Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach is an entertaining read. As the title suggests, she focuses on those animals and plants that cause disturbances, ranging from manslaughter to vandalism to more mundane nuisances. Roach travelled the world investigating these case studies and how local authorities respond to them. She describes a wide range of different techniques from bear “crime scene” investigations used in British Columbia to birth control experiments on monkeys in India, with just about everything in between. Roach is quite serious about the topic but uses a lot of humor in the telling. There are a couple of passages that made me laugh out loud. Roach seems sympathetic to those who suffer from wild animals, such as farmers in India whose entire livelihood could be trampled under foot by a small group of elephants. She is less sympathetic to those, especially in the USA, who value their pets and their freedom over wild animals, writing: “Keep your pet inside at night! How is the life of a beagle or goat worth more than the life of a wild mountain lion?” (p. 135). There is a bibliography, but no reference notes. There are no maps and no index.
My three takeaways from Fuzz:
Nations respond in different ways. Shouldn’t be too much of a surprise in this, of course, but there is a stark contrast between the United States and India, for example. In the former, the default is to kill wildlife, especially “guilty” animals. This can be an animal suspected of killing a human, but can also include species, like black birds, that eat cash crops. I was a little taken aback by the poisoning of starlings, cowbirds, and black birds to protect the sunflowers, even though other non-lethal forms of mitigation are more effective. In India, to the counter, the inclination is the opposite, to not kill animals as the default policy, and rely on other methods. These could include birth control and sterilization of monkeys (although there is a long way to go on this) or using electric fences to keep elephants from agricultural lands.
Roach comes back a couple of times to the role garbage plays in shaping human-animal interactions. In my home state of Colorado, the obvious example is of trash can and home raiding bears. Don’t lock down the garbage and the omnivorous bear will get into it. Once the bear realizes they can get an easy and tasty meal, they keep coming back, increasing the likelihood of dangerous encounter. Yet, there is an easy fix, which is to lock down the garbage. In another example from Fuzz, Roach points out that the huge, open garbage dumps significantly contribute to the monkey population in India, something local authorities seemed oblivious to.
Thirdly, the importance of perceptions. What is really happening versus what do we believe is happening. Are their more mountain lion encounters with humans or in recent decades, or are “more” incidents being seen through outdoor or doorbell cameras? Does our fear of bird strikes distract us from the more likely occurrence of a airplane collision with a deer during takeoff, taxiing, and landing? Does fear of leopard attacks in the Himalayan region stand in for other unaddressed social anxieties? As an example from the book, concerned parents used to the boogeyman of their children being attacked by leopards on the way to school because the state did not provide school buses for them.
