse. I was also surprised to see the number of people employed as animal welfare officers who are charged with killing animals.

I think I was taken aback to not see roaches or mosquitoes addressed here.

The book is filled with Mary Roach's hilarious take on science and nature; it's a fun book.

Okay, this turned out to be pretty fun, and informative too. It raises some important questions about how to deal with animals when they stray into the realms of humans, and how to do it in a way that allows both entities to get along - especially since only one party can really control what they're doing. There's plenty of anecdotes and stories from people who have to manage the in-between spaces: some from professionals, and some from Roach's own life and the lives of ordinary people. There's an interesting point made about how maybe humanity needs to learn to let Nature have its way in some things, and how maybe we shouldn't be trying to control it so much as learning to just live with it - go around, instead of trying to go through, so to speak.

But...IDK. This didn't feel as compelling or fun as the pevious Roach books I've read? It just might be the subject matter, which CAN get a little dry because it's mostly to do with laws, but... Not sure. Still informative, and still fun in places, just not as much as the other books of hers that I've read.