Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times–bestselling 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. Intrepid as ever, 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. She taste‑tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

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