Some kids live and breathe for animals, and I was one of those kids.
I had my stuffed animals and my plastic stethoscope, and I wanted to be a vet, like James Herriot. Maybe a small animal vet, maybe a field vet, but a vet. When I turned nine, I came across David Quammen's Song of the Dodo, a book about island biogeography. I read it because of the dodo on the cover.
Since non-fiction is not a genre known for economy of expression, I was prepared for dry prose and a headache. But Quammen wrote in a style both spare and informative, making technical material accessible through lively commentary. He was a kind of chimera, a journalist who had hung around biologists so long that he now had at his disposal the insight of both fields. More often …show more content…
I knew there were doctors and veterinarians, but Quammen interviewed people who ran after fledgling skuas, tracked lemurs, recorded baboon infrastructure. And if they were lucky, they got a paycheck out of the deal. I was jealous.
My previous impression of science had been informed by pop culture, and I thought of scientists as bespectacled geniuses, abstract and beyond reach, in the same vein as Einstein or Pasteur. But these scientists, in the best way possible, were just people. They read Harry Potter. They joked around. They watched Star Trek. As children they might have been like me, and as an adult I wanted to be like them.
Lest readers get any crazy ideas, Dodo emphasized equally the long hours, the dangers of getting up close and personal with wild animals, and the need for many semesters of calculus. But on a nine-year-old, that sort of thing only ever works as reverse psychology.
Naturally, I felt the need to share with everyone else the wonders of ecology. During family gatherings, I brought up whatever new fact I'd learned, speaking so fast my speech slurred. “Lemurs are the most primitive of the primates,” I’d say, as if uttering some sacred truth. “Insular dwarfism leads to elephants the size of dogs.” I’m not convinced I actually understood a word I said, but adults rarely did either, so it worked
I had my stuffed animals and my plastic stethoscope, and I wanted to be a vet, like James Herriot. Maybe a small animal vet, maybe a field vet, but a vet. When I turned nine, I came across David Quammen's Song of the Dodo, a book about island biogeography. I read it because of the dodo on the cover.
Since non-fiction is not a genre known for economy of expression, I was prepared for dry prose and a headache. But Quammen wrote in a style both spare and informative, making technical material accessible through lively commentary. He was a kind of chimera, a journalist who had hung around biologists so long that he now had at his disposal the insight of both fields. More often …show more content…
I knew there were doctors and veterinarians, but Quammen interviewed people who ran after fledgling skuas, tracked lemurs, recorded baboon infrastructure. And if they were lucky, they got a paycheck out of the deal. I was jealous.
My previous impression of science had been informed by pop culture, and I thought of scientists as bespectacled geniuses, abstract and beyond reach, in the same vein as Einstein or Pasteur. But these scientists, in the best way possible, were just people. They read Harry Potter. They joked around. They watched Star Trek. As children they might have been like me, and as an adult I wanted to be like them.
Lest readers get any crazy ideas, Dodo emphasized equally the long hours, the dangers of getting up close and personal with wild animals, and the need for many semesters of calculus. But on a nine-year-old, that sort of thing only ever works as reverse psychology.
Naturally, I felt the need to share with everyone else the wonders of ecology. During family gatherings, I brought up whatever new fact I'd learned, speaking so fast my speech slurred. “Lemurs are the most primitive of the primates,” I’d say, as if uttering some sacred truth. “Insular dwarfism leads to elephants the size of dogs.” I’m not convinced I actually understood a word I said, but adults rarely did either, so it worked