Wildly entertaining book by Mary Roach on the intersection of wildlife and humanity. Roach follows wildlife professionals to learn how they attempt to control animals in nature using all manner of approaches (even zoning rules in Aspen).
Fascinating and funny.

Until now, I have kept away from Mary Roach’s books because I somehow got it in my head that as someone who traditionally never been all too interested in most sciences, I would inevitably find them to be mildly interesting, but still slogs overall. But when given the opportunity to read “Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law,” I finally decided to give her work a try because the subject matter of this particular book intrigued me so much. However, I still assumed a somewhat dry and jargon-packed narrative.

Well, you know what they say about making assumptions. As it turns out, all of my preconceived notions were so far off that I am now genuinely baffled as to how I arrived at them in the very first place. Roach’s writing is so incredibly approachable (not to mention packed with smart and funny insight) that I now feel like she could write a pamphlet on a random rock and it would end up being one of the most enjoyable things that I have read all week. Fortunately for me, in the case of this specific title, her subject matter is when animals and humanity encounter one another, as seen through the eyes of the women and men who patrol that space. It’s not only a genuinely fascinating topic that was such a blast to explore, but Roach’s writing has provided a fair amount of mental fodder that I am still chewing on, especially on my recent evening walks.

“Fuzz” lies directly at the intersection of educational and enjoyable, and is perfect for both old fans of Mary Roach and newcomers such as myself. And now that I have finally learned what I have been missing out on, it’s definitely time for me to add a few new titles to my to-reads list.

Y'know, it's really hard to review a Mary Roach book.

I realized this when I was trying to explain my utter delight while reading Fuzz to a bunch of folks whom I would normally recommend books to, and the conversation would inevitably start off with, "You know Mary Roach? The science wri... well, not science exactly, it's more like... Well, she wrote that book, Stiff, about all the things you can do with your body when you're dead?"

That's a conversation starter.

Anyway, you either know Mary Roach, or you don't. And if you know Mary Roach, then please know that Fuzz had maybe the most back-to-back laugh-out-loud Mary Roach moments of any of her books that I've had the please to reading, and if you know Mary Roach, you know that that's a lot.

A lot.

As always, too, Roach is well-researched, informative, humble, humorous, and endlessly readable, even when talking about, okay let's be real, people sometimes being eaten by wild animals...

Which I guess is one more thing you can do with your body after you die?

Mary Roach’s latest dive into the interesting and odd is Fuzz, in which she pesters experts and government officials in four different counties to ask all kinds of inappropriate questions about human-animal conflict. She talks to wildlife rangers who determine if people were killed by animals, other humans, or by accident. She attempts to get straight answers out of officials who really don’t want to talk about India’s monkey overpopulation problem. And she talks to lots and lots of biologists who study species they clearly enjoy, but that they are tasked with finding ways of eradicating. The result of this tension is that Fuzz might be the most melancholy of Roach’s books. Thankfully, it is packed with irrelevant facts, fun vocabulary, and plenty of silliness.

Humans have been locked in a struggle with many species since the first humanoids. We are killed by and kill in turn large predators like bears, mountain lions, and leopards. (All are covered in Fuzz.) We’ve also been fighting with species who steal our food and mess with our stuff, mostly by pooping on it. (Roach discusses several species of birds and rodents.) We’re not even safe from plants. Windthrown (a new word I learned from Roach) trees destroy our property and occasionally hurt us. Some plants can poison us. It’s a dangerous world out there. As Roach discovers, however, most of the things we do to avoid, mitigate, relocate, or eradicate the problems are pointless.

There’s a fact Roach deploys towards the end of Fuzz. Until the mid-nineteenth century or so, boys were employed as bird scarers. Twice a year, the boys would head out into the fields to scare the crap (literally, but accidentally) out of birds that would eat seed and ripe grain. Because they only did this semi-annually and because they were kids, the birds didn’t acclimate and the scaring worked a charm. All of the other methods used since then—explosives, poisons, and even lasers—stop working very quickly, if they even work at all. The real kicker of this is that birds don’t take that much. A rancher tells Roach in the last chapter that he estimates that the birds take about the same amount of cattle feed that he loses to the wind. These facts summarize Fuzz well. First, technology is no substitute for understanding animal and human behavior. Second, really understanding animals and the ecosystem would show us that it’s best if we left things alone. On the way to this lesson, Roach dives into monkey contraception, gene drive eradication plans, dynamiting treetops, lots of humane rodent traps and less humane poisons, and the US Navy futilely waging war on the gulls of Midway Island.

I learned so much from this book that I’ve been blurting out all kinds of trivia to everyone I’ve talked to in the last two days. The urge to drop trivia into every conversation will probably fade. (It usually does.) What’s going to stick with me is the knowledge that we need to learn to live with all of the other species on this planet. The critters are crafty and they’ve had a very long time to learn how to survive. Our energies would be better spent making peace with the rats and the gulls and getting into the habit of correctly using bear-proof garbage bins.

Mary Roach is as entertaining as ever with this book FUZZ: When Nature Breaks the Law. AS people continue to encroach on animal's habitats the encounters with them have increased greatly. This book leads the reader on many trails of meeting with animals in their own homes.

All kinds of info you didn't know that you wanted to know. Mary Roach is back in good form!

This read is quick and feels light while actually packing in a lot of facts and examples. Heartily recommended for nature lovers of all types. This is a great example of nonfiction that doesn't "feel" "nonfiction-y." 4.5 stars!

Like Mary Roach's other books, I adored the concept but felt the book was okay. The summary makes it seem like it's going to be significantly weirder, but it's really about how wildlife experts deal with animals when they mix with humans. The stories are unsurprising (some attacks, food stealing, etc.), but if you're interested in wildlife interactions, it will be interesting. I ended up hopping around the book because some of the details didn't grab me. If you like Mary Roach's work, you'll enjoy this book.

Boy, was I excited to see Mary Roach’s upcoming release available on NetGalley. She has a fun voice which relates every subject she chooses to research in a humorous, educational way.
Fuzz is just as interesting as her previous works. I was engaged right off of the bat, and reading aloud to my husband soon after. I couldn’t stop talking about it today.
Highly recommended!

For years people have recommended Mary Roach to me, I'm sorry I waited until now to pick up her books. Fuzz compiles tales of wildlife and nature meeting humans with disastrous consequences. Subtitled: "when nature breaks the law," I would argue it's more about when nature and humans collide. Because after all, who makes the law? We do. Bears don't know they are invading our territory. Trees don't intend to fall on a car. Birds are eating crops that look like food to them. BUT in the voice of Mary Roach, she's able to present these stories with stunning detail and background information that will have you rethinking what you initially expect with each tale. I highly recommend FUZZ and I look forward to going back and reading Roach's other works.

Mary Roach has done it again. Fuzz is about wild animals and the hi-jinx they tend to get up to and how that often leads to them breaking the law. Roach tackles bears, monkeys, elephants, and more in this fun and informative book.

I love Mary Roach's writing (I have read all her books) and when I saw this book was available I got super excited. Reading the description, I was ready to laugh out loud while learning science.

This wasn't what I really got however. The book was good. There were interesting stories of travel to places where humans and animals interact. There was learning about how those interactions can go wrong and what some people are doing to prevent them from doing so. It was a solid book with some humor.

It just didn't blow me away like he other books have. My wife put it like this, "Whenever you start a Mary Roach book, it prepare for 'I have to read you this...' over and over. That didn't harken this time." The fact is that I did tell her a couple anecdotes here and there, but I never was so enthralled that I would insist she stop what she was doing and listen.

Mary did a good job bringing the important issue of human-animal interactions to life and helping people understand how they can be a detriment. What I felt like was missing was the depth of science and the triggers to get people to desire to explore past her pages that have so often characterized her writing.

Overall, a solid book, but this far the least fascinating of her ouvere.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.
#maryroach #fuzz #netgalley

I am a huge fan of Mary Roach, love her writing style and subjects, but this one I could just not get into. It did not seem to have her usually spark. I would still recommend it as there are some interesting tidbits scattered through out but I don't think this one should be an intro to the author

Mary Roach’s newest book is about “problem wildlife” and the unpredictable and frequently dangerous interactions between nature and civilization. Her work is as interesting, funny, and delightfully weird as ever, and impeccably researched, with Roach interviewing experts in obscure fields, going along on predawn mountain lion tracking missions, and baiting wild macaques into stealing food just to see what it's like to be robbed by a monkey. Also included: an exploration of deer vs vehicles (including the headlight phenomenon), the next generation of bird deterrents (less scarecrows, more lasers), and death by elephant (more common than you’d think.)

As with everything else by Mary Roach, this book is highly recommended.

I enjoyed this book seeing how animals and society interact with each other, even if the consequences are not always good. I might have misunderstood the summary, as I thought it would be more about animals "breaking laws" rather than trying to work with them peacefully, but that's okay. Overall a good read and will recommend to patrons.

This is another fascinating and funny Mary Roach book that I absolutely loved! In all of the stories about the wildlife workers and the animal perpetrators, it comes back around to humans being the actual problem. I laughed out loud several times and also cried a little worrying about many of the animals that are impacted by lazy or selfish people. I have already recommended this book to anyone who will listen!

Roach is known for her irreverent, witty, and accessible approach to science and Fuzz is no exception. Her latest endeavor takes you into the world of flora and fauna behaving badly, starting with bears dumpster diving and housebreaking in Aspen and leading you across the world to pickpocketing monkeys in India and invasive alien species in New Zealand. Roach explores the issues posed by various creatures, how they have been dealt with in the past, present, and possible future solutions. Fuzz is a simultaneously hilarious and sobering look at the difficult choices wildlife organizations must make in order to humanely control out-of-control populations, appease those suffering the nuisance, as well as defenders of animal rights.

Another great one from Mary Roach - although I would suggest it's not her most cohesive book (in the end it was less about animals "breaking the law" and more just about human-wildlife interactions), but still enjoyable and engaging, as all her books are.

It does not even really matter what a Mary Roach book is about. Readers aren't going to get an encyclopedic understanding of the topic--here, it's where conservation/wildlife biology meet human civilizations, and how animals and humans coexist. In these chapters, mostly they do so unsuccessfully, due in large part to humanity's foibles and inability to abide by practical common sense advice. Don't leave food out where it will attract bears. Don't go out amongst the elephants at night. Do use lasers to deter gulls from eating large important floral displays. What readers will be looking for is Roach's nonlinear, footnote-adorned take on different situations and her deft balancing of perspectives and personalities. Will readers leave this book with a better understanding of the situations Roach examines? Yes. Will they have been vastly entertained while gaining that understanding? Also, yes. Do not skip the footnotes. Mary Roach is queen of the footnotes.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law explores from predators to pests to trees crashing down the world of nature rudely intersecting human "civilization" with both dire and sometimes hilarious consequences. Roach relates stories of intentional predators such as leopards and tigers as well as the not so intentional dangers of hungry bears, poisonous beans, pesky monkeys, the ever popular rat, the hazardous combination of birds and airports, and the Danger Tree, and explores how people seek to "solve" the problem. This is the first time I have read one of Roach's books, so I cannot compare it to one of her other's, but it was as entertaining as her reputation favors her. The book flows like one long narrative. I had to go back to see how it was organized (the disadvantage of the ebook). While filling the book with reams of facts and footnotes, Roach uses all the most interesting and entertaining stories and incidents to make learning as painless as did your favorite teacher. Anyone the least bit interested in animals or nature will enjoy (most of) this immensely. (There were a few icky bits! But you were expecting that, right?) Highly recommended.

As always, Roach delivers so much information in palatable and fun chapters. She delves into ideas and approaches that don't occur to the typical reader. I plan to use quotes and chapter titles to entice readers to buy this one!
"The future of turd science is bright."
"Frass is insect excreta and my new favorite word of the day."
"Chapter 8: The Terror Beans" (that title alone is enough to interest me in a whole book!)