Interesting parallel with something I read decades ago.
Paul L Errington was a wildlife biologist, a colleague of Aldo Leopold, whose work centered around the prairie pothole marshes of the upper midwest. He spent a lifetime studying, among other things, muskrats.
He wrote a lovely slim book, _Of Men And Marshes_. One of the chapters is a narrative of what happens when a small initial population of muskrats expands in an ideal but finite marsh environment.
Muskrats are physiologically like nothing so much as scaled-up field mice, adapted to aquatic life. And the course of the muskrat population is quite similar to that of the mice in Calhoun’s universe, up to the point where surplus males gather and fight, and stressed females begin to eat their own young.
But marshes have edges, and Errington describes coming across badly damaged muskrats far out in the countryside, dying of wounds or exposure, but no longer in the intolerably overcrowded marsh in which they were born.
If you have any taste at all for nature writing, I commend the book to your attention. Errington is thoughtful company with a long perspective. The pen and ink illustrations by Albert Hochbaum are, to my eye, very beautiful.
Welp.
all play and no work make mousey go crazy
Interesting parallel with something I read decades ago.
Paul L Errington was a wildlife biologist, a colleague of Aldo Leopold, whose work centered around the prairie pothole marshes of the upper midwest. He spent a lifetime studying, among other things, muskrats.
He wrote a lovely slim book, _Of Men And Marshes_. One of the chapters is a narrative of what happens when a small initial population of muskrats expands in an ideal but finite marsh environment.
Muskrats are physiologically like nothing so much as scaled-up field mice, adapted to aquatic life. And the course of the muskrat population is quite similar to that of the mice in Calhoun’s universe, up to the point where surplus males gather and fight, and stressed females begin to eat their own young.
But marshes have edges, and Errington describes coming across badly damaged muskrats far out in the countryside, dying of wounds or exposure, but no longer in the intolerably overcrowded marsh in which they were born.
If you have any taste at all for nature writing, I commend the book to your attention. Errington is thoughtful company with a long perspective. The pen and ink illustrations by Albert Hochbaum are, to my eye, very beautiful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lester_Errington
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Marshes-Paul-L-Errington/dp/B0000CJVQX/
sounds like a good read. i will keep it in mind next time i’m in one of our local used books places.