Tag: Animals Nonfiction

I knew about this guy because I watched his documentary film about living with wild turkeys a few years ago- and have really been wanting to read his book about that experience (Illumination in the Flatwoods) ever since. I should have known he worked with more species, not just turkeys. His list of close contact wildlife studies includes bighorn sheep, wood ducks, elk, gray foxes and many others. I hoped for more books on those, but can’t find any (though I assume he’s written reports).

Touching the Wild is about his study on a mule deer herd in Wyoming. The deer had their winter range on part of his ranch, so he and his wife easily observed them up close. And then one day, a single doe started hanging out in his yard near the house, showing little fear of humans. She was there so often they gave her a name, and she soon accepted food they offered. The other deer saw that she was unharmed and started to come closer to the house too, so before long they could recognize many individuals. They gave them all names, and started keeping track of how the deer were related to each other, which one had new fawns, who got injured or sick, which had dominant status, and so on. All that is chronicled in the bulk of this book- a saga of the deer through seven years. Their personalities are distinct, and their stories are individual. Some seem to meet with bad luck from the start- loose their mother as a fawn, struggle with hunger and illness, loose their own fawns as an adult, meet with terrible injury from barbed wire or mountain lion attacks, and on and on. A lot of suffering detailed. But also very close and tender moments, as some of the deer became so trusting they would allow the author to groom them with his hands, or sit near them while they were in labor! Other individuals remained suspicious and would never let him approach (and he always respected that). This man had been a hunter, but now after knowing the deer as individuals he found their deaths hard to take and tried to protect them, feeding orphaned fawns even though he knew fewer than half would survive, supplementing winter feed when the deer had a difficult time, etc. He never intervened to patch up injuries or administer medications though.

I liked this book but also felt a little disappointed in it. It has a lot of effusive writing- not flowery per se, but full of descriptions with long words- example-  ” Learning and transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next is a fundamental tenet of culture and is distinguished from those social systems that are defined by the instinctive obligations of genetically defined social behavior”  – and expressing over and over a very emotional connection to the deer. He kept saying how much he learned from the deer, how they revealed the secrets of their lives to him, but I never got a good sense of what that was. What secrets of their behavior did he uncover? It wasn’t until the final chapters that there was actual information about the mule deer lives outside of their social interactions in his yard- how they compete with other cervid species for habitat, how many predators threaten them, how their physiology and behavior is so different from the white-tail. Honestly I found this section more interesting, that I was actually learning something from it- and there wasn’t enough of that.

Most telling was all his explanations of mule deer population declines, and his theories on the underlying causes. The prevalence of predators again (wolves and mountain lions), the number of human hunters (allowed to take does and fawns as well as bucks), the low ratio of female fawns (which no one can really explain), and for some reason the deer seem to be having trouble getting enough nutrition from their summer range. I had never heard of the effects of acid rain on plant life in mountain regions- but I went to read more about it after this book, and yes it seems to be a real problem- it’s complicated but basically it changes the chemical composition of the soil which binds up selenium so the wildlife ends up with deficiencies which leads to disease. It’s troubling that I looked up more about mule deer in Wyoming, and it seems their numbers are still in decline. And yet hunters are still allowed to buy permits to take does and fawns- the main thing this author argued against.

A mule deer is a creature that is wide awake on this planet, and I feel safe in saying that the human organism by comparison is a creature asleep at the wheel. The human brain is developed around a highly complex, language-based representational system, and we are proficient at collecting and organizing large quantities of information, but there appears to be little correlation between the acquisition and accumulation of these vast amounts of information and the achievement and expression of a corresponding wisdom. It must be bound up in the complexity of the human brain, but, ironically, we are creatures who find it exceedingly difficult to simply pay attention.

Borrowed from the public library. The book has many good photographs. I’m now inclined to look for the corresponding documentary film.

co-authored by Mikel Delgado, phD

By the guy who does the My Cat From Hell show. Which I’ve only seen a few episodes of. It’s all about his theories on what makes cats satisfied, confident and happy, which leads to good behavior. It boils down to three basic concepts: cats retain the same instincts to stalk, hunt and eat prey as their wild ancestors, they need high places to feel safe from predators, and they are very territorial. So lack of hunting opportunities (play, for indoor cats) leads to boredom and frustration, lack of elevated perches leads to all kinds of insecurity issues, and feeling their space is threatened – whether by other cats in the household, cats seen outside through windows, new baby, new dog, new cat introduced etc- leads to other problems.

He starts with a basic and quick history on domestic cats, which clues you in to their innate wild nature. Then talks about how cats communicate, three broad cat “personality” types (shy, confident and friendly, or defensive and aggressive), the influence of food, the need for cats to feel secure, how to make you household layout more friendly to cats (this includes things like litterbox placement, and making “cat highways” out of shelves and things) how to teach your cat what behaviors are acceptable (not by using punishment) and finally, there’s several detailed chapters about solving certain problems. First, very specific steps laid out for introducing a new cat to the household. Then how to modify those steps if it’s a dog or a new baby joining the family. Why outbursts of aggression or wild energy occur (cats ambushing ankles, attacking your hand and so on) and how to dissipate them. How to draw out the shy cat so it isn’t living under the bed all the time, encourage your cat to use appropriate scratching surfaces, what to do if your cat is just being a pest (mine likes to knock things off the counter, or meow repeatedly and loudly late and night / early in the morning) and the biggie: cats that eliminate outside of the litterbox. In all things he sounds pretty sensible. Seems like many issues arise from misunderstanding the nature of cats, or expecting unrealistic behaviors from them. Some things in the book don’t really relate to me, or at least not anymore. For example, we have a one-cat household. In the past we tried to introduce a second cat, kind of using the guidelines Galaxy lays out, but not precisely. I wonder now if I’d done it his way -had never heard of the guy back then- would it have worked. Other things I’m not sure I’m on board with: I can see adding a few perches, shelves and cat tunnels to my house- but I don’t really want to fully “catify” it as he urges, with walkways all around the rooms up by the ceiling.

And there was one point that sorely disappointed me. He mentioned that you can use training to get your cat to do unpleasant things. He describes steps to getting your cat used to his carrier so every trip to the vet isn’t a battle of wills. And then states you can get your cat trained to take his pills so that you’re able to just casually walk by, “bend down as if you’re petting her to say ‘hi’ and give her a pill“. I admit my interest ticked up when page 144 mentioned using clicker training for your cat to take medication without struggling. Because mine does. I have to wrap him in a towel and gently force his mouth open. I was ready to take notes on a better method! But he never says how. Just tells you to do your own research and find a step-by-step method that works. (We’ve gotten better. My cat doesn’t run away and hide after getting his pill anymore- he now knows that I give him special treats right after, so after escaping the towel, he’ll pause and wait for that. But his pills have a very bitter taste, so I have a hard time imagining he’d ever just open his mouth and swallow them willingly).

There’s lots more to this book I will leave for the reader to discover. On the whole I found it informative. There were a few parts that lacked clear explanation- especially the section about “catifying” the house to help your pets feel more secure and at ease. The author makes up a bunch of words to refer to his ideas like catify, and he constantly calls the cat’s sense of security and confidence his “mojo” but takes this even further with phrases like “mojo-fy”, “mojo-fication” and “mojo-rific”. Sometimes the phrases he uses sound a bit New-Agey too, which started to get old.Parts of the book are a bit repetitive, probably because the author thinks people will just turn to the section they want immediate help with. But overall- a solidly helpful book.

Borrowed from a family member.

About the Michael Vick case: football player who was an influential part of a dogfighting operation, owning and training pit bull type dogs. When he got busted, unlike in previous similar cases, the dogs were not immediately euthanized. Usually they’re deemed too dangerous and vicious to ever live in a home setting again. This case proved it all wrong. Rescue facilities, animal sanctuaries, dog trainers and foster groups stepped to evaluate and work with these dogs, giving them a chance at a better life. Some needed serious medical treatment. Most were terrified of loud noises, the proximity of people, anything unknown. They had lived such limited lives as fighting dogs, many did not know how to walk on a leash, navigate stairs, or even play with toys.

The book begins by telling how the dogfighting operation was discovered, the state the dogs lived in, the methods that were probably used on them (brutal and uncaring to say the least), how all the pieces of the case were put together, where the dogs stayed while it was all getting figured out (some in better places than others), where they all went afterwards (varied depending on their condition and needs) and how their rehabilitation worked out. Some dogs’ stories are covered in a lot of detail, others just get a blip at the end, where there’s a section that tells what happened to each and every one of them. Fifty-one dogs were seized from the property, forty-seven of those deemed worth attempting to save. Only three ended up not making it. One had serious medical problems and was euthanized. Another died in an unfortunate accident. And only one was considered so violent and aggressive it couldn’t be handled at all. All the rest lived through their ordeal and improved with a lot of effort and patience on the part of many people. Their responses varied- ranging from timid and skittish to suspicious and guarded to outright threatening. Many were fostered out and eventually adopted into family homes. Others had to live their whole lives in a sanctuary, due to behavior issues or an inability to be safe around other dogs. But they all did far better than anyone really expected, and it set a precedent for saving other dogs from similar situations, instead of just automatically euthanizing them.

Some parts of this, of course, are hard to read due to the mistreatment and suffering of the animals. The first hundred pages in particular are rather dry and I almost didn’t continue- it starts out just all about the case, more the people involved than the dogs. I didn’t really care about what kind of coffee or beer the investigators had while conniving with each other, or who did what to further his career- but I get it, this author is more used to sports writing and the book is based on a sensational case. I suppose for readers who like reading true crime it’s compelling, but for me it was just something to get through in order to read the part I was more interested about: the dogs. Even then there were some awkward parts, some missing words in a sentence here and there (is it just me, or is this getting more common nowadays? don’t people use human proofreaders anymore?)

There is, as I expected, some overlap in here with content from Dogtown, as a good number of the dogs from this case went to that sanctuary. I recognized two of them from the descriptions of their behavior and how they were rehabilitated. But there’s enough different information that it was still interesting to read about those individuals all over again. I’m pleased to see the author wrote another book after this one, The Found Dogs, detailing where many of these same dogs are ten years later. I’ll be interested to read that one if I can find a copy.

There’s a very large animal sanctuary in Utah, which specializes in taking animals that no one else wants or can handle. Whether because of behavior issues or serious illness and injury, this place takes them in and they are given every chance for a new life. Medical care, training, rehabilitation until they are healthy and able to be adopted out into a new home. The ones that can’t be adopted because of ongoing health issues, aggression or whatever, are guaranteed a home for life at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. It’s got different sections for horses, cats, pigs, birds, etc- and the place for dogs is called Dogtown. There’s a tv show about it, I know I watched at least a few episodes years ago, because I recognized the buildings and layout of the dog runs (very spacious) from the photos. Most of the dogs live in groups so they can socialize. Sometimes they stay with staff members in their homes, to get used to being in a house or trust people again. Plenty end up being adopted by staff members, too.

Each chapter in this book tells an individual dog’s story (except one that was all about how the organization got started that founded Best Friends- and while that was good information, kinda boring). Two are about dogs from the Michael Vick fighting kennels, several are about dogs rescued from puppy mills or hoarding situations. There are dogs with serious injury, dogs traumatized by living through a natural disaster or war zone, dogs that nobody knows what really happened to them- just that they’re terrified of everything, or super aggressive. One dog that seemed to have some kind of mental impairment- his family gave him up because he simply couldn’t learn the basics (where to eliminate). Another dog that was very old and only lived a few weeks at the sanctuary, but got the best of care and touched a lot of hearts while he was there. Very touching stories, and interesting too if you like to read about how dogs are trained, and what is done to help them with fears and behavior problems. Also some spotlights on the trainers and vets who work there, their experiences with particular dogs, how they learned their skills and so on.

It did get a bit repetitive, and the writing is fairly simple, and sometimes I didn’t like how things were phrased, but that’s just my personal reaction. I’m not sure why the author had to explain certain terminology or identify places again in later chapters, unless they were originally written as short stories and not meant to be compiled? It felt a bit insulting to the reader- really, you told me this part twenty pages ago. But I was able to shrug those off and enjoy the reading. Also I never saw the word aggress before- as in aggression, but verb form. So I learned something new, that wasn’t about dogs.

Borrowed from the public library.

This is one of those books that feels difficult to appreciate outside its timeframe- the seventies. Contrary to prevailing notions of the time that animals merely act on instinct without thought or feeling, the author roundly claims that cats are intelligent and expressive. He also has points to make about them being just as smart as dogs, even though most people can’t teach them to do tricks or follow commands. The first chapter is a bit heavy-handed with these arguments (even though they’re for cats, it’s painful to read- feels very dated) and the last chapter gets weird, with the author encouraging the reader to compile observations of cat behavior with other dedicated cat-watchers into computer databases that will prove to the world once and for all how superior cats can be (and furthermore, claiming to have a kind of ESP connection with his cats- rather like this guy did with horses).

But! all the stuff in the middle is fairly good reading, if you like cats. The author most certainly did not like cats at first, especially since the first cat he lived with as an adult, was an unspayed female who spent weeks yowling and shrieking around the house when in heat (no suitors available). He also complains about tomcats making a stink, but at the same time seems to be proud of how far they roam and of evidence that they won battles (lots of fighting cat noises, but his comes home without a scratch). These first few chapters are likewise a bit difficult reading, since in his early years of keeping cats (after one unexpectedly won his heart) most people didn’t neutered their cats, or keep them from roaming, so excess kittens and short lives ending abruptly, abounded. Don’t read if you want to know all the unfortunate and awful things that can happen to cats. So they had quite a few cats that went through rough times, before they started getting their cats fixed. Even then they still roamed, so there’s a lot about their cats’ hunting, and what they brought home, and how they tried to teach the cats to only catch rodents, not birds. Some really remarkable incidents about cats apparently understanding what people were talking about, of learning the “house rules”, of passing the information on to other cats that joined them. There’s one female cat that seemed to prefer pale ginger toms for her mates, reminding me of a stallion I once read about, that would only gather brunette mares for his herd. There’s stories about cats who visit all the neighbors for extra meals, about cats with serious illness or injury (they don’t always survive), one about a cat who learned to pose for photographs and would sit still until the flash went off. There’s stories of cats recognizing the dangers of snakes, and dealing with incursions from civets into the house, and warding off rivals until they suddenly became friends, and so much more. It’s a good read, but again, you have to remember when it was written, and take a lot with a grain of salt, and likewise be able to stomach some suffering. Also, the guy and his wife thought nothing of smacking their cats to teach them to stay off the counters, leave human food alone, not crawl into the baby’s crib, etc.

The best part, though? On page 80 this book tells me why cats are frightened of cucumbers! You know the internet videos, I’m sure. WELL- the author goes on and on in one chapter about how cats recognize the difference between venemous and harmless snakes, and how absolutely terrified they are of the latter, being extremely cautious around them. He says that “a copperhead smells like cucumbers. Perhaps all poisonous snakes smell like cucumbers – ” indicating that this is a thing the cats instantly identify via the scent. So there’s that!