Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature's Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species

Abstract

For anyone still under the misconception that nature writing is limited to celebrations of natural beauty and explorations of soothing pastoral landscapes, Trash Animals provides a refreshing corrective. This volume contains 17 essays devoted to a variety of creatures: ring-billed gull, snake, wolf, Mormon cricket, coyote, prairie dog, packrat, Canada goose, starling, carp, cockroach, black-billed magpie, pigeon, feral cat, bullhead catfish, prairie lubber grasshopper, and rats and mice. Most of the essays offer bioregional perspectives and consider the place of each animal within a specific landscape, including both rural territories (prairie dogs in Colorado, bullheads in Minnesota and Iowa) and urban settings (pigeons in New York, gulls in Toronto, magpies in Ch'angwon). Vivid and engaging, these essays serve as fine examples of contemporary nature writing. Though informed by biology, ecology, history, and other disciplines, these are not academic articles. Addressing human–nonhuman relationships insightfully and entertainingly, they are aligned more with the natural history essays of Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Loren Eiseley than with scholarly or theoretical writing. In keeping with the long tradition of nature-oriented personal essays, the authors drift thoughtfully among modes of discourse; narratives of personal encounters with each species mingle with historical anecdotes, opinions, scientific facts about physiology and behavior, and contextual information drawn from areas such as history, psychology, literature, and legend. The volume rejects superficial revulsion or admiration in favor of a more complex look at “trash animals” in relation to human culture. Several essays make the important point that humans are complicit in the presence of these animals in our lives: city gulls feed on our trash; carp and starlings were introduced in North America from abroad; crickets and grasshoppers became defined as invaders after native grasslands were replaced with agricultural crops. The pieces by Michael Branch (on packrats) and Carolyn Kraus (on cockroaches) illustrate a deep and troubled ambivalence that is evident throughout the collection. In both cases, unwanted creatures that can cause real harm (physically, hygienically, and psychically) take up residence in human habitations, and both authors recount the difficult process of sorting through their feelings and weighing their options as ecologically engaged animal lovers who nonetheless are alarmed by the presence of undesirable animals.