Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

by Mary Roach

Paperback, 2022

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

W. W. Norton & Company (2022), 336 pages

Description

"Join "America's funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post) Mary Roach on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet. What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? As New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Roach tags along with animal attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller-blasters. She travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the Pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. Along the way, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. Combining little- known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and mugging macaques, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat"--… (more)

Rating

½ (253 ratings; 3.9)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Tytania

The unifying theme is supposed to be "when nature breaks the law." This loose idea combines stories of investigating wild animal attacks, deterring birds from eating sunflower seed fields, controlling monkeys in India, controlling rodents in your own home, and myriad other digressions. Mary Roach

is funny, so it's all good.

"I have read the 1978 paper by researchers... who tried to warn away white-tailed deer by erecting roadside plywood cutouts of deer rear ends with tails a-flagging. On some... an actual deer tail had been nailed in place. Sadly, because who wouldn't want to see our nation's highways lined with plywood deer asses with decomposing tails, none of it worked."

Then the story of "fecal bags" attached to goat butts (no, she's not always scatological, but, well, she often is)... a harness was designed with no fewer than 19 leather straps that allowed goats to rear up on their hind legs. "In a minor setback, several of the nonharnessed goats, being goats, ate the leather straps off their pals." I had to include that quote.

I'm pro-wildlife but I find a little tiresome heroic efforts to get vermin out of your home without actually harming any critters. I do not wish to inflict cruelty. When she says glue traps ought to be banned, because "a professional pest control person should be checking the traps daily and humanely killing any rodent that's been caught... what homeowner is going to tackle that?" We do, actually. We use glue traps because they work, and my husband, bless him, humanely dispatches anything we catch, always within half a day. She admits herself that snap traps very often fail to kill immediately and humanely, so what's the diff? But the complaints about have-a-heart style traps where you release the critters somewhere far away - well, then they don't know the territory and they get eaten. OK, as if in their own territory, they live to a ripe old age enjoying Lawrence Welk and complaining their children never call. It's a thing-kill-thing world out there, people!

I was pretty disgusted to hear how Big Sunflower kept trying to kill blackbirds that would feast in their sunflower fields. They said blackbirds were responsible for the loss of about 2% of their crop. 2%? You can't give 2% for wildlife? You have to kill and bomb and poison and kill myriad other inoffensive birds too in the process? 2% of your crop, for a healthy blackbird population and all the other little tweeters too. Cmon!

Back about getting pests out of your home. (It's a sore spot with me.) She had a rat in her walls. A rat! So instead of doing anything lethal, she so virtuously had the pest guy come over, figure out where he was getting in, and plug all the entrances with steel wool. Problem solved! Sure! Oh, it's so simple! Sure, just go around putting a little steel wool here and there. I wish it were that easy to keep things out.

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LibraryThing member bragan

The subtitle here is more gimmicky than accurate. Obviously it's not about nature "breaking the law," because that's an inherently ridiculous concept. What it is about is the ways in which humans and animals (or, sometimes, plants) come into conflict with each other, and the ways in which humans

respond to those conflicts.

My initial impression of this one is that, while it was readable and interesting enough, certainly, it wasn't nearly as entertaining as many of Mary Roach's earlier books. After a while, I realized that at least part of the problem was that even someone who once made reading about corpses an oddly enjoyable experience, couldn't (and, let's face it, probably shouldn't) do the same for stories about people getting mauled by bears or children being killed by leopards. After the first few chapters, though, she turns to some slightly less somber topics -- monkeys stealing things, seagulls vandalizing the Pope's flowers, weird tactics for scaring birds -- and things get rather more fun, especially Roach's trademark weird, hilarious footnotes. Well, mostly it gets more fun, anyway. The chapter about research into humane forms of pest control, perhaps ironically, is quite distressing.

Rating: I wavered just a little on this, but even when she's writing about things that are genuinely disturbing (as opposed to just kind of gross), Mary Roach is always worth reading.

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LibraryThing member greeniezona

Most of what you expect to get from a Mary Roach book is here: a curious person investigating areas they don't know much about, conversations with experts in areas it perhaps had not previously occurred to you there would be experts in, and lots of engaging/funny anecdotes you will want to repeat

to those around you.

That said, a lot of what humans do in the name of animal control is just depressing, and some of that wore on me after a while. Also, this felt less structured than Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, still my favorite book of hers that I've read, and I sometimes wondered where we were going and why.

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LibraryThing member Dabble58

I would read a menu written by Mary Roach for a diner that served only breakfast. Her research, combined with a truly memorable dry wit and a lovely writing style, makes everything she writes worth the happy hours you will devote to reading it.
This book is somewhat less focused than some of her

others, but I found it fascinating to learn about the ways we humans try to impose a “law” on nature- and about the humans who are charged with enforcing said law. In so many ways it is a completely ridiculous thought. In others, wildlife management is necessary, for their health and ours.
It’s tempting to quote Roach’s Bon mots and footnotes, many of which made me laugh out loud, but that would ruin the pleasure of reading along some fascinating nugget of information only to be slapped upside the head with something so ludicrous it leaves you gasping.
Anyone who even thinks of venturing into the wilds (even the alleyways of Aspen Colorado) should read this book. It will give you a picture of a world you’ve likely never thought about. As after all of Roach’s books, I feel educated, entertained, and just a little sore in the abdomen from giggling.

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LibraryThing member AliceaP

Mary Roach will forever be linked in my mind to my time as a Library Sciences student because I used her book Stiff to create my very first (and only) book trailer for an assignment. And that marked the beginning of my obsessive interest in death culture and funerary practices. So when I saw that

she was coming out with a new nonfiction book focusing on animals who are up to no good you know I had to check that book out. Now that makes it sound like it's a book full of animal hijinks when in actuality this is more about the strained relationship between people and wild animals. She opens the book with a brief history of legal battles fought against wild animals (yes, this is real). A large chunk of the complaints come from farmers (this is true of the past as well) because wild animals like rats and birds are known to consume large quantities of crops. However, there are also those animals like bears and cougars that wander into populated areas looking for food (open garbage cans being like a buffet) and what started out as foraging quickly turns into defending of resources...and oftentimes the destruction of the wild animal. This is a fascinating and well-researched look into conservationism and the problems caused by human-wildlife conflict. It's a subtopic of conservationism that I hadn't really given much thought to but Roach certainly gives the reader plenty to ponder.

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LibraryThing member JJbooklvr

I absolutely loved this! I learned a lot, laughed a lot, but was also horrified at the lengths humans will go to try and control nature. A lot to process here...

LibraryThing member MontzaleeW

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
by Mary Roach
I love Mary Roach's books! I always learn, laugh, get a little grossed out, and am surprised by her tenacity. In this book we find out how different animals and plants are a danger to us but we are the ones to blame. She doesn't say that but when you

look at each situation and scenario, man has encroached on, pushed out, or starved out native animals. Encounters are inevitable. Other situations too cause interactions such as garbage.
I found the tree section a bit boring and a lot of other sections have been covered on nature shows but she goes beyond this. She goes to a class to figure out how to tell if a human, bear, or cougar killed a person based on the marks on the body! Like I said, tenacity!

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LibraryThing member reader1009

nonfiction - large pest control (mammals, not bugs) - history, ethics, interesting factoids

another diverting read from Mary Roach. The first chapter (when animals maul/maim) is fascinating but somewhat unpleasant; the rest of the book (dealing with lesser crimes and misdemeanors) is equally

fascinating and more enjoyable.

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LibraryThing member cmc

_Fuzz_ is exactly what you'd expect from a Mary Roach book: interesting bits of information tangled up with silliness, and all wrapped around a core of serious exploration of various aspects of some set of related issues. In this case, she's exploring the conflict zone between animals, just trying

to do their thing, and humans, annoyed by animals interfering with **their** things. And so we learn about deer, bears, elephants, mountain lions, leopards, monkeys, mice, rats, cats, stoats, birds, and the humans who are trying to mediate between the animals and the other humans.
I could write more about the specifics, but if you're interested in animals and humans (also animals, of course), you should just read her book. I learned a bunch of interesting trivia, had some of my assumptions and beliefs challenged, and added a few new things to be worried about.

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LibraryThing member ecataldi

I adore Mary Roach and her latest microhistory was no exception. I devoured this in one day. Each chapter deals with real life scenarios on human rules that animals break. It's equal parts hilarious and nauseating, but all around fascinating. Mary Roach is America's funniest science writer and her

foray into the animal kingdom is amazing. There is a bit of gore or violence against animals in these pages (she pulls stories from all over the world), but the message is positive and empathetic. Rowdy, ridiculous and informative.

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LibraryThing member wdwilson3

Mary Roach consistently produces entertaining fact-based books – books that your learn from and have a few chuckles in the process. Not many authors can do that. Only Bill Bryson comes to mind, actually. In this instance, she investigates the confrontation between mankind and the natural world.

More specifically, the way humans deal with the often troublesome, pesky relations with animals and birds. Loosely linked reports of mankind's issues with bears, gulls, rodents, leopards, elephants, and many others, pose the practical and ethical problems that scientists face in understanding how to cope with the interface. I learned things and I had a good time.

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LibraryThing member FormerEnglishTeacher

This is my third Mary Roach book. I don’t think there is a dud in the stable. She writes like the journalist she is but in a completely entertaining way. Her style is funny and very conversational. As a reader you get the feeling early on that you somehow know her. And don’t let her levity fool

you. She’s among the best science writers out there. This book filled my head with all kinds of useless yet fun information about how humans get along with (or don’t) animals of all kinds. Maybe the most disgusting story Roach told was of her friend who picked up a discarded water bottle from the floor of her truck after a particularly dehydrating run. After noticing an unusual taste, the friend realized there was a decomposing mouse in what was left of the water. A call to an on-demand nurse told her she probably didn’t have to worry about disease (she didn’t swallow), but she might need a shrink. That story was one Roach told to illustrate how small an opening a mouse can get through. A mere listing of the dimensions of the opening isn’t good enough for Mary Roach. No, she has to come up with the grossest story she can dig up to make her point. That’s what makes her so good. I actually enjoyed “Stiff” more than this book, but I recommend “Fuzz” to anyone who wonders about how we’ve managed to live with these creatures for so long.

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LibraryThing member jennybeast

I really enjoy Mary Roach's work -- not so much because of her humor, although there were definitely some funny moments in this book, but because of her ability to explain big scientific problems and current work in a way that I find easy to understand.

This is kind of a tough book, in the sense

that it is about the deaths of animals, often on a horrifically large scale, which I find distressing. What I appreciated about it is that it is equally a book about trying to find alternatives to the deaths of animals, and particularly a book that illustrates the utter futility of trying to exterminate "pests", as it has been proven ineffective over and over again. I love the way Roach brings history into the narrative, and the way she links it to current science and concerns. I was really excited about the portion of the book on New Zealand, as I have often wondered if there was a better solution to the mass poisoning of forests that they practice in order to try and preserve their native species.

Fascinating.

Advanced Readers's Copy provided by Edelweiss.

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LibraryThing member albertgoldfain

About as good a book possible on a topic that never really held my interest: the variety of confrontation points between humans and wildlife. The writing is journalistic, without positive or negative "spin" on either symbiotic adaptations or adversarial confrontations between us and the wild.

Roach's humor shines through...there is gold in some of the footnotes...so do read those.

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LibraryThing member Beamis12

Man vs. Nature. As we encroach further and further into territories once the feeding grounds of wild animals, clashes are inevitable, which is the focus of this book. Not just animals but threatening plants and invasive species are also discussed. Roach travels all over the world investigating the

mitigation efforts that are being employed by various cultures in an attempt to protect people as well as animals.

My favorite parts were the bears in Colorado, though I admit I can find them fascinating because I don't live where I would run into any. They infiltrate houses, stealing food, they can open the refrigerator, take out a carton of eggs and remove the eggs one by one. Monkeys that hold cell phone hostages until they are given food by the tourists. Yellow eyed penguins, only found in New Zealand that are now in danger of extinction. Much information in this book, sometimes a little too much, but as always her research seems impeccable. Her trademark humor is inserted here and there but not as much as in some of her works.

ARC by Edelweiss.

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LibraryThing member AAAO

The Muslim view was not included with other religions in this book:
Abu Huraira* reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A man suffered from thirst while he was walking on a journey. When he found a well, he climbed down into it and drank from it. Then he came out

and saw a dog lolling its tongue from thirst and licking the ground. The man said: This dog has suffered thirst just as I have suffered from it. He climbed down into the well, filled his shoe with water, and caught it in his mouth as he climbed up. Then he gave the dog a drink. Allah appreciated his deed, so He forgave him.” They said, “O Messenger of Allah, is there a reward in charity even towards the animals for us?” The Prophet said, “Yes, in every creature with a moist liver is a reward for charity.”
Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6009, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2244
* Abu Huraira was a reliable reporter from the companions of the prophet peace and blessings be upon him and them. Wikipedia says he was named Abu Huraira “in reference to his attachment to cats,” but the accurate story is that he raised a kitten by keeping it in his sleeve, and people started to call him thus. One of those things that has to happen to you before you understand….Abu Huraira was a source of broad Islamic science, but this would have been relevant given the book’s title. I have a sense that that kitten was the one who settled upon the reporter, not the other way around. In Islam buying and selling of pets is discouraged, putting a purely monetary value on Allah’s creation isn’t appropriate.

In Islam, if you can define “pests” as such you can exterminate them, albeit humanly and without using fire. Only Allah [The Most Glorified, the Most High] penalizes with fire. I know Muslims who will not use pest zappers because of this.

The book itself wanders at times. The ricin arguments weren’t applicable, for me, because the cases cited were of humans seeking a natural product, both separate and isolated from nature’s agency. It would have perhaps been more appropriate to say…. some plants that we as humans are often urged to eat may even contain cyanide (in the plant section), for example the seeds of some fruits. Or some other thing along the lines of the unexpected toxicity of some plants. There, it would have been nature exceeding the limits we would like it to stay within.

There is a liberal use of the theory of evolution. For one thing, the theory of evolution is just that, a theory. But more importantly, evolutionary ideas are operating on such a macro, massive level, that they are almost inhuman is span. We, human, live for a century or so on average, why should we be repeatedly cognizant and meditative of what we ultimately will not control? “Theories” that rely largely on “belief” are ineffective “science” at best.

And yet…And yet, I might have overlooked all that, and chosen this book as ‘one of the best’ this year but for the obscenity, which for me always weighs, in measures and magnitudes, unfavorably. I nearly never can exempt it, when reading is bad for you.

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LibraryThing member murderbydeath

This has not been a great week for me overall, and this arrived Tuesday afternoon (book lover's torture #12: when you hear the delivery man leave your new books at the doorstep and you can't get up to retrieve them), and by Wednesday I was in desperate need of a distraction. Mary Roach had me

laughing out loud on page 1, and I can't tell you how much I needed those laughs.

In her introduction she states that she's starting with the felonious crimes first: those incidents, usually bear/cougar/mountain lion, where people are mortally wounded, and ends the book with the crimes more akin to nuisances; crop theft, stealing food, etc.

It probably says something about me that I found the first half much easier to read than the second half - or maybe not. The crimes may be 'lesser' but the punishments meted out by people most definitely are not. Humanity's ability to embrace wholesale slaughter is depressing.

The author manages to end the book on a hopeful note, and while the writing isn't always even (sometimes the humour is a tad over-done), I learned a lot and sometimes I was entertained (usually by the way the author can laugh at herself). Her writing isn't for everyone, but for those that enjoy bit of entertaining and informative science journalism, her books usually deliver.

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LibraryThing member eduscapes

New works of popular science nonfiction are examining fascinating scientific themes through entertaining stories. Educators will find these useful in identifying timely examples for their classrooms.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
Mary Roach, Sep 2021, W.W. Norton & Company
Themes: science, social

science, nature, biology, philosophy, wildlife

FUZZ explores the science of human-wildlife interaction and conflict. Combining the disciplines of human behavior and wildlife biology, Roach shares fascinating and often humorous examples of the challenges of human-nature coexistence.

Take-aways: Roach’s conversational style is always popular with young adults and educators alike. From connections with bears and elephants to monkeys and trees, each chapter shares a short, engaging narrative that helps readers understand the complex relationships between nature and humans.

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LibraryThing member cougargirl1967

Another informative and thought provoking book by the delightful Mary Roach. She is so thorough with her research and always having fun with her topics.

LibraryThing member hcnewton

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as a part of a Quick Takes Catch-up post, emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness.
---
So this is about what happens when animals and humans have a hard time co-existing—which basically means when animals being animals inconvenience (or worse)

humans. Was that hiker killed by an animal, or did they die of other causes and become food for an animal? What happens when we put a building where an animal expected to be able to be?

I don't think it was as amusing as Roach tried to make it. It was interesting, but it went on too long and therefore became less-interesting the longer it went on. I don't remember anything more specific than that—which says something about the book. It just didn't hold my attention for long.

This is my first Mary Roach book—and maybe would've been my last if I hadn't run into a couple of other bloggers who are Roach fans that were as tepid as I was about the book. Still, I'm going to get a bit more distance between this book and my next.

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LibraryThing member Gwendydd

As always, Mary Roach's writing is delightful, and she's willing to ask all of the questions that everyone else is too polite to ask.

The book veers from its original topic. Given the title, I was expecting the book to examine examples of legal cases where animals were accused of crimes, or where

there was debate about whether animals were subject to human laws, such as the court case about whether a photo taken by a monkey can be copyrighted by the camera's owner. That's not what the book is about. The first few chapters are about how various law enforcement agencies deal with problems created by animals. For instance, some towns in Colorado have laws requiring business owners to keep their dumpsters locked so that bears don't get into them, but when multiple businesses have access to a dumpster, enforcing those laws is difficult. Roach explores a few similar situations where law enforcement agencies face challenges in getting humans to behave responsibly so that their actions don't attract or endanger animals.

But the bulk of the book is actually about pest control, and various approaches to keeping everything from bears to monkeys to mice away from humans and their food. Roach focuses on the search for humane methods to control animal populations, but there is also considerable discussion of what happens when humans try to kill large numbers of animals (it usually doesn't go as planned).

Roach ultimately argues that it's usually more successful to try to find ways of peacefully coexisting than to control or kill wild animals.

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LibraryThing member SChant

I like Mary Roach's work, and this contains many fascinating facts and sympathetic interviews with workers in areas that might seem esoteric to many of us, but I found her trademark bright and breezy style somewhat jarring when the subject of the book is the wholesale slaughter of animals and birds

who happen to impinge on humans. It made me feel uncomfortable.

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LibraryThing member msf59

I had not read Mary Roach in a few years, so I was delighted that her new book dealt with nature colliding with humanity. A subject that fascinates and horrifies me. There is her usual humor here but she mostly takes an informative dive into many areas, where animals and even trees, cross deadly

paths with people. She covers bears, mountain lions, deer, elephants, albatross, macaques and mice. She also offers some solutions, for a better co-existence with this wildlife. A good, solid read and Roach does a fine job narrating the audiobook.

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LibraryThing member jnmegan

Mary Roach returns once again, bringing her sense of irony to a potentially dry subject in Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. Inspired by humorous anecdotes and old legal records, the author uncovered many stories of animals being ridiculously anthropomorphized worldwide. Roach is well known for her

series of catchy single-word titles (Stiff, Gulp and Bonk), that expose our misconceptions and human hubris. This time, she wanders the globe to explore consequences that occur when humans and animals collide. Fuzz is a report of her discovery of many unfortunate remnants of some outdated procedures and ill-conceived attitudes. Roach has a clear message here: Practice tolerance and accommodation, rather than defaulting to attempts at elimination and extinction for our non-human counterparts on Earth. She goes on to describe the many mishaps and failures of “pest” control that have been tried, with both comic and tragic results. Roach seeks to remind us that we humans are mere tenants of this planet along with our coinhabitors, with no greater claim to territory or possession than any other creature. A warning must be given to those who avoid reading about animal cruelty or abuse. The book sometimes gets mired in the nitty-gritty of chemicals and methodology, and too descriptive of the gory details. Despite some uneven parts, Fuzz tackles a controversial topic in a light-hearted but insightful way. Mary Roach shadows those tasked with managing the animal encounters and presents them with candor and respect. With her gentle humor she can expose our own folly in pursuing a pointless quest for dominance that is unachievable and undeserved.

Thanks to the author, WW Norton, and Edelweiss for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

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LibraryThing member xaverie

I did like this book quite a bit, it just didn't fully coalesce into the level of quality I've read from other non-fiction authors this year.

Fewer