Tag: 4/5- Great Book

The more I read about eels, the more fascinated I am. This book was published almost a decade after Eels by James Prosek, and yet it doesn’t add a whole lot to the eel’s story. Not to say there isn’t a lot of different information, and what was familiar was presented from different angles, so I found it intriguing all over again (plus I had forgotten plenty of details in the meantime). But in the end, the unanswered questions still remain. The eel’s birthplace remains at most a highly probably best guess, still nobody has seen two eels mating, or found adult sexually mature eels in the Sargasso Sea. If I read about this in the first book I had forgotten: that young Sigmund Freud spent a month dissecting hundreds of eels in search of one that had reproductive organs (eels don’t develop sexual organs until they’re on their final journey to the sea to mate). I read (probably again) about the man who tracked down the eels’ breeding ground, by following the leaflike eel larvae searching for smaller and smaller ones until he must be near their birthplace. Twenty years of searching. I read about how eels were among the foods that saved early colonists in New England from starving (even though nobody eats eel for Thanksgiving, they should!) About an eel that a kid tossed down a well, and apparently it survived there for a hundred and fifty years, alone in the dark, eating the occasional thing that fell in. Eels can have a very long lifespan. And what’s crazy is that they make their journey back to the sea, undergoing a final metamorphosis into an adult eel, at anywhere from four or five years to thirty, fifty, eighty . . . or more. So two eels that meet in the Sargasso Sea could be “all in the same developmental phase, the same relative age, if you will, and yet the oldest seven times older than the youngest.” There’s stories of eels caught in their young stages and kept in captivity, that stayed in that phase for years and years, never developing further.

There’s a lot of material in this book quoted from Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, which has a lengthy section about the life of an eel. And a passage reproduced and examined at length, from The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, where the main character and his parents observed a man pull a dead horse’s head out of the water and extract eels from it. I found this passage very disturbing back then and disturbing now all over again! (In fact, a lot of that book was disturbing. It’s one I read in high school, the words captivated me and I was proud of reading a real dorstopper, but a lot of things in that book were rather repulsive, it’s one I kind of regret reading at all. However a lot of it also went way over my head, so not sure I can judge it fairly).

This book also has a lot of personal narrative, where the author describes fishing for eels with his father as a young boy, how their methods changed over the decades, and different details surrounding that. It was lovely, even though of course the eels die and get eaten. And the way they acquired a massive amount of worms to make a special kind of bait ball, was rather shocking!

Plus lots more facts and interesting stories and tidbits about the life and mystery of eels, of course. At the end, as is sadly the case with many books about wild animals that I read, is a chapter full of concern for indications that eel numbers are falling drastically, and it is likely this animal will go extinct before we even have understood it completely.

Borrowed from the public library.

I thought at first this book was going to be nothing special- personal stories about the author’s cat, alongside historical stuff about how they came to live alongside humans, how revered they were in Egypt, how they’ve retained their wildness in form and behavior, etc. But then just when I thought this was like any other books about cats, it started to get really interesting. There’s a section about scientific studies done on how early kittens should be socialized to human contact. Another about how specifically cats aim their vocal communication at humans- not each other. There’s a description of a group in Rome that feeds and provides for feral cats- including adopting them out- and all the controversy about supporting feral colonies this way: is it really helpful? also more on the debate if cats are responsible for reducing songbird numbers. More on why cat problem behaviors arise, with strong nods to the guy who does the My Cat From Hell show, and lots about how the comfort of a cat in his environment is so important to his mental health, and state of calmness. There’s much about what makes indoor life for a cat enjoyable and satisfying (high places, play that involves the whole hunting prey sequence, not getting scared or stressed by loud noises, punishments, etc) and then a very personal in-depth consideration of dealing with an older cat’s final illness and passing on. There’s grieving, and then the joy of a new kitten in the household again. So yes this book does have a lot of what my cat did stuff- and it’s delightful to read, but there’s also so much about recent or fairly unknown studies on cats, and what we can learn from them, and how that can make the lives of cats among humans better. He’s got an interesting opinion that most cats are standoffish and seem uncaring, because they lived with people who didn’t show them much affection! Also his idea that: if most indoor pet cats are sterilized, because that’s what good pet owners do nowadays, but the shelters and rescues keep getting filled by kittens born to the feral and semi-feral cats still roaming around- which are then fixed and hopefully find new homes- are we inadvertently selecting for cats that are less people-friendly? Because unless you’re on an island, there’s always wild fertile cats out there that will wander in and fill the gaps in feral colonies. I had never quite looked at it from that viewpoint before.

Borrowed from the public library.

Familiar with my reading habits and you’ll know that I’ve long been fascinated by accounts of apes that use sign language or language devices, parrots that speak and show cognitive skills, and really any book about animal intelligence. Well, here we finally have a similar account about a dog. Anybody who’s lived with a dog (or cat) can tell you they understand at least some human language- certain words get dogs very excited, anticipating a walk or food, etc. My cat comes to his name. Chaser is famous for knowing over a thousand words assigned to individual toys and objects. Christina Hunger took this all one step further.

She works as a speech therapist, helping nonverbal children learn to use communication devices. She recognized in her dog the same behavioral milestones that young children achieve right before they being speaking. Her dog obviously knew the meaning of numerous words, so she decided to give the dog a way to say them. She fashioned a board with buttons that would verbalize pre-recorded words, starting with outside, eat, water and play. It took a while for the dog to catch on to what the buttons were for- but Christina patiently modeled using them, with the same methods she’d use for teaching a child. That is, she didn’t get the dog to use the word buttons for a reward, like a trick. She taught the dog to use the buttons in context, and the ability to communicate was its own intrinsic reward. And a powerful one. Stella began using the buttons regularly, and it became so invaluable- they could hear her pushing “outside” no matter what room in the house they were in- thus avoiding accidents- that when moving or traveling they had to find a way to bring the buttons along. (Stella and her family had got so used to her talking to express needs, that once in a hotel they missed her more subtle body language cues that she needed to go outside). Soon the author added more button words to Stella’s device, and then even more. When the book was published, she was using thirty words. Now- I visited her blog- her vocabulary includes over fifty words.

The dog surpassed all expectations in language use. She started applying words appropriately for situations they hadn’t been modeled for, demonstrating that she really knew what they meant. She put words together in novel combinations to express things- creating two, three- and four-word phrases. She not only used words to request food, water, going on a walk, visiting the beach, playing with someone etc- but also to comment on what was happening in the family at the moment (saying “water” when Christina watered her plants for example), to remark on things that had happened in the past- (“Jake bye” a few minutes after her husband left for work) or even to grasp what plans her family had for the immediate future (leaving on a trip, putting her with the dog-sitter, going to the beach at the end of the day instead of right now, etc). It’s pretty amazing to see the comprehension unfold and become actual two-way communication. No, the dog can’t discuss complex abstract ideas- but she makes her wishes known, expresses affection for her family and visitors, tells somebody when she needs help (retrieving a lost toy, opening the blinds to look out the window, even to learn using her new communication board when buttons were moved!) and even verbalizes displeasure for what somebody did or what’s going on.

The author carefully explains her methods, why they work better than training the dog with treat rewards, how to do this with your own dog, how to overcome setbacks or confusion, and more. The story isn’t just about Stella’s use of language, it’s also about the author’s work with children, several moves her family made, how Stella’s fame disrupted things when the story was first presented to media, and just about life with a dog in general. Before reading this book I’d seen a few clips online of Stella, other talking dogs, and one of a cat. I admit it did look a bit gimmicky and I was skeptical. But reading it all in context, it’s nothing short of amazing.

Borrowed from the public library.