Mary Dansak of Auburn, Alabama, is a lifelong science educator, devout naturalist, equestrian, and writer of memoir and commentary. This volume is a selection of 70 of her weekly short articles from the “Auburn Villager” from August of 2022 to December of 2023, arranged chronologically. This arrangement gives a flow to the pieces in the same way that Thoreau’s “Walden” takes the reader through the natural cycle of the seasons.
Included here are close observations of the natural world, childhood recollections and nostalgia, and warnings about what we are doing to the environment, the flora and fauna of Alabama, driving so many species to near-extinction. For Dansak, as for many of us, E. O. Wilson is a deity and inspiration and she evokes him often.
Notwithstanding the boom in tourist dollars, I empathize with Dansak’s lamentations about the development on the Alabama coast. She recalls as a child staying at the Orange Beach Cottages on the bay, paddling “in the shallow water” with some time at the Gulf beach each day. Now, she occasionally stays in the condos, reading inside during the heat of the day, swimming in the evenings. She apologizes to the Gulf: “You are still the same wild creature.” “It’s not your fault, what they’ve done to you.”
Dansak also writes of the many orphaned creatures she and her father, a biologist, saved and raised—fledglings fallen from the nest, a raccoon, snakes of all sorts. This was emotionally satisfying and hands-on educational. Surprisingly, I thought, this is all now not legal. If you find an abandoned or lost critter you have to call the proper authorities.
One chapter, in the “I did not know that” category, concerns Kleptoparasites, or pea crabs. These creatures live in the shell with the oyster, especially oysters harvested from the high salinity Georgia/ South Carolina coast. Like the host oyster, they are alive and one chews them right up. They have, she says, a sweet, briny taste. I have never seen one and that is probably because, in restaurants, they are tossed out in the kitchen in order not to “gross out” the patrons. Surprisingly, since she cuddles snakes and loves vultures, Dansak is herself squeamish about the pea crabs and the oyster itself!
Animal sexual behavior is an old favorite for nature writers. We have known for ages how the female praying mantis, after mating, eats the head of her mate for nourishment. Dansak has more to add here. Cuttlefish display male color patterns on one side, female on the other.
Freshwater eels don’t become male or female until they are about to die. A number of animals employ parthenogenesis, a kind of virgin birth. No males are involved. Dansak tells us this is “common in wasps, snakes , sharks, and other species,” and is “on the rise in the animal kingdom. We don’t know why.”
