Last weekend I heard a story I won’t soon forget. Bob Freer, who runs an animal rescue shelter in the Everglades, appeared on a rerun of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and he began to talk about Florida’s python problem. Of course, I knew Florida had a python problem. But there’s knowing, and then there’s […]
Nature
In the Southern summer of 2004, my then-girlfriend and I were camped in a shelter near a rock climbing area in New Zealand called Flock Hill. It was a gorgeous landscape, sweeping grassy hills made famous as Rohan in the “Lord of the Rings” and glacial erratics from the final battle scene in “The Lion, […]
It’s small, it’s fuzzy, and it hurts like hell. Variously known as the “cow killer,” “mule killer,” and “motherf-ing thing that just stung me,” the velvet ant packs more pain per pound than the meanest great white. Don Manley, a professor emeritus of entomology at Clemson University, recalls his run-in with Dasymutilla sp. as the worst […]
Their fur is so soft. Their paws are velvet. And the twitch of their little noses can send people into paroxysms of baby talk. But behind that cute little “bunny” is a fearsome rabbit, ready to destroy everything in its path. Yes, the true nature of the rabbit is starting to come to light.
What is the most fearsome animal in the ocean? Is it the great white shark? The deadly stingray? The Megalodon? No. It is the Gribble. A gribble is an adorably chubby wee crustacean about three to six millimeters long. It has seven pairs of legs and four pairs of appendages sprouting around its mouth. And […]
The following is an essay I wrote while reporting from the Sea of Cortez last fall. To learn more, read my piece in this month’s Harper’s Magazine: “Emptying the World’s Aquarium.” Over the past few days I have found myself thinking a lot about the tragic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In it, […]
Oh, Chanel, you were such a tease. Maybe I should have figured that out from your fancy name, or from your Facebook page. When I look back, it’s not that you posted anything actually untrue, but you did get me all excited about your debut, your flowering, your signature scent. You were constantly updating the […]
I was about 50 feet up when I started to freak out. I had agreed to come to this Oregon forest and climb a very tall, very old tree with my mom, because it seemed like a nice mother-daughter bonding experience. Now I was approximately one-fifth of the way up a Douglas fir named Sophia, […]
