Thumbs up for Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. Nonfiction.
It’s Mary Roach, so I read it in one sitting despite having no existing interest in the topic. I would read anything she wrote. However, this is a hard book to wholeheartedly recommend. You do get the sense that the professionals trying to stop humans and wild animals from tangling with each other do truly CARE; and, as always, Roach is compassionate even when she is making her subjects uncomfortable with nosy questions. Nevertheless, strong content warning: not just ‘animal death,’ but ‘animal suffering.’ I’d say this one is for diehard Roach fans.
Elephants are vegetarians, but they are not picky eaters. They’ll eat most parts of a plant—grains, grass and leaves, stems, twigs, bark. On a tea estate in the Sonitpur district of Assam in 2017, three wild elephants broke into a workers’ shop at 2:00 a.m. and helped themselves to the cotton fiber product known as rupees. They broke open the cash box and consumed 26,000 rupees in large denominations.
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