Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife

Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Softcover. Very Good. 5x1x8. Bensusen, Sally J. In Very Good+ condition. Animals are the source of some of our most imaginative and persistent fantasies, and these fantasies are the only way most of us ever get to escape from our urbanized and domesticated lives into a larger world, writes Richard Conniff in the introduction to Every Creeping Thing. But Conniff, author of Spineless Wonders, has some rather strange ideas of the kinds of animals we might want to daydream about. Take the little brown bat ... please: "When their mouths are open and their insect-gnashing teeth exposed, they look like the sort of particularly unpleasant lap dog that a Barbie doll would have in her spiteful and neglected old age. Conniff lovingly describes the habits of grizzlies, mice, cormorants, weasels, sharks, porcupines, moles, snapping turtles, and other underappreciated critters, including the scientists and fanciers who pay attention to these animals. In deadpan prose, Conniff describes the decorative nature of bloodhound slobber (It hangs down in ropes from the upper lips, or flews, and sometimes gets festooned between the lip and the end of either ear.) and the distinctive mating call of the porcupine (It is like a baby whimpering from a dream that is bad and getting worse... ). Every Creeping Thing is a delightful, yet far too short, tour of our love-hate relationship with some faintly repulsive wildlife.