Fuzz by Mary Roach

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
By Mary Roach
WW Norton, 2021

“Two thousand species in two hundred countries regularly commit acts that put them at odds with humans,” Mary Roach writes at the beginning of her new book Fuzz; When Nature Breaks the Law. “Each conflict needs a resolution unique to the setting, the species, the stakes, the stakeholders.” In fifteen cheerful, fast-paced, funny chapters, Roach looks at deaths, home invasions, traffic violations like jaywalking, and massive amounts of food theft committed by the various usual suspects: bears, raccoons, mice, deer, elephants, even cougars, and many kinds of birds. 

As is her usual practice, Roach interviews humans involved in every aspect of these violations. She talks with animal control officers in many countries - and she does her customary hilarious job of relating their hard lessons, dorky enthusiasms, and deadpan humor. Unlike in centuries past, none of these modern-day professionals consider these wayward animals their enemies; Roach accurately reflects a world in which these officers are heartbroken if they need to kill a bear that’s become too familiar with backyard garbage cans or a cougar that’s discovered the easy pickings of the local mountain bike path. 

She also ranges her interviews to other countries, and the results can be eye-opening. When she talks with people in India who are dealing with elephants in their crops and neighborhoods and back lots, a genuine sense of desperation becomes palpable. “You tell us to change crops,” says one Indian woman, referring to small gardens kept for employees. “From corn or rice to something like ginger or chilis, which elephants don’t like. But we grow corn and rice to feed ourselves. Also, once the tractor passes, the elephant is coming, coming, coming again. Elephants need a lot of food.” 

The underlying irony of all these stories is of course the weird disparity in terms. These animals are breaking human laws, after all, temporary codes that have only been in place for a few hundred or a few thousand years, whereas the animals themselves have usually been roaming the same localities for millions of years. Even pantry-raiding mice or garbage-raiding bears are merely responding to the sudden availability of easy food in their territory ranges. They neither know nor care about human laws, which raises the question throughout Fuzz: doesn’t that mean it’s the humans who should be doing the adapting?

Roach is above all an entertaining writer, so when she touches on such deeper issues, she touches on them lightly. But you can hardly write an entire book about what’s euphemistically referred to as “wildlife management” without asking variations on the question: what sacrifices are humans willing to make, in order to have both an ever-expanding habitat and humane treatment of the nonhumans those habitats are crowding? “What if we accepted that risk?” she wonders at one such point. “What if we chose to live not only with the occasional bear in the kitchen but with the likelihood that someone at some point will be killed by one of those bears? Planes are allowed to operate even though every now and then they crash and people die.”

Fuzz doesn’t pretend to have definitive answers to such questions; this is far more a snapshot of the current situation than a roadmap to future solutions, if such future solutions are even possible. Two things are certain: Roach’s vast audience of fervent fans won’t be disappointed by this latest book, and more Americans than at any time in the last century will read it with sharp intakes of personal recognition. When you sit down to read Fuzz, chances are increasing every year that you’ll do so in a house with raccoons living in the basement, or deer living in the wooded fringe of the Little League baseball field, or a black bear visiting your backyard compost pile at night. 

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.