Author: Ronald N. Rood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Porcupines
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Author: Uldis Roze
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421407353
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Could a porcupine make a good pet? Do they ever stick themselves or other porcupines with their quills? In this latest addition to the Animal Answer Guide series, we learn about these mysterious animals’ "pincushion defense," along with the following facts: • Porcupines survive on a diet of leaves, bark, and fruit• Quills are actually modified hairs• There are 26 species of porcupines (and counting)• Old World and New World porcupines have a common ancestor but evolved independently• New World males will gather to fight ferociously over a single female Porcupines: The Animal Answer Guide presents solid, current science in the field of porcupine biology. Uldis Roze compares and contrasts porcupines in terms of body plan, behavior, ecology, reproduction, and evolutionary relationships. He examines the diversity of porcupines from around the world—from North and South America to Africa and Asia. This guide explores the interactions between humans and porcupines, including hunting, use of quills by aboriginal societies, efforts to poison porcupines, and human and pet injuries (and deaths) caused by porcupines. Roze also highlights the conservation issues that surround some porcupine species, such as the thin-spine porcupine of Brazil, which is so rare that it was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in the 1980s.

Author: D. H. Lawrence
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521358477
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays restores what Lawrence wrote.

Author: Marcia Bonta
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 9780822971467
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Marcia Bonta is a naturalist-writer who has lived on a 500-acre mountain-top farm in central Pennsylvania for twenty years. Appalachian Spring is her personal account of that glorious spectacle - the coming of the spring to the woods and fields of Appalachia.The book begins with spring preliminaries in January and February when gray squirrels mate and the great horned owls conduct their courtship rites. Then, with the onset of true spring, the intricacies of the season unravel day by day in journal entries that combine Bonta's own meticulous observations with the research reported by botanists, entomologists, and other natural scientists.She recounts her hours spent watching an active red fox den or observing the drumming of a male ruffed grouse - all without the benefit of a blind. She discovers new-born fawns on the trail and hen turkeys with their poults in the field. A black bear peers into her sitting room window; deer play tag in her front yard.Birdwatching is an integral part of her spring ritual; she records both the return of nesting species and the passing through of migrants. She spends a blustery St. Patrick's Day following a flock of American pipits foraging in her field, discovers and watches an ovenbird nest beside her trail, and counts twenty-three species of wood warblers during one spectacular day in mid-May.Every aspect of the natural world catches her eye, from tthe life cycle of a tent caterpillar to the sex life of a jack-in-the-pulpit. But while she considers her book to ber her own love sone about the place and season on earth she loves most, she also mourns the continual exploitation of the natural earth by humanity for its own often superficial uses. She hopes, by recounting the wonders of the natural world, to convert others to what she calls the "third stage" in humanity's relationship with nature, that of empathy with all of nature for its own sake. "To know the earth better, to grasp a little of its workings, to look on it with awe and wonder as well as with respect, is to want to save it from destruction."

Author: Kay Redfield Jamison
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375701486
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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A national bestselling author examines one of the mind's most exalted states—one that is crucially important to learning, risk-taking, social cohesiveness, and survival itself. “[Jamison is] that rare writer who can offer a kind of unified field theory of science and art.” —The Washington Post Book World With the same grace and breadth of learning she brought to her studies of the mind’s pathologies, Kay Redfield Jamison examines one of its most exalted states: exuberance. This “abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion” manifests itself everywhere from child’s play to scientific breakthrough. Exuberance: The Passion for Life introduces us to such notably irrepressible types as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Richard Feynman, as well as Peter Pan, dancing porcupines, and Charles Schulz’s Snoopy. It explores whether exuberance can be inherited, parses its neurochemical grammar, and documents the methods people have used to stimulate it. The resulting book is an irresistible fusion of science and soul.

Author: D. H. Lawrence
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795351526
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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This collection of essays by the author of Lady Chatterley’s Loverpresents his musings on literature, politics and philosophy in a newly restored text. Though D. H. Lawrence was one of the great writers of the twentieth century, his works were severely corrupted by the stringent house-styling of printers and the intrusive editing of timid publishers. A team of scholars at Cambridge University Press has worked for more than thirty years to restore the definitive texts of D. H. Lawrence in The Cambridge Editions. Between 1915–1925, D. H. Lawrence wrote a series of “philosophicalish” essays covering topics ranging from politics to nature, and from religion to education. Varying in tone from lighthearted humor to spiritual meditation, they all share the underlying themes of Lawrence’s mature work: “Be thyself.” As far as possible, the editors of the Cambridge Editions series have restored these essays to their original form as Lawrence wrote them. A discussion of the history of each essay is provided, and several incomplete and unpublished essays are reproduced in an appendix.

Author: Andrew Dequasie
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462814034
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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This book is a collection of essays and anecdotes about 19 animals, 18 birds, 15 fish, 10 reptiles, 31 insects, 39 plants, 17 trees, and 6 other subjects encountered in nature by the author, mostly in the region from West Virginia to Vermont. Hopefully, it lends personality to these subjects and leaves the reader with a sense of the changing view of our natural world during the 20th century. It is not encyclopedic, being limited to things the author has had experience with. On the other hand, it contains many off-beat details not to be found in other references. Among stone-age peoples, one of the important duties the hunter had to fulfill when he returned home was to tell the other members of his tribe where he had been, what he had seen, and what he had done. That is what the author attempts to do in this book. For instance, he tells of : Dealings with raccoons, both tame and wild. How to rescue a skunk from a storm drain. Home-made animal traps. What constitutes a successful backwoods fox hunt. How kingfishers and sparrow hawks mourn their dead. Why bluebirds are scarce. Why a killdeer will tease a dog. Where to find bluegills in the Ohio River or smelt in the Niagara River. A box turtle's prediction of dry weather and rain. Living where copperheads live. Playing with garter snakes. How to find a bee tree. The very different lives and habits of hornets, brown wasps, and mud dauber wasps. Sleeping with bedbugs. The psychological warfare of the deer fly. When to look for snow fleas. How to recognize chamomile by its aroma. The scarcity of ginseng. Trouble with jack-in-the-pulpit. Using jimson weed to kill flys. The forms and effects of poison ivy. Why black raspberries grow in smaller patches than red raspberries. Making use of elderberries. How Indians used acorns as food. Growing black walnut trees from seed. There are no pictures in this book. Those would greatly increase the size and &nbs

Author: Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station (Portland, Or.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Author: Alain Mabanckou
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1593764804
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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All human beings, says an African legend, have an animal double. Some doubles are benign, others wicked. This legend comes to life in Alain Mabanckou’s outlandish, surreal, and charmingly nonchalant Memoirs of a Porcupine. When Kibandi, a boy living in a Congolese village, reaches the age of 11, his father takes him out into the night and forces him to drink a vile liquid from a jar that has been hidden for years in the earth. This is his initiation. From now on, he and his double, a porcupine, become accomplices in murder. They attack neighbors, fellow villagers, and people who simply cross their path, for reasons so slight that it is virtually impossible to establish connection between the killings. As he grows older, Kibandi relies on his double to act out his grizzly compulsions, until one day even the porcupine balks and turns instead to literary confession. Winner of the Prix Renaudot, France’s equal to the National Book Award, Alain Mabanckou is considered one of the most talented writers today. He was selected by the French journal Lire as one of fifty writers to watch this coming century. And as Peter Carey suggests, he “positions himself at the margins, tapping the tradition founded by Celine, Genet, and other subversive writers.” In this superb and striking story, Mabanckou brings new power to magical realism, and is sure to excite American audiences nationwide.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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