Raised in Ontario, Canada as a kid I hated swimming. Mom never learned, she preferred to stay safely on shore and shout out dire warnings about snappiRaised in Ontario, Canada as a kid I hated swimming. Mom never learned, she preferred to stay safely on shore and shout out dire warnings about snapping turtles & eels. At least the snappers swam on the surface, I'd see them coming but the eels? Horrible, slimy creatures of the night that slithered unseen in the dark murky water. I still shudder! It opens with “The eel is not an easy fish to like” No kidding… Read it hoping I’d get over my fear, finished it creeped out as ever - and utterly fascinated.
• Monstrous: The Europeon conger up to 10 ft long weighing in at 240 lb. • Ancient: Some have a lifespan of over a hundred years and don’t produce offspring till they’re over 60. • Deadly: A tiny amount of eel blood is enough to kill you, pass on the eel sushi... • Mysterious: They migrate en masse, in the Catskills “The run corresponds with the new moon and floods brought on by the hurricane season, when the sky is at its darkest and the river at its highest” Yearly millions of eels around the world migrate from rivers to oceans, among the "greatest unseen migrations of any creature on the planet” Just picture this! “On wet nights, eels are known to cross over land from a pond to a river by the thousands, using each other’s moist bodies as a bridge, to climb moss-covered vertical walls forming a braid with their bodies.” • Illusive: We’ve yet to find a spawning adult or witnessed a freshwater eel spawning in the wild. For eel scientists, solving the mystery of eel reproduction remains a kind of holy grail. All they know is they spawn somewhere in the Sargasso Sea in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle – yeh, the infamous Bermuda Triangle, how spooky is that? • Mystical: Why this book sang for me - his passionate quest to understand the mystical role, the spiritual importance that Eels play in so many native cultures. • Most Frightening: That they're gone and I had no idea "The St. Lawrence River feeding into Lake Ontario once comprised the single largest nursery in North America. Now almost no eels are returning at all." Damn those dams. My poor planet - death by a thousand paper cuts.
10 years in the writing Prosek outgrows some of his arrogance. Liked that this Yale grad formed a lasting and respectful friendship with "old river rat" Ray who works an eel weir in the Catskill Mountains. Ray chose a life most would write off as too hard, too lonely. "I told Ray I admired the way he lived. “Don’t look up to me, kid,” he said “look with me.” and Prosek did. 4 ½ slimy stars and a big thanks to Will for the review that led me to it.
CONS: Think Carlos Castaneda obsessed with fish. His writing is kinda all over the place, shifts without warning between fact and folklore. Fine, I enjoyed it - just wish he’d been a little clearer. FYI: Eels don’t bark like dogs, nor do they cry like babies…trust me, I googled it:)...more
When the rat-race overwhelms I go for a Heinrich hit, take a visit to his cabin for some downtime. A professor of biology it’s not light fare but he’sWhen the rat-race overwhelms I go for a Heinrich hit, take a visit to his cabin for some downtime. A professor of biology it’s not light fare but he’s got such an approachable style. “Aside from walking around aimlessly and gawking, I have spent the last three mornings comfortably perched on a solid branch of a pine tree growing at the edge of our bog. At dawn, an hour before the sun’s glare bleeds the colors; it’s a study in pastels” I too am an aimless gawker - how I get anything accomplished when gardening is a mystery - waste hours in a distracted daze so my favorite chapter was on Ant Wars. “There is a solution that beats a lawn chair, or a television set with 100 channels by a mile: watching ants and other critters” Hey, instead of feeling guilty now I'll imagine him applauding:)
I’ve heard complaints that it’s disjointed, reads more like a series of essays. Fair enough but I have him pegged as the absent minded professor type, figure he’s just staying in character. So try this if you’re curious about why leaves change colour, why trees grow upwards & bushes outwards. If you like knowing stuff like migrating hummingbirds cross The Gulf of Mexico, 520 miles of open water at 30 miles an hour, a nonstop flight of 17 hours! Or why nature sometimes throws all the rules out the window with spring flowers blooming in fall and birds nesting when they should be migrating. “Mistakes or imperfections provide variety for natural selection to work on, to permit evolution. There is even a mechanism whose only “purpose” is to produce variation. It’s called sex.”
Cons: More personal preference than a negative this book’s main focus is on BUGS. I prefer mammals and birds so got more pleasure from “Winter World”, my review if you're the same.“https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...” And the chapter on Wood Frogs? Talk about a disgusting sex life. The males put a death-lock on the nearest available female and all pile on. He describes finding a ball of fifteen with one poor girl dead in the centre…
It’s like spending a couple of weeks with Bernd in his isolated cabin in Maine, ungrudgingly shared with deer mice & an assortment of bugs, all part oIt’s like spending a couple of weeks with Bernd in his isolated cabin in Maine, ungrudgingly shared with deer mice & an assortment of bugs, all part of it. A remarkable man who’s sole purpose is to answer all your questions and while he’s at it renew your sense of wonder in nature’s complexity. If you’ve grown up with brutal winters and are at all tuned into nature you must have questioned how on earth animals survive it…“by defying the odds and the laws of physics and proving that the fabulous is possible”
- Why do birds flock and why only come winter? - How do bears, instead of suffering from muscle loss like we would after 6 months of lying around, just wake up, stretch & casually walk up a mountain? - How do tiny fragile birds like chickadee's not freeze at 40 below? - And what about those little red squirrels, are they insane? Why are they running around in subzero temperatures instead of hibernating along with the rest of the squirrel kingdom?
Always focusing on cold weather survival mechanisms he covers a lot of territory for such a short book, touching on everything from flying squirrels, bats & butterflies to snakes and turtles. He includes his own illustrations, pencil sketches I believe, a really nice touch. This isn’t dumbed down so be prepared to pay attention. Most of it I got though admittedly he lost me on super-cooling. The memoir of a biologist, the style is concise & factual but with just enough of a lyrical touch to get a feel for him, a quiet understated style that still manages to relay his passion. My 1st Bernd and I want more. Summer World: A Season of Bounty I think next, I intend on reading all his books.
“Fine feathery snow crystals drift down. There is not a breath of moving air. The sharp clean smell of this new snow prickles my senses and excites. Within a minute I stand at the edge of the pond feeling peace, and just barely hearing the tinkling of snow crystals falling on my jacket. They amplify the stillness”...more
Florence (Lefty)
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science
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