Fuzz Quotes

“We are irrational in our species-​specific devotions. I know a man who won’t eat octopus because of its intelligence. Yet he eats pork and buys glue traps for rats, though rats and pigs are highly intelligent, likely more intelligent—​I’m guessing, for I have not seen the SAT scores—​than octopuses. Why, for that matter, is intelligence the scale by which we decide whom to spare? Or size? Have the simple and the small less right to live?”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Snowplows kill twice as many Canadians as grizzly bears do.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“The black bear is a ridiculously lovable species. There's a reason kids have teddy bears, not teddy goats or teddy eels.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Californians are like, 'Lions are everywhere now!'" What's on the rise are home security cameras. Doorbell cameras are the mammograms of wildlife biology.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“If the present rate of decline continues, the yellow-eyed penguin will likely be gone from the planet in ten or twenty years. It is difficult to be here watching them and not feel somewhat slammed by this information. What a thing to lose! Go look them up. The candy red beak, the pink go-go boots, the yellow mask angling back from the eyes. They’re the Flash, they’re 1970s Bowie! I don’t mean to imply that adorable, showy species are of more value or somehow deserving of more concern. It’s just … damn.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“So she looks in her rearview mirror,” one is saying, “and there’s a bear in the back seat, eating popcorn.” When wildlife officers gather at a conference, the shop talk is outstanding. Last night I stepped onto the elevator as a man was saying, “Ever tase an elk?”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Is there something uniquely dangerous about beans? I posed this question to plant scientist Ann Filmer, recently retired from the University of California, Davis. In her reply, she included a link for a website she had put together on poisonous garden plants. I was taken aback to note that nine of the 112 plants in Category 1 (Major Toxicity: “may cause serious illness or death”) were currently, or had recently been, growing in our yard: oleander, lantana, night-blooming jasmine, lobelia, rhododendron, azalea, toyon, pittosporum, and hellebore. Another, the houseplant croton, was growing in an orange ceramic pot in my office. In other words, it’s not beans. It’s plants, period. If you can’t flee or maul or fire a gun, evolution may help you out with other, quieter ways to avoid being eaten. Over the millennia, natural selection favors eaters who turn up their proboscis at you, and eventually they all steer clear.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Because people like me want to have their hamburgers. Only once or twice a year, I want to say. But I know that’s a lame defense. It’s not the quantity that matters, it’s the statement you make or don’t make. When you tell people you don’t eat beef — or would never use a glue trap — you make the alternative a little less comfortable for them. You keep it from being a thing they give no thought to.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“For most of the past century, your odds of being killed by a cougar were about the same as your odds of being killed by a filing cabinet. Snowplows kill twice as many Canadians as grizzly bears do.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Gulls would eat the world but leave the plants.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“(Pitkin County bears consistently prefer premium brands. “They will not touch Western Family ice cream,” Tina White reports.)”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“New Zealand says it like it is. On the brink of a cliff above the surf at Pancake Rocks is a sign warning tourists not to climb over the fence. It closes with “Don’t be an idiot.”
― Roach Mary, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Of all the animals we have ever kept, these Albatross are the ones to which I have become most attached. I really love them and respect their independence and jaunty ways. This marks the end of a period of acquaintance with real aristocrats of life.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“But the United States is surely not the only country working on gene drive in mammals. If we’re on it, China is too. And China has not demonstrated a comforting abundance of oversight in the realm of genetic engineering.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“I am skeptical, only because I have read the 1978 paper by researchers at Pennsylvania State University who tried to warn away white-tailed deer by erecting roadside plywood cutouts of deer rear ends with tails a-flagging. On some, the raised tail was painted white; on others, 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.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Albert Ken-rich Fisher’s 1900 “Summary of the Contents of 255 Stomachs of the Screech Owl” made me feel tired and sad, though also vaguely festive, owing to the author’s “Twelve Days of Christmas”–style presentation: “91 stomachs contained mice … 100 stomachs contained insects … 9 stomachs contained crawfish … 2 stomachs contained scorpions …” Droppings provided a kinder, less taxing alternative.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“I would take delight in the optical non sequitur of a bear standing in front of a Louis Vuitton boutique. This poor goober with the burrata on its snout, innocent and utterly unaware of its likely fate, makes me want to cry.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“If other fallers read this, he will no doubt get grief about his lovely hands, but I believe a man named Dazy will handle it.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“compensatory reproduction.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Doorbell cameras are the mammograms of wildlife biology.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“And he said, ‘I don’t have the right to decide whose life is more important, the person or the bear.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Naturalists were the original biologists, and hunters and trappers were the original naturalists.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“The future of turd science is bright.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Possum merino is a heavenly soft wool blend. When I first arrived in New Zealand, I bought a pair of wonderful green possum merino gloves. I imagined peaceful possum flocks being sheared like sheep. Then Warburton explained that possum pile is too short to shear and is typically sliped instead. Sliping involves some kind of postmortem chemical depilatory. I still wear the gloves, though with diminished happiness.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Like most birds, gulls mate by aligning their cloacal openings. The ornithological term for this is “the cloacal kiss.” Which makes bird sex sound sweet and demure, until you remember that they also excrete through their cloaca.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“The black bear is a ridiculously lovable species.There’s a reasonkids have Teddy Bears, not Teddy Goats or Teddy Eels.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“The victims of arboreal manslaughter may be, unlike the perpetrators, quite young.”
― Roach Mary, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“When bear biologists from the state of Washington surveyed forty-eight U.S. wildlife agencies, 75 percent said they sometimes translocate problem bears, but only 15 percent believed it was an effective way to resolve the problem. It’s more often done in high-profile cases, when media attention has put the animal and the agency in the spotlight. Generally speaking, translocation is a better tool for managing the public than it is for managing bears.”
― Roach Mary, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“I can’t judge. We all have emotional connections to certain branches of the tree of life, and for some that branch is trees. We are irrational in our species-specific devotions. I know a man who won’t eat octopus because of its intelligence. Yet he eats pork and buys glue traps for rats, though rats and pigs are highly intelligent, likely more intelligent—I’m guessing, for I have not seen the SAT scores—than octopuses. Why, for that matter, is intelligence the scale by which we decide whom to spare? Or size? Have the simple and the small less right to live?”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“Exasperated, the navy turned to science for help. On October 2, 1957, Hubert Frings, a Pennsylvania State University professor of zoology, got a call from Washington. Would he be willing to come to Midway Atoll for the December/January nesting season? In other words, would Frings make the supreme sacrifice of spending his between-semester break on a tropical island in lieu of hanging around Altoona, Pennsylvania? You bet. Accompanying him would be his wife, Mable, a librarian and bioacoustician with a special interest in cricket and grasshopper “chirp sequences.”
― Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law