Pets and Pests

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By Danielle Deaver

Whether you walk a dog every day, take your binoculars out on walks for birdwatching or spend a lot of time trying to save your lettuce from bunnies, humans interact with animals just about every day. Sometimes that’s a happy thing — a dog who greets you at the end of the day with tail wagging — and sometimes it’s not a good thing (see bunnies, above). No matter how or why you encounter animals, these books will give you a greater understanding about the creatures we share a world with.

An Immense World
By Ed Yong
We can never really know what it’s like to be an animal, but reading Ed Yong’s new book helps us get pretty close. He writes about everything from bees that see flowers in a completely different way to the reasons behind the fly’s erratic flight patterns. Yong also explains the fascinating ways that animals perceive the world through its magnetic field or ultrasonic sounds. Yong’s great gift in is turning hard scientific facts into stories, making this a wonderful book to sink into.

 

All Creatures Great and Small
By James Herriot
A classic, for a good reason. Herriot tells charming, and sometimes heartbreaking stories about his years as a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales of England.

 

Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm
By Jon Katz
Jon Katz offers a glimpse into how difficult life on a small farm is, and also how hilarious — especially when you have spirited border collies helping to run things.

 

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
By Mary Roach
We’ve all seen funny videos of bears wandering into houses, but what really happens when animals and humans get too close? Mary Roach explains with her trademark humor.

Danielle Deaver is an adult services librarian, Montgomery County Public Libraries, Davis Library.

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