What makes a trash animal?
I reviewed Trash Animals: How We Live With Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species, edited. Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II (University of Minnesota Press). You can read it in The Chicago Reader.
An excerpt:
What makes a trash animal? Why is one animal a pest and another a beloved pet or, as in the history of the wolf, a formidable “spirit animal”? This book indicates there are no simple answers to be found. Even a beloved creature like the domestic cat—the U.S. is home to one in four of the world’s cats—can take on pestilential proportions and threaten native populations if introduced into foreign territory.
Read the rest here.