Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jan 25, Lexidreams rated it it was ok Shelves: The introduction is a very well written social critique. However, it does not really match what follows. Most of the chapters are naturalist's personal accounts of their experiences with animals who have been deemed pests. In these chapters I was hoping to find more tips on coexistence and insights into how we come to physically divide up and share the world with other animals.

But it did not quite go in that direction. For one thing, the book bases itself mainly in the USA and entirely in the W The introduction is a very well written social critique. For one thing, the book bases itself mainly in the USA and entirely in the West. Multiple chapters had the writers showing respect for the 'trash' animals, but in the end they still drowned them in trash cans literally.

The book does provide a couple insightful solutions for particular cases and a bit of humor see the chapter on the amusingly 'hardcore' pigeon movement of NYC but I wish it had delivered so much more. This is not an animal rights oriented book, though those interested in the field may gain something from it. For example, in one inexplicable paragraph in the second to last chapter, a writer discusses his desire to foster in his students a disgust for social norms which romanticize nature, seeing such ideologies and "speak for those who can't" organizations as uncritically brainwashing people.

He believes by actually taking his students to experience nature they will make up their own minds, but of course also within the context of him specifically wanting them to deal with self-defecating grasshoppers whose only major value he believes comes from dissection.

Recognizing and encouraging in your students "a willingness to outcompete, kill, hunt, or otherwise violently engage with other living beings" would seem to go against the themes and likely audiences of the book, but I guess it was deemed as appropriate???

He ends his chapter by stating, "In reference to hunting, Thoreau wrote, 'We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane while his education has been sadly neglected. Perhaps this chapter was included to provide an alternative perspective but if the book really meant itself as an attempt to critique and challenge the construction of animals as 'trash', I am flummoxed.

Unfortunately, multiple sections of this book seem to be another example of the ideology which finds that it's okay to take part in behavior which is under moral question as long as one speaks words of "honor" and "respect" while doing it. The book ends on an anthropocentric note, even as it seemingly attempts to encourage humans to act more morally towards animals, by implying that it is only humans who can act morally towards other beings or understand that they "ask something of them".

It was just well bellow my expectations. Oct 21, Kusaimamekirai rated it really liked it. I really enjoyed this compilation of essays about the animals in our lives many of us would rather forget. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Search my Subject Specializations: Civil War American History: Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.

How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species

How We Live with Nature's Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II Abstract Trash Animals, a collection of essays by a wide range of environmental writers, examines relationships between humans and wildlife deemed filthy, feral, unwanted, problematic, invasive or worthless. More Trash Animals, a collection of essays by a wide range of environmental writers, examines relationships between humans and wildlife deemed filthy, feral, unwanted, problematic, invasive or worthless.

Bibliographic Information Print publication date: How we respond to conflicts with animals reveals our larger relationship with the environment as a whole. Other essays reveal the limits that science has as an objective arbiter of nature. Science cannot ultimately answer all our questions about value and management of species.

Jeffry Allan Lockwood also shows us that disgust can be an aesthetic experience when he illuminates the life of the prairie lubber grasshopper, which has a rather disgusting escape tactic. Life is full of beauty, but it is full of feces, filth, and decay. Lockwood shows us that even creatures that disgust us can lead us into wonder at the natural world. The essays in Trash Animals reveal that human relationships with animals, even animals that seem ecologically or economically worthless oftentimes, a harmful assumption or those that do us harm, can be imagined in new ways. And if we can see animals in a different light, our ethics of engagement will most certainly follow.

As David Quammen argues in his essay "The Face of a Spider," engaging in a moral dialogue about "insignificant" creatures is vitally important because these animals comprise the majority of animal life. The first sections examine cultural and psychological constructs of species, in effect revealing more about human fears than of the animals themselves.

The middle sections shift from the symbolic to the biological animal and ask whether conflicts with humans are unavoidable or are a result of unrealistic desires to dominate animals and environments. The closing sections of the book focus on ways to re-imagine human relationships with animals regarded as having little or no value, suggesting ultimately that the concept of the "trash animal," not the animal itself, is what we should discard.

Part One of the collection, "Association, Symbolism and Language: These essays make clear that it is human misunderstanding of animals, like the ring-billed gull, wolf, and Mormon cricket, which places them in the category of "trash. These essays construct the varied ways species come to be maligned and question if these animals deserve the consequences of human prejudice. Cultural Blind Spots and the Disappearance of the Ring-Billed Gull in Toronto," Gavan Watson asks the reader to consider the nature of our relationship with a species that is both ubiquitous and maligned, the ring-billed gull, although it is rarely called that.

Watson argues that though the bird is prevalent in the urban environment of Toronto the fact that residents of the city do not know the bird's actual name or its natural history makes it virtually invisible. This impedes a nuanced understanding of this species, creating a psychological distance between human and bird. In "Hunger Makes the Wolf" Charles Bergman asks, what ways do humans "need" animals we perceive as dangerous, like wolves.

In his personal quest to see wolves in the wild, Bergman interviews scientists, crawls into a den to come face to face with the wild animal, and presents a multitude of cultural interpretations of the wolf that includes wolf as mother, lover, nurturer, devil, sexual deviant, thief, insatiable hunger, symbol of the untamable wild, vermin, scourge, murderer. As such, the wolf has been much maligned.

Even in one of the wildest and untamed places in the world, the Arctic, the author observes wolves scavenging at the dump, which fills him with a sense of loss. The fact that wolves may harm the interests of hunters or livelihoods of ranchers makes them loathsome for many, but Bergman argues these conflicting creatures are necessary to our wild lands and our spirits.

The wolf as metaphor resonates in our psyches in deep and meaningful ways that can't be quantified by science or sit easily in our domestic lives. They connect us to the primal call of the wild, the wilderness within. Catherine Puckett looks at a creature more maligned than the wolf and equally endangered, the eastern diamond-back rattlesnake in her essay, "Eve in the Garden with the Serpent. Puckett looks at the cultural stigma surrounding snakes in the South informed by religion, myth, and family and recounts the harms that are inflicted on creatures that while poisonous are also "more polite than most people.

She also sees the snake as an ally, one who has a secret knowledge of the wilderness she loves. The rattlesnake is an outsider in its own habitat--as she finds herself to be--an unconventional Southern woman living with her husband's all too conventional family as she enters middle age. Christine Robertson asks the reader to deconstruct their fears and prejudices of locusts and questions if toxic campaigns to control these insects are warranted in her essay, "Managing Apocalypse: A Cultural History of the Mormon Cricket.

Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II

Robertson examines the history of insect eradications campaigns in the West, which continue today despite negligible results and toxic consequences up the food chain from birds, to predators and livestock to humans. Mormon crickets serve as a symbol for misguided land management policies and a silent apocalypse--the slow poisoning of our environment and unfortunately our selves. The Biological Trash Animal," reconsiders engagements with coyotes, prairie dogs, and packrats, and re-frames the nature of these conflicts from a biological and historical perspective. These essays scrutinize the conventional way people view conflicts with wildlife and propose new ways of thinking about and handling inevitable conflicts with animals.

Even though Couturier has never witnessed a coyote she identifies with the creature making a home in the urban and agrarian landscapes of the East. She is drawn to the creature to fulfill "A need. Couturier discusses the violence that is strategically enacted on coyotes by government organizations even though coyotes rarely molest livestock and serve as natural and free rodent control on the landscape.

As coyotes migrate east, filling the niche the extirpated wolves left behind, the author welcomes the wild and unknown into her suburban landscape and life. When Kelsi Nagy decides to turn her horse out on a pasture inhabited by prairie dogs she explores the national controversy surrounding prairie dogs. In her essay "Prairie Dog and Prejudice," she examines general perceptions of prairie dogs, which has caused people to assume these creatures are invaders that destroy the landscape, harm cattle and spread the plague.

Nagy learns that the prejudice surrounding prairie dogs has generated unfounded myths about these creatures that are actually an important part of the prairie ecosystem. Even though prairie dogs provide the only food and shelter for the most endangered mammal in North America, measures to control prairie dogs continue on public lands. Nagy reveals that imposed prejudices toward unwanted wildlife reveal imposed values toward wildlife that are difficult to overcome no matter how valuable prairie dogs are to the Great Plains ecosystem. In his essay, "Nothing Says Trash like Packrats: Branch does battle with the wily pack rats living in the crawl space of his desert home and challenges us to reconsider the kind of neighbors we make with wildlife.

Once packrats move into his newly built home outside Reno, Nevada, Branch looks to his own ignorance and agency in creating habitat for packrats. His solutions work with the animal's behavior, but not without first having blood on his hands. Even though a packrat can be considered one of the worst kind of invaders--a messy, smelly rodent that carries off house keys and baby pacifiers-- the author learns that there is a value to the rodent's hording behaviors. A native mammal in North America, packrats have been bringing artifacts of nature and now culture to their middens for centuries.

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Their nests, some of them in continuous use for 50, years, are time capsules to the natural history of the Great Desert Basin and a treasure trove for climate researchers that use plant and animal artifacts preserved in ancient middens to analyze past climate trends. Branch concludes that these creatures have become the ultimate trash animal having turned trash--animal droppings, twigs, leaves, bones and berries--into scientific treasures, a window into the biologic past.

The essays in Part Three, " Mis Management: These essays treat animals that were too successful in acclimating, attesting to the unforeseen consequences of human attempts to manipulate the non-human world. The animals represented in this section--Canada geese, starlings, and common carp--highlight the current, politically and rhetorically-charged issue of "invasive alien species. In "Canadas" Bernard Quetchenbach questions what it means to lose the wild rhythms of nature, like the migration of geese, and to have them replaced with year round resident geese.

Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature's Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species

While wild geese bring to mind iconic images of wild nature and the rhythms of the seasons, resident geese are lumped into the category of nuisance animals with raccoons and gulls. Even birders make distinctions between migratory and urban geese. Like other nuisance species human activity led to year round populations of geese, byproducts of twentieth century hunters who bred captive geese as decoys. Once released these semi-wild geese never took to the skies with their migrating kin and settled permanently in urban environments, fouling pristine and orderly sidewalks and golf courses.

Quetchenbach looks closely at the dis-ease with which we live with Canadian geese and proposes, "the year-round presence of the once almost-exclusively migratory Canada goose testifies that our actions have far-reaching, unpredictable effects, causing apparently permanent disruptions in what we like to think of as serene, dependable nature.

A Tragicomedy in Five Acts. Today starlings are considered pests that disturb the peace with raucous calls, alfresco gatherings with bird droppings, agriculture and air travel. Half of all planes that hit flocks of birds crash into murmurations of starlings. While extreme measures are undertaken to control these much maligned immigrants, including heavy poisoning with a toxin often referred to as "starlicide," Mitchell wonders what we are fighting against when we wage campaigns against this successful alien species.

Starlings mirror the progress of human immigrants across the continent; they continue to thrive in our environments; and they are here to stay. Mitchell ponders the starling's role in a new world that we have adapted for our own use where starlings thrive through no fault of their own. Might they have filled the niche of other avian predecessors before them? Phillip David Johnson, II meditates on fly fishing for carp, invasive species, sport fishing, and what wilderness means in an increasingly post-pristine world in his essay, "Fly-Fishing for Carp as a Deeper Aesthetics of Angling.

Its reputation often clouds the fact that it was introduced in the United States to restock overfished, polluted waters in the wake of manifest destiny. Though the carp industry continues to thrive, the association of carp with the trash and marginal people groups remains. As sport fish, Johnson finds them worthy adversaries--big, strong, and difficult to catch. Fishing for them in irrigation ditches, farm ponds, and golf courses, he finds solitude that has vanished on the "pristine" yet crowded trout streams near his home in Colorado.

Ultimately, Johnson asks if it is possible to find value fishing for an invasive species in a "trashed" landscape and what we can we learn about other attitudes toward nature, wilderness, and our relationship with animals. Part Four, "Urban Environments: Citizens of the Post-Pristine," follows animals that thrive in urban spaces and take on the ambivalent attitudes people hold regarding cities. In places, these essays reveal the irony inherent when the biological success of some species would have never been possible without the city and other human-built spaces.

This last section challenges readers to look beyond cultural constructs that pit humans against animals or that place animals within anthropocentric systems of value. Carolyn Krauss examines exactly how far a pacifist can be pushed by the cockroaches that have moved into her home in her essay "Metamorphosis in Detroit. While cockroaches are a long time citizen of the planet and a marvel of survival, Krauss finds they have been loathed for centuries. For example, what we know to be the German cockroach was "called the Russian roach by the Prussians and the Prussian roach by the Russians.

Enamored with the roaches fascinating biology, Kraus finds that it is easier to love the theoretical animal than the insects scurrying through her home. Some conflicts between humans and animals cannot be avoided no matter how many facts are known about them.

Trash Animals — University of Minnesota Press

In his essay, "Kach'i: During his tenure in a hyper- urban environment, Bishop finds wonder in these raucous birds, which, unlike North Americans, Koreans admire or see as auspicious omens of good luck. Seeking nature in the city, Bishop discovers how magpies evoke nostalgia for the "wild" the city has replaced. Andrew Blechman analyzes the varied campaigns waged against urban pigeons, whose excrement is blamed for destroying a city's beauty, in his essay "Flying Rats," taken from his book Pigeons: While pigeons pose no more of a health threat than an average house cat, many people view them as vile and disgusting creatures.

Like other "trash" birds, they are loathed for their ubiquity, their waste, and their ability to thrive in human built environments. He finds that not everyone loathes pigeons. A handful of people are dedicated advocates to the plight of rock doves. For these modern day feral pigeon fanciers, the pigeon may serve as a symbol of their own outcast or misfit natures.

If no peaceful way can be found to coexist with some animals, at least there can be much learned from a thorough understanding of the conflict, not only about the nature of species, but also human aesthetics, evolution, and the limits of moral thought and action.

Trash Animals

In his essay, "Kill the Cat That Kills the Bird," Bruce Barcott writes about the controversy surrounding feral cats and asks some tough questions about the rights of individual animals versus the existence of endangered bird species. Barcott travels to Galveston, Texas to meet the most notorious cat killer in the United States, Jim Stevenson, an avid birder, arrested for shooting feral cats. An exotic species in the United States, house cats that have turned wild are the second leading cause of wild bird deaths in North America.

As urban development creates island ecosystems, bird populations are becoming increasingly sensitive to predation by these unmanaged creatures. Barcott asks us to consider if there are humane ways to manage feral cats and effectively save bird populations. David Quammen, in his essay, "Face of a Spider" examines his desire to "do no harm" when a nest of black widow spiders hatches at his desk. This unwelcome event makes the author confront a situation he would rather avoid and prompts him to ask the question, "How should humans behave toward the members of other living species?

The basic process of animal life human or otherwise, do necessarily involve a fair bit of ruthless squashing and gobbling.