Feral Cities
Adventures with Animals in the Urban Jungle
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
We tend to think of cities as a realm apart, somehow separate from nature, but nothing could be further from the truth. In Feral Cities, Tristan Donovan digs
below the urban gloss to uncover the wild creatures that we share our streets and homes with, and profiles the brave and fascinating people who try to manage them. Along the way readers will meet the wall-eating snails that are invading Miami, the boars that roam Berlin, and the monkey gangs of Cape Town. From feral chickens and carpet-roaming bugs to coyotes hanging out in sandwich shops and birds crashing into skyscrapers, Feral Cities takes readers on a journey through streets and neighborhoods that are far more alive than we often realize, shows how animals are adjusting to urban living, and asks what messages the wildlife in our metropolises have for us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Donovan (Replay: The History of Video Games) spends time in the trenches with those who care for, monitor, and capture animals in this anecdotal and curiosity-sparking volume on changing urban environments and the fate of wild creatures in heavily populated areas, from Brooklyn to Berlin and Miami to Mumbai. He joins Annette Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, early one morning as she finds birds "everywhere, crumpled or concussed on the sidewalks," having crashed into panes of glass. Donovan also rides with officers in the Los Angeles Wildlife Program as they track coyotes in Griffith Park and the Hollywood Hills, where the animals have been living for over 30 years. Meanwhile, in the sprawl of Phoenix, he accompanies a "mild-mannered web designer" who moonlights as a rattlesnake catcher. As the author notes, people "move to the city and expect it to be free of bugs, snakes, carnivores, and just about everything else too. Even, it seems, when the land right next to our homes is untamed desert." Donovan not only shows readers how territorial boundaries between humans and wild animals constantly shift, but also how such encounters with birds, coyotes, and snakes should come as no great surprise. Photos.
