December 2019 - Page 2 of 2

The Wolf

by Dr. Michael Fox

Lovely little book about the family life of wolves. Part of it is story, following one pup from birth to adulthood as it learns life skills, how to stay safe, hunting with the pack etc- all the usual stuff. Interjected are explanations about wolf behavior and ecology, so it\’s very educational as well. The little wolves grow and play, although one dies young from a disease. This book has a lot more about their intimate social lives- showing how the interactions form their bonds and organize their place in the pack. The young wolves encounter threats from a bald eagle, a wolverine and porcupine (seems to be the classic encounter in any book about young wild animals). They learn to catch mice and grasshoppers on their own, and are schooled in hunting caribou by their parents. I thought for once this would be a story just about the (relatively) peaceful lives of the animals, but man does make an appearance at the end- the wolf pack is hounded by hunters using airplanes. Some are shot and left to die. The ending is a plea for wolves to be protected, pointing out their role in keeping populations of caribou and other prey animals healthy, and a little bit about conservation work. Of course the book is dated- it hopes for example that wolves will someday be re-introduced to Yellowstone (which has now occurred). The illustrations by Charles Fracé are very nice.

As I read this book immediately after Cry Wild, I couldn\’t help notice the differences between a few very similar scenes. In both stories the young wolf pups find a porcupine, but in this case the parent warned them from approaching, and later they came across a dead one and found out how sharp the quills were against their curious noses, so escaped injury. In both books one pup dies very young, and the mother\’s reaction is opposite. In Cry Wild the mother wolf anxiously licked and tended the dead pup, trying to coax it to nurse again and finally when they all moved to a new den, simply left the body behind. Here in The Wolf, as soon as the dead pup ceases moving, the mother apparently no longer recognizes it as her young, and matter-of-factly eats the body.

I wonder which depiction is more accurate. I suppose they both could be, if the wolf learned how to react to the situation according to what wolves around it normally did?

Rating: 3/5 96 pages, 1973

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

Cry Wild

by R.D. Lawrence

The life of a wolf in the wild, growing up and then eventually encountering mankind, to its misfortune. I was surprised how much this book reminded me of White Fang– although it feels a lot more realistic, it has similar sentiment of \”tooth and claw\” ruling in the wild, and it starts out very similar- opening scenes of a wolf pack struggling to survive famine in the winter wilderness, then better times come with spring and the female gives birth to pups, the strongest of which becomes the animal protagonist of the story. Much of the narrative is just about the family life of the wolves, their tenderness towards each other, the pups\’ fumbling play-wrestling with each other and curiosity at encountering new animals, and their growing survival skills- finally becoming adept at hunting together with the adult wolves. It often switches viewpoint to depict other animals living in the forest and how their lives interact, reminiscent to me of One Day At Teton Marsh. As the young wolves grow up, they meet some harsh life lessons and two of them don\’t make it to adulthood but otherwise the pack life seems pretty stable until a forest fire forces them to flee to a new area. Here one of the young wolves comes across a baited live trap, and his subsequent experience at the hands of man marks him forever. What follows is brutal, but I will say the book ends on a final positive note.

There was one odd moment in the story, when the wolf pups found a porcupine. Of course one got smacked with the quills, and the other wolves pulled them out of her face with their teeth! The pup suffered for a few weeks but then her \”iron constitution\” overcame the embedded quills and she was fine. I think in real life a wolf would die of the infection, if not starve because they couldn\’t eat due to the pain. In The Last Wild Wolves there was a photograph of a wolf that had one quill stuck in its nose. The research team found that wolf dead a month later. Regardless, this one detail among so much realism was easy to overlook and overall it\’s a really good book depicting the wolves\’ lives.

Rating: 3/5 146 pages, 1970

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads

Wolf Pack

Tracking Wolves in the Wild
by Sylvia A. Johnson and Alice Aamodt

For a juvenile non-fiction book about wolves, this one is pretty thorough. It details how wolves live in the wild, their social structure and pack life, how the pups are raised, what they eat, hunting methods, territory defense and so on. Also conflicts with humans, some folklore and misconceptions about wolves, and how radio-tracking is used to study them (thus the subtitle, which I found a bit odd because it\’s only one short chapter at the very end that discusses this). It\’s basic, but really informative for all that. I recognized most of the photographs. I think I\’ve seen them before in some older edition of National Geographic.

Rating: 3/5 96 pages, 1985

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Nonfic

Lone Wolf

Wolves of the Beyond
by Kathryn Lasky

Wolf pup Faolan is cast out by his pack at birth for a deformity- he has a splayed front paw with a strange mark on it. He would have died, but a grizzly bear that had just lost her cubs took him in, nursed him and taught him all she knew. When the wolf pup grows up he realizes he\’s not actually a bear, and sets off to find his own kind. Adventures ensue, hinting at some grand destiny for this little wolf.

I liked the beginning of this book, when the wolf was being raised by a bear. I thought the talking animals were written really well, with realistic behaviors and some interesting invented animal culture in there. The story moves pretty quick and things really change when the wolf leaves to find his own kind. He encounters savage cannibalistic wolves that live with no apparent laws, then explores a cave with depictions on the walls that teach him history (this was rather confounding, I couldn\’t figure out how the wolf learned to read the symbols on the wall so instantaneously), and then meets a clever metalsmithing owl. It all takes place in the same universe as the Guardians of Ga\’hoole (which I haven\’t read, but saw the movie) I read it as a standalone but ended up it didn\’t really work for me. I started skimming at some point, it was feeling like a very different kind of story and some of the elements got a bit too mystical or fantastical for my suspension of disbelief. Also, it seemed really unlikely that a young, lone wolf, no matter how well-fed and taught by a bear, could kill a cougar on its own, and later take down a full grown caribou, also solo. There\’s lots of killing- the wolf and other characters talk about it matter-of-factly and it\’s not deliberately gory but might be off-putting for some kids (this is middle-grade fiction). The more spiritual elements like the wolves, bears and other animals telling things by star patterns, was a bit of a stretch for me too. Oh well. This series (and others by the same author) have lots of fans, so it\’s probably just me. Being too old, and too critical.

Rating: 2/5 219 pages, 2010

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic

The Last Wild Wolves

Ghosts of the Rain Forest
by Ian McAllister

Gorgeous book about a wolf population that lives in the temperate coastal rainforest of Canada- the Great Bear Rainforest. It\’s an isolated area, cut off from the mainland by a large mountain range, so the wolves there have been unmolested by humans and evolved apart other wolves. The author studied some forty packs in the region and shares his findings in this book, liberally illustrated with some really stunning photographs. He describes the methods of study- it was completely hands-off: the wolves were habituated to a few people following them from a distance while scat and hair samples were taken to determine exactly what they were eating, how they were related, what diseases they\’d been exposed to, etc. Reading why, I learned for the first time how being trapped for radio-collaring can be very stressful and traumatizing to a wolf (or any other wild animal I assume). There\’s some about the wolves\’ social structure and individual personalities, but a lot of the book is about how the wolves are adapted to live in the coastal environment. Most of their nutrition coming from the sea- they eat shellfish in the tidal zones, beached carcasses of mammals like seals or sea lions, and spawning salmon in the creeks. Only in the winter do they seem to depend on deer for food. They swim between the islands to reach different areas of their habitat, and compete with black and grizzly bears for territory and food. One wolf family denned in the site of a long-since abandoned First Nations village, and the author speculates on what the relationship between wolves and native tribes may have been like in the past. Some wolf trails on the islands were actually worn into the rock, indicating the wolves had used them for literally hundreds of years. I definitely want to read some other books written about the \”sea wolves\” now- have added Following the Last Wild Wolves to my TBR. The copy of this book I borrowed came with a DVD which I viewed. Some of it was poor in visual quality- grainy, blurry or shaky footage- but it was still wonderful to see on film the landscape and individual wolves described in the book. While the afterward can be sobering- it tells how commercial logging and hunting is finally encroaching into the Great Bear region- looking up the current situation I find websites about eco tours to view the wolves, so I hope the area is more protected now.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5 192 pages, 2007

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Becoming a Veterinarian

Masters at Work
by Boris Kachka

Little book packed with stuff. Kind of an overview about what it takes to be a vet, it follows several different veterinarians through what led them to the career, how they got into vet school and fulfilled their on-the-job training, what motivates or discourages them, what keeps them going- including job switches when they start to face burnout. The author follows one rural vet to farm visits treating cattle- it\’s not at all like it was in the James Herriot books, he keeps pointing out. Then there\’s a day spent in a small animal practice, one in a busy city on a mobile spay/neuter unit providing low-cost services, another in an animal hospital ER, and a high tech specialty treatment center where innovative procedures are created. Kind of shows a little bit of everything- hectic working conditions, co-worker conflicts, difficulty with finances, managing owner\’s expectations and making decisions based on their ability to pay, long hours and stress. How veterinary medicine compares to the very similar work in human medical care- although the gap is closing in many ways (procedures available more and more for animals that used to be just for people), the pay certainly isn\’t. Some of the chapters- the one in the small animal practice in particular- felt very jumpy, abruptly moving from one moment to the next but it just shows how fast-paced that can be. I was surprised and pleased to read about how much animal care has improved in shelters across the country. It was also nice to see how many varied types of jobs are actually out there- some veterinarians end up working in public health or in education, not being hands-on with the animals. Some people enjoy the tension and challenge of a high-pressure environment like the ER, others find they like working at a slower pace and getting to know patients better at small local practices, or that they prefer the technical side of things, not being near animals at all. Of course there\’s a good number of very brief case studies in here, telling how the animals were treated- but mostly the book\’s intent was to give an honest look at the realities and options out there for work in the field nowadays, and I think it probably does a good job of that.

Borrowed from the public library, found browsing the shelves.

Rating: 3/5 152 pages, 2019

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Nonfiction (general)

Wildhood

the Epic Journey from Adolescence to Adulthood
in Humans and Other Animals
by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Katherine Bowers

All living things go through a transition from youth to adulthood. It\’s a time of trying out survival skills and independence, testing boundaries and rebelling against parental control. The authors look at a wide variety of animals- from sea-dwelling mammals and crabs to birds, wolves and hyenas- even fruit flies. They examine how all these different animals navigate the stressful, exhilarating and downright dangerous time of adolescence. The book is divided into several parts, focusing on how animals learn to be safe- flirting with danger in order to learn about it, navigate social structures attempting to gain or hold status, experiment with courtship skills, and learn how to provide for themselves- hunting or finding food. They compare the way animals manage all this, to how human adolescents also learn to become independent adults. Some animals immediately shove their young off on their own, others have a long teaching period or allow their offspring to linger around the home territory with partial support for as long as they need it. It\’s all very interesting and I came across lots of things I never knew before. There are a few specific individuals whose coming-of-age moments are in the book as a narrative- they are a penguin, humpback whale, Eurasian wolf, cougar and a spotted hyena- but their stories are told in a very stretched-out manner. One or two sentences about the animal first leaving home- it\’s about to leap into the ocean!- and then paragraphs on scientific data or explanations or examples from other species- and then one more snippet about the animal- followed by a whole chapter of tangents. Well, the tangents are actually the point, but I nearly forgot about the penguin or hyena example in the meantime. Also there\’s a very odd typo where a klipspringer is repeatedly called clip springer (it\’s a small antelope) which really bugged me. And I didn\’t really care for the term \”wildhood\” which the authors chose to use. They explained why, but it still felt gimmicky to me. I don\’t know what\’s wrong with just using the term adolescence or youth, even when talking about animals. Regardless, I really enjoyed this book. Similar read: Becoming a Tiger.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Rating: 4/5 354 pages, 2019

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

I tried very hard to like this book, because it was highly recommended to me by two family members, but I just can\’t get into it. I did read as far as the first passage my dad or sister marked (p. 96) and flipped through to read the other marked passages. It\’s full of elegant language, insightful and clever remarks, unflappable characters who meet awkward circumstances with dignity. It\’s about a gentleman who is placed under house arrest by the Bolsheviks in 1922. His crime -as far as I could tell- is writing some revolutionary poetry so he is spared being shot and instead condemned to live in a grand fancy hotel. For some thirty years. So he watches a lot of history pass by, gets to know the various hotel staff intimately, and some of the other guests, including a nine-year-old who first shows him the rooms in the basement and where to sneak to spy on meetings in the old ballroom. The story wanders all over the place, in past reminiscences and current musings to stories told and heard by others. All very rich and fine and sometimes amusing or insightful, but somehow boring too. I\’m sorry to say I was relieved to give up on it. Could just be wrong timing for the reader. It\’s popular enough I\’ll always be able to find a library copy if I want to give it another try someday.

Borrowed from a family member.

Abandoned 462 pages, 2016

more opinions:
Attack of the Books!
who else has read it?

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Historical Fiction

Month: December 2019

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