I was in the Galapagos Islands in July, which felt a bit like traveling to another planet. At least, that’s what I’d imagine an interplanetary hop to be like. The land features are familiar and yet not quite—lava fields still sharp and freshly black or dotted with hopeful plant life, colossal rocks turned to sculpture […]
Animals
In the part of your mind that is still animal, still wild, you remember fight or flight; the possibility of paws holding you down, and the hinge of jaws upon you. The thought no longer goes through our minds the way it must have long ago. Sometimes, though, the memory returns. I was considering such a scenario years […]
We came back from vacation earlier this month to find that someone else had moved in. I didn’t realize it at first—the house seemed just as we had left it, and we were busy emptying the car and starting the laundry and repopulating the house with the things we’d taken with us. It was later, […]
In this month’s issue of National Geographic, I lay out a simple question. How many great white sharks are there on Earth? It seems simple enough – we’ve found some 3,500 planets outside our solar system and 400,000 species of beetles on Earth. This is the modern world of crowdsourcing and big data. We can […]
I remember my 7th grade science fair project pretty clearly. You may think you aren’t interested in what it was, but you should be—because it was fabulous. It was truly unique. I didn’t grow plants under different colored lights and I didn’t build a lame volcano using paper maché and some sticky baking soda and Sprite mixture (or whatever). […]
There is currently a war raging in my yard. For the past week a handful of squirrels (I can’t honestly say how many since I can’t tell them apart) have been fighting. And not just the regular squibble squabble squirrel fight. A full on, screaming, bloody, vicious battle.
I’ve recently added a bit to my awkward beginning-of-interview spiel. I do the standard “here’s what my story is about, here’s why I wanted to talk to you” thing. But I also now usually say something like “oh, and if you hear any weird sounds, there are squirrels fighting in my back yard and my […]
Last summer, my husband and I began watching what we believed to be one of the worst shows on television. The series, Zoo, is based on a novel by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Here’s the premise: The world’s animal population has turned against humanity. Lions are killing tourists, wolves are murdering prison inmates, even […]